THE FREE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH:
A SHORT HISTORY (1982-1998)
Vladimir Moss
God demands the following three virtues of every
baptized Christian: from the soul - true faith, from the body -
chastity, from the tongue - truth. (St Gregory the Theologian)
Introduction
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the
"second administration" of the Soviet government, the Soviet Moscow
Patriarchate, continued to exist virtually unchanged, only changing its
political orientation from pro-communist to pro-democratic. At this time
the leadership of the healthy ecclesiastical forces opposed to the
Moscow Patriarchate (MP) inside Russia was assumed by the Free Russian
Orthodox Church (FROC). This article consists of a short history of the
FROC and a canonical justification of its independent existence.
1. Origins
The origins of the FROC go back to January 5/18,
1981, when a priest of the Russian Catacomb Church, Fr. Lazarus
(Zhurbenko), was secretly received into the West European diocese of the
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA) by Archbishop Anthony of Geneva
and Western Europe (ukaz no. 648/818/2). Shortly after this, in 1982,
another cleric of the West European diocese, Fr. Barnabas (Prokofiev),
was secretly consecrated as Bishop of Cannes and sent to Moscow, where
he consecrated Fr. Lazarus to the episcopate. The candidacy of Fr.
Lazarus had been put forward by the dissident MP priest, Fr. Demetrius
Dudko, with whom Archbishop Anthony had entered into correspondence.[1]
On August 1/14, 1990, the Chancellery of the ROCA
decided to throw some light on this secret consecration by issuing the
following statement: "In 1982 his Eminence Anthony, Archbishop of Geneva
and Western Europe, together with his Eminence Mark, Bishop of Berlin
and Germany, on the orders of the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad, secretly performed an episcopal consecration on
Hieromonk Barnabas (Prokofiev), so that through the cooperation of these
archpastors the Church life of the Catacomb Orthodox Church in Russia
might be regulated. Since external circumstances no longer compel either
his Eminence Bishop Lazarus in Russia, or his Eminence Bishop Barnabas
in France to remain as secret Hierarchs of our Russian Church Abroad,
the Hierarchical Synod is now officially declaring this fact."[2]
This was an ominous phrase: "so that... the Church
life of the Catacomb Orthodox Church in Russia might be regulated". No
indication was given as to why the life of the Catacomb Church needed
regulating from abroad, nor how it was proposed that this regulation
should be accomplished (apart from the consecration of a hierarch), nor
whether the consent of the Catacomb Church to such a regulation had been
sought or received, nor what canonical right the ROCA had to regulate
the life of the Catacomb Church.[3]
In actual fact the consent of the Catacomb Church, was neither asked nor given.….[4]
Be that as it may, the ROCA now had the beginnings of
a secret hierarchy in the Soviet Union. This hierarchy began to act in
the spring of 1990, when the first substantial signs of the collapse of
Communism and a measure of ecclesiastical freedom were becoming evident.
Thus Bishop Lazarus flew to New York, where his consecration was
confirmed by the Synod of the ROCA; and believers throughout Russia
became aware that the ROCA had entered into combat with the Moscow
Patriarchate on Russian soil.
The first parish to leave the Moscow Patriarchate and
officially join the ROCA was that of St. Constantine the Great in
Suzdal, Vladimir province, whose pastor was Archimandrite Valentine
(Rusantsov). As Fr. Valentine told the story: "In the Vladimir diocese I
served as dean. I was a member of the diocesan administration, was for a
time diocesan secretary and had responsibility for receiving guests in
this diocese. And then I began to notice that I was being gradually,
quietly removed. Perhaps this happened because I very much disliked
prayers with people of other faiths. It’s one thing to drink tea with
guests, and quite another.. to pray together with them, while the
guests, it has to be said, were of all kinds: both Buddhists, and
Muslims, and Satanists. I did not like these ecumenical prayers, and I
did not hide this dislike of mine.
"And so at first they removed me from working with
the guests, and then deprived me of the post of secretary, and then
excluded me from the diocesan council. Once after my return from a trip
abroad, the local hierarch Valentine (Mishchuk) summoned me and said:
‘Sit down and write a report for the whole year about what foreigners
were with you, what you talked about with them, what questions they
asked you and what answers you gave them.’ ‘Why is this necessary?’
‘It’s just necessary,’ replied the bishop. ‘I don’t understand where I
am, Vladyko – in the study of a hierarch or in the study of a KGB
operative? No, I’ve never done this and never will do it. And remember
that I am a priest and not a "stooge".’ ‘Well if you’re not going to do
it, I will transfer you to another parish.’
"And so the next day came the ukaz concerning my
transfer to the out-of-the-way place Pokrov. I was upset, but after all
I had to obey, it was a hierarch’s ukaz. But suddenly something
unexpected happened – my parishioners rebelled against this decision,
people began to send letters to the representatives of the authorities
expressing their dissatisfaction with my transfer: our parishioners even
hired buses to go to the capital and protest.
"The patriarchate began to admonish them,
suggested ‘a good batyushka’, Demetrius Nyetsvetayev, who was constantly
on trips abroad, in exchange. ‘We don’t need your batyushka,’ said the
parishioners, ‘we know this kind, today he’ll spy on foreigners,
tomorrow on the unbelievers of Suzdal, and then he’ll begin to reveal
the secret of parishioners’ confessions.’ In general, our parishioners
just didn’t accept Nyetsvetayev. They didn’t even let him into the
church. The whole town was aroused, and the parishioners came to me:
‘Fr. Valentine, what shall we do?’ At that point I told them that I had
passed my childhood among the ‘Tikhonites’ [Catacomb Christians], and
that there is a ‘Tikhonite Church’ existing in exile. If we write to
their first-hierarch, Metropolitan Vitaly, and he accepts us – will you
agree to be under his omophorion? The church people declared their
agreement. However, this attempt to remove me did not pass without a
trace, I was in hospital as a result of an attack of nerves. And so, at
the Annunciation, I receive the news that our parish had been received
into the ROCA."[5]
On June 8/21, 1990, the feast of St. Theodore,
the enlightener of Suzdal, the ROCA hierarchs Mark of Berlin, Hilarion
of Manhattan and Lazarus of Tambov celebrated the first hierarchical
liturgy in the St. Constantine parish.[6] Then, in February, 1991
Archimandrite Valentine was consecrated as Bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir
in Brussels by hierarchs of the ROCA. There now began a rapid growth in
the number of parishes joining the ROCA on Russian soil, including many
communities of the Catacomb Church. Most of these joined the Suzdal
diocese under Bishop Valentine, but many also joined the Tambov diocese
of Bishop Lazarus and the Kuban diocese of Bishop Benjamin. The ROCA
inside Russia was now called the Free Russian Orthodox Church (FROC).
2. First Signs of Division
Now where truth and Christian piety flourishes the
devil is sure to interfere. And at this point he inspired certain
hierarchs of the ROCA to hinder the work of the FROC hierarchs by a
series of anti-canonical actions.
In 1991 the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA decided to
organize church life in Russia on the principle of non-territoriality.
As Archbishop Lazarus explained: "The Hierarchical Synod decreed equal
rights for us three Russian hierarchs. If someone from the patriarchate
wants to join Vladyka Valentine – please. If he wants to join Vladyka
Benjamin or me – please. So far the division [of dioceses] is only
conditional – more exactly, Russia is in the position of a missionary
region. Each of us can receive parishes in any part of the country. For
the time being it is difficult to define the boundaries of dioceses."[7]
This decision led to some conflicts between the FROC
bishops, but not serious ones. However, it was a different matter when
bishops from abroad began to interfere. As early as July, 1990
Archbishop Lazarus told the present writer that if Archbishop Mark of
Germany continued to interfere in Russia he might be compelled to form
an autonomous Church. But Archbishop Mark did not stop. He ordained a
priest for St. Petersburg, a "Special German deanery" under the Monk
Ambrose (von Sievers), who later founded his own Synod, and in general
acted as if Russia were an extension of the German diocese.
In November, 1991 a correspondent of a church
bulletin asked Bishop Valentine about Archbishop Mark’s role. The reply
was carefully weighed: "When the situation in Russia was still in an
embryonic stage, Archbishop Mark with the agreement of the
first-hierarch of the ROCA made various attempts to build church life in
Russia. One of Archbishop Mark’s experiments was the ‘special German
deanery’ headed by Fr. Ambrose (Sievers). Now this is changing, insofar
as the situation in the FROC has been sufficiently normalized. From now
on not one hierarch will interfere in Russian affairs – except, it goes
without saying, the three hierarchs of the FROC."[8]
In 1992, however, Archbishop Mark’s interference did
not only not cease, but became more intense, and was now directed
particularly against the most successful and prominent of the FROC
hierarchs, Bishop Valentine. Thus while calling for official
negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate[9], Mark called on believers
in a publicly distributed letter "to distance yourselves from Bishop
Valentine of the Suzdal and Vladimir diocese of the Free Russian
Orthodox Church", described the clergy in obedience to Bishop Valentine
as "wolves in sheep’s clothing", and told them to turn instead to Fr.
Sergius Perekrestov (a priest who was later defrocked for adultery
before leaving the FROC). A priest of the Moscow Patriarchate
interpreted this letter to mean that the ROCA had "turned its back on
the Suzdal diocese of the FROC".[10]
In a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly dated December 25,
1992, Bishop Valentine complained that Archbishop Mark’s attacks
against him had been distributed, not only to members of the Synod, but
also to laypeople and even in churches of the Moscow Patriarchate. And
he went on: "On the basis of the above positions I have the right to
confirm that after my consecration to the episcopate his Eminence
Vladyka Mark did everything to cause a quarrel between me and their
Eminences Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin…
"It is interesting that when their Eminences
Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin, by virtue of the Apostolic
canons and their pastoral conscience, adopted, with me, a principled
position on the question of his Eminence Archbishop Mark’s claims to
administer Russian parishes, the latter simply dismissed the two
hierarchs as being incapable of administration… Then Archbishop Mark
began to accuse me of ‘lifting everything under myself like a
bulldozer’. Therefore his Eminence Mark chose a different tactic. He
wrote a letter to Kaliningrad, calling me ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’,
and this letter was read out from the ambon in the churches of the
Moscow patriarchate.
"Yesterday I was told that his Eminence Archbishop
Mark sent a fax to the Synod insistently recommending that his Eminence
Barnabas not be recalled from Moscow until a church trial had been
carried out on Valentine. What trial, for what? For everything that I
have done, for all my labours? Does not putting me on trial mean they
want to put you, too, on trial? Does this not mean that it striking me
with their fist they get at you with their elbow?"[11]
The reference to Bishop Barnabas is explained as
follows. In February, 1992 he had been sent to Moscow as superior of the
community of SS. Martha and Mary in Moscow, which was designated the
Synodal podvorye. Then, on August 3, he organized "a conference of the
clergy with the aim of organizing the Moscow diocesan organization of
our Church. The conference was attended by more than ten clergy from
Moscow and other parts of Russia. In his speech before the participants
Vladyka pointed out the necessity of creating a diocesan administration
which would unite all the parishes of the FROC in Moscow and Moscow
region, and also those parishes in other regions of Russia which wanted
to unite with this diocesan administration."[12] "At the diocesan
conference… a diocesan council was elected, containing three members of
the National Patriotic Front, Pamyat’, as representatives of the
laity."[13]
This was a double blow to the FROC. First, the
appointment of a foreign bishop with almost unlimited powers in Russia
was a direct affront to the attempts of the Russian bishops to prevent
foreign interference in their dioceses. The encroachment of the foreign
bishops on the canonical rights of the Russian bishops was becoming
increasingly scandalous. (According to the holy canons (8th of the 3rd
Ecumenical Council, 9th of Antioch, 64th and 67th of Carthage) no bishop
can encroach on the territory of another bishop or perform any
sacramental action in it without his permission.) Secondly, Bishop
Barnabas’ open endorsement of the fascist organization Pamyat’, which
organized provocative demonstrations and even an attack on the offices
of Moskovskij Komsomolets, scandalized church opinion both in Russia and
outside.
On October 25 / November 7, 1992, Metropolitan Vitaly
and the Synod of the ROCA acted to distance themselves from the
activities of Bishop Barnabas, sending Bishop Hilarion and Fr. Victor
Potapov to Moscow to express the official position of the ROCA at a
press conference; which duly took place on November 13. However, in
February, 1993, at a meeting of the Synod in New York, it was decided to
reject this press-conference as "provocative" and to praise one of the
pro-fascist priests, Fr. Alexis Averyanov, for his "fruitful work with
Pamyat’", bestowing on him an award for his "stand for righteousness".
Moreover, no action was taken against Bishop Barnabas, while Fr. Victor
was forbidden to undertake any ecclesiastical or public activity in
Russia.[14]
The year 1993 brought no relief for the beleagured
FROC bishops from their foreign brothers. Thus when the large and
prosperous parish of the MP in Naginsk under its very popular pastor,
Archimandrite Adrian, applied to come under the omophorion of Bishop
Valentine, and was accepted by him on January 18, Bishop Barnabas
interfered and suggested they come under his omophorion – which offer
was politely but firmly turned down. At the same time the MP circulated
an accusation - signed by a woman but with no other indication of time,
place or names of witnesses of the supposed crime - that Archimandrite
Adrian had raped one altar boy and had had improper relations with
another. This accusation turned out to be completely fabricated – the
"raped" altar boy wrote a letter of apology to Fr. Adrian and the letter
was accepted by the prosecutor in the criminal court. Both youngsters
were then sued for stealing icons…
In spite of this, Bishop Barnabas, without any kind
of investigation or trial, suspended the archimandrite and wanted to
depose Bishop Valentine for accepting such a pervert into his diocese.
The Russian newspapers pointed out that Bishop Barnabas seemed to be
partially supporting the patriarchate in the struggle for this parish –
in which, as Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) pointed out, the KGB appeared also
to be operating.[15] Nevertheless, several ROCA bishops wanted to
proceed with defrocking Bishop Valentine; but the decision was made to
retire him instead on grounds of his ill-health – a completely
uncanonical decision since neither had Bishop Valentine petitioned for
his retirement nor had the ROCA bishops investigated his state of
health.
But worse was to come. Bishop Barnabas wrote to
Metropolitan Vladimir (Romanyuk) of the uncanonical Ukrainian
Autocephalous Church seeking to enter into communion with him, and
followed this up by visiting him in Kiev. The Moscow Patriarchate
gleefully displayed this letter as proof of the ROCA’s incompetence, and
it was only with the greatest difficulty (and delay) that the Synod,
spurred on by Fr. Victor and Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) outside Russia, and
by Bishop Valentine inside Russia, began to extricate themselves from
this scandal.
A recent publication summed up Bishop Barnabas’
contribution to Russian Church life in this year: "In the shortest time
[he] introduced the completest chaos[16] into the life of the Free
Church, which was beginning to be reborn. This representative of the
Synod began, above the heads of the Diocesan Bishops of the Free Church
in Russia, and in violation of the basic canonical rules, to receive
into his jurisdiction clerics who had been banned from serving by them,
to carry out ordinations in their dioceses without their knowledge, and
finally was not ashamed to demand, at the Council in 1993, that he
should be given rights to administer all the parishes of the Free Church
in Russia![17] This request was not granted by the Council, the more so
in that it learned that ‘the empowered representative of the Synod of
the Russian Church Abroad in Moscow’, on writing-paper of the
Hierarchical Synod, wrote a petition to ‘the Locum Tenens of the Kievan
Patriarchal Throne’, Metropolitan Vladimir (Romanyuk), in which it said
that ‘the traitrous Muscovite scribblers hired by the Moscow
Patriarchate are trying to trample into the mud the authority of the
Russian Church Abroad. In this connection: we beseech you, Your
Eminence, through the Kievan Patriarchate headed by you, to give our
ecclesiastical activity a juridical base and receive us into brotherly
communion.’ Extraordinary as it may seem, the Council did not consider
it necessary to defrock its representative, and it was put to him that
he should set off for the Holy Land for a mere three months without
right of serving – which, however, he did not carry out. This shameful
letter was widely distributed by the Moscow Patriarchate, while the
‘Patriarchal Locum Tenens’, delighted by this prospect, invited the
First-Hierarch of the Church Abroad to visit Kiev in written form. This
letter was also widely distributed."[18]
This was clear evidence, if further evidence were
needed, that the interference of foreign bishops in the affairs of the
Free Russian Orthodox Church had to be drastically curbed, and that the
canonical rights of the FROC bishops to rule their own dioceses without
inteference from the "centre" (several thousand miles away from Russia!)
had to be unequivocally strengthened and protected.
However, a letter dated October 2, 1992 from
Archbishop Mark to Protopriest Michael Artsumovich of Meudon gave
equally clear evidence, if further evidence was needed, that this ROCA
hierarch at any rate neither intended to protect the rights of the
Russian bishops nor in any way respected either them or their flock: "We
are receiving [from the MP] by no means the best representatives of the
Russian Church. Basically, these are people who know little or nothing
about the Church Abroad. And in those cases in which someone possesses
some information, it must be doubtful that he is in general in a
condition to understand it in view of his own mendacity and the
mendacity of his own situation. In receiving priests from the
Patriarchate, we receive with them a whole series of inadequacies and
vices of the MP itself… The real Catacomb Church no longer exists. It in
fact disappeared in the 1940s or the beginning of the 1950s… Only
individual people have been preserved from it, and in essence everything
that has arisen since is only pitiful reflections, and people take
their desires for reality. Those who poured into this stream in the
1950s and later were themselves infected with Soviet falsehood, and they
partly – and involuntarily - participate in it themselves, that is,
they enter the category of what we call ‘homo sovieticus’… In Russia,
consequently, there cannot be a Russian Church because it is all based
on Soviet man… I think it is more expedient to seek allies for ourselves
among those elements that are pure or striving for canonical purity
both in the depths of the Moscow Patriarchate and in the other Local
Churches – especially in Serbia or even Greece…We will yet be able to
deliver ourselves from that impurity which we have now received from the
Moscow Patriarchate, and again start on the path of pure Orthodoxy… It
is evident that we must… try and undertake the russification of Soviet
man and the Soviet church…"[19]
Archbishop Mark gave himself away in this shocking
and insulting letter: disdain for the "pitiful" and supposedly long-dead
Catacomb Church, disgust with the "impure", "Soviet" Free Russian
Church, admiration for the "purity" of the apostate churches of "World
Orthodoxy" with their Masonic and KGB-agent "hierarchs". As for the
remark – by an ethnic German - about the "russification" of the Russian
Church, the reaction in the heart of Holy Russia was one of
understandable dismay...
3. The First Separation
Archbishop Mark wanted to rid himself of the
"impurity" of the Free Russian Church; he was soon to achieve his aim.
For on April 14/27, 1993 Archbishop Lazarus wrote to the Synod that on
the basis of ukaz no. 362 of his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon he considered
the decisions of the Synod to be "not obligatory for execution for the
True Orthodox Catacomb Church". But, he insisted, he was not breaking
communion with the ROCA. As a result of this, without consulting either
him or his diocese, the ROCA retired him, and the administration of his
parishes was transferred to Metropolitan Vitaly.
At this point the first signs of serious dissent with
the ROCA’s politics in Russia in the ranks of the ROCA’s episcopate
appeared in the person of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), the foremost canonist
of the ROCA and a man of enormous experience in church matters, having
been at the very heart of the ROCA’s administration from 1931 until his
forced retirement by Metropolitan Vitaly in 1986. In an emergency report
to the Synod dated May 16/29, after sharply criticizing the unjust and
uncanonical actions of the Synod, he said: "As a consequence of this
Archbishop Lazarus has already left us. And Bishop Valentine’s patience
is already being tried. If he, too, will not bear the temptation, what
will we be left with? Will his flock in such a situation want to leave
with him? Will not it also rebel?
"For clarity’s sake I must begin with an examination
of certain matters brought up at the expanded session of the Synod
which took place in Munich.
"A certain tension was noticeable there in spite of
the external calmness. It turned out that behind the scenes a suspicious
attitude towards Bishop Valentine had arisen. Already after the closing
of the Synod I learned that several members of the Synod had been shown
a document containing accusations of transgressions of the laws of
morality against Bishop Valentine. The President of the Synod did not
have this document during the sessions but only at the end. It was then
that I, too, received a copy of the denunciation from Archbishop Mark,
who was given it by Bishop Barnabas, who evidently did not know how to
deal with such objects according to the Church canons. I involuntarily
ascribed the unexpected appearance of such a document amidst the members
of the Synod to the action of some communist secret agents and to the
inexperience of Bishop Barnabas in such matters.
"The caution of the Church authorities in relation
to similar accusations in the time of troubles after the persecutions
was ascribed to the 74th Apostolic canon, the 2nd canon of the 1st
Ecumenical Council and especially to the 6th canon of the 2nd Ecumenical
Council. At that time the heretics were multiplying their intrigues
against the Orthodox hierarchs. The above-mentioned canons indicate that
accusations hurled by less than two or three witnesses – who were,
besides, faithful children of the Church and accusers worthy of trust –
were in no way to be accepted…
"Did they apply such justice and caution when they
judged Bishop Valentine, and were ready without any investigation to ..
defrock him for receiving Archimandrite Adrian? And were the accusations
hurled at the latter really seriously examined?
"Beginning with the processing, contrary to the
canons, of the accusations against Bishop Valentine on the basis of the
single complaint of a person known to none of us[20], the Sobor was
already planning to defrock him without any kind of due process, until
the argument of his illness turned up. But here, too, they failed to
consider that this required his own petition and a check to ascertain
the seriousness of his illness. The intention was very simple: just get
rid of a too active Bishop. They didn’t think of the fate of his
parishes, which exist on his registration. Without him they would lose
it.
"While we, in the absence of the accused and,
contrary to the canons, without his knowledge, were deciding the fate of
the Suzdal diocese, Vladyka Valentine received three more parishes. Now
he has 63. Taking into account Archimandrite Adrian with his almost
10,000 people, we are talking about approximately twenty thousand souls.
"The question arises: in whose interests is it to destroy what the papers there call the centre of the Church Abroad in Russia?
"The success of Bishop Valentine’s mission has
brought thousands of those being saved into our Church, but now this
flock is condemned to widowhood and the temptation of having no head
only because he turned out not to be suitable to some of our
Bishops…"[21]
It was in this highly charged atmosphere, with their
bishop forcibly and uncanonically retired and the registration of all
their parishes hanging by a thread, that the annual diocesan conference
of the Suzdal diocese took place from June 9/22 to 11/24. It was also
attended by priests representing Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Benjamin.
Hieromonk Agathangelus read out a letter from Archbishop Lazarus in
which he declared that although he had considered the actions of the
ROCA in Russia to be uncanonical, he had tolerated them out of brotherly
love, but was now forced to speak out against them, for they were
inflicting harm on the Church. First, the ROCA did not have the right to
form its own parishes in Russia insofar as the Catacomb Church, which
had preserved the succession of grace of the Mother Church, continued to
exist on her territory. Therefore it was necessary only to strengthen
the catacomb communities and expand them through an influx of new
believers. Secondly, the hierarchs of the ROCA had been acting in a
spirit far from brotherly love, for they had been treating their
brothers, the hierarchs of the FROC, as second-class Vladykas: they
received clergy who had been banned by the Russian Vladykas, brought
clergy of other dioceses to trial, removed bans placed by the Russian
hierarchs without their knowledge or agreement, and annulled other
decisions of theirs (for example, Metropolitan Vitaly forbade an
inspection to be carried out in the parish of Fr. Sergius Perekrestov of
St. Petersburg). Thirdly, the ROCA hierarchs were far from Russia and
did not understand the situation, so they could not rightly administer
the Russian parishes. Thus the Synod removed the title ‘Administering
the affairs of the FROC’ from all the hierarchs except Bishop Barnabas,
which forced the dioceses to re-register with the authorities -
although, while a new registration was being carried out, the parishes
could lose their right to ownership of the churches and other property.
Moreover re-registration was almost impossible, insofar as it required
the agreement of an expert consultative committee attached to the
Supreme Soviet, which contained hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Fourthly, the ROCA hierarchs had been inconsistent in their actions,
which aroused the suspicion that their actions were directed, not by the
Holy Spirit, but by forces foreign to the Church.[22] Archbishop
Lazarus concluded by calling for the formation of a True Orthodox
Catacomb Church that was administratively separate from, but in
communion with, the ROCA, on the basis of Patriarch Tikhon’s ukaz no.
362, which had never been annulled.
At the end of the conference it was decided that the
Suzdal diocese would follow Archbishop Lazarus’ example in separating
administratively from the ROCA while retaining communion in prayer with
it. Bishop Valentine expressed the hope that this would be only a
temporary measure…[23]
Some FROC priests – notably Protopriest Lev Lebedev
of Kursk – while fully agreeing that the ROCA bishops had committed
uncanonical acts on Russian soil, nevertheless began to express the view
that the actions of the FROC bishops had been hasty and were justified
only in the case that the ROCA had fallen away from Orthodoxy, which, as
everyone agreed, had not yet taken place. However, Bishop Gregory
(Grabbe) adopted a quite different position. He pointed out that the
claims of the ROCA to rule as opposed to help the Church in Russia
contradicted the ROCA’s own fundamental Statute:-
"For decades we living abroad have commemorated ‘the
Orthodox Episcopate of the Persecuted Church of Russia’. But in our
last Sobor we removed from the litanies and the prayer for the salvation
of Russia the word ‘persecuted’, witnessing thereby that we already
officially consider that the persecutions on the Russian Church have
ceased.
"And indeed, our parishes in Russia are now harried
in places, but basically they have complete freedom of action, in
particular if they do not lay claim to receive any old church, which the
Moscow Patriarchate then tries to snatch. However it does not always
succeed in this. Thus the huge Theophany cathedral in Noginsk (with all
the buildings attached to it) according to the court’s decision remain
with our diocese…
"In other words, we can say that if there is
willingness on our side we now have every opportunity of setting in
order the complete regeneration of the Russian Orthodox Church in our
Fatherland. "The very first paragraph of the ‘Statute on the Russian
Church Abroad’ says:
"’The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is an
indivisible part of the Russian Local Church TEMPORARILY self-governing
on conciliar principles UNTIL THE REMOVAL OF THE ATHEIST POWER in Russia
in accordance with the resolution of the holy Patriarch Tikhon, the
Holy Synod and the Higher Ecclesiastical Council of the Russian Church
of November 7/20, 1920 no. 362 (emphasis mine, B. G.).
"If we now lead the Russian Hierarch to want to
break their administrative links with the Church Abroad, then will not
our flock abroad finally ask us: what ‘Episcopate of the Russian Church’
are we still praying for in our churches? But if we took these words
out of the litanies, them we would only be officially declaring that we
are no longer a part of the Russian Church.
"Will we not then enter upon a very dubious
canonical path of autonomous existence, but now without a Patriarchal
blessing and outside the Russian Church, a part of which we have always
confessed ourselves to be? Will not such a step lead us to a condition
of schism in the Church Abroad itself, and, God forbid, to the danger of
becoming a sect?..
"It is necessary for us to pay very careful
attention to and get to know the mood revealed in our clergy in the
Suzdal diocese, so as on our part to evaluate the mood in which our
decisions about the Church in Russia could be received by them.
"But will we not see then that it is one thing when
the Church Abroad gives help to the Russian Church through the
restoration in it of a canonical hierarchy, but something else entirely
when we lay claims to rule the WHOLE of Russia from abroad, which was in
no way envisaged by even one paragraph of the ‘Statute of the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad’, nor by one of our later resolutions?"[24]
On October 20 / November 2 (i.e. over eighteen months
since the scandals erupted), the Synod decided to withdraw Bishop
Barnabas from Russia and to place all his parishes in the jurisdiction
of Metropolitan Vitaly (who, throughout the 1990s, has not set foot once
on Russian soil, in spite of numerous invitations).[25] All the
parishes of the ROCA in Siberia, Ukraine and Belarus were to be
entrusted to Bishop Benjamin.[26]
On March 8/21, 1994, in a conference taking place in
Suzdal, Bishop Valentine said: "On June 10/23, 1993 in Suzdal there took
place a diocesan congress in which resolutions were taken and an
Address was sent to the Synod indicating the transgressions, by the
above-mentioned Hierarchs, of the Apostolic Canons and decrees of the
Fathers of the Church, of the Ecumenical and Local Councils. At the same
time they asked that his Grace Bishop Barnabas be recalled, and that
Archbishop Mark should ask forgiveness of the clergy and the Russian
people for his humiliation of their honour and dignity. If our request
were ignored, the whole weight of responsibility would lie on the
transgressors of the Church canons. But so far there has been no reply.
"We sent the Resolution of the clergy, monastics and
laypeople warning that if there continued to be transgressions of the
Apostolic Canons and Conciliar Resolutions on the part of the Hierarchs,
with the connivance of the Hierarchical Synod, the whole responsibility
would lie as a heavy burden on the transgressors. The Synod did not
reply.
"Together with his Eminence Archbishop Lazarus and
the members of the Diocesan Councils I sent an address to the Synod in
which their attention was drawn to the wily intrigues on the part of
those who wished us ill, and asked that the situation be somehow
corrected, placing our hopes on Christian love and unity of mind, which
help to overcome human infirmities. But in the same address we laid out
in very clear fashion our determination that if the Hierarchical Synod
did not put an end to the deliberate transgressions, we would be forced
to exist independently, in accordance with the holy Patriarch Tikhon’s
ukaz no. 362 of November 7/20, 1920, in the interests of the purity of
Orthodoxy and the salvation of our Russian flock. The reply consisted in
Vladyka Metropolitan threatening a ban.
"I sent a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly in which I
besought him earnestly to confirm my status before the Ministry of
Justice of the Russian Federation, so that the Suzdal Diocesan
Administration should not lose its registration. This time the reply was
swift, only not to the Diocesan Administration, but to the Ministry of
Justice of the Russian Federation under the signature of Bishop
Barnabas, saying that the Russian Hierarchs were no longer Administering
the affairs of the FROC, and that this duty was laid upon him. As a
result I and the member of my Diocesan Council began visiting office
after office, a process that lasted many months.
"It is difficult for you to imagine how much labour
we had to expend, how many written bureaucratical demands we had to
fulfil, in order to get our Regulations re-registered. If I had not
undertaken this, all the churches would automatically have been taken
out of registration and then, believe me, the Moscow Patriarchate would
not have let go such a ‘juicy morsel’."[27]
After hearing more speeches in the same vein,
including one from Archbishop Lazarus, the Congress made the following
decisions: 1. To form a Temporary Higher Church Administration (THCA) of
the Russian Orthodox Church, which, without claiming to be the highest
Church authority in Russia, would have as its final aim the convening of
a Free All-Russian Local Council that would have such authority. 2. To
elect and consecrate new bishops. 3. To declare their gratitude to the
ROCA and Metropolitan Vitaly, whose name would continue to be
commemorated in Divine services, since they wished to remain in
communion of prayer with them. 4. To express the hope that the
Hierarchical Synod would recognize the THCA and the consecrations
performed by it.
One of the members of the Congress, Elena Fateyevna
Shipunova, declared: "It is now completely obvious that the subjection
of the Russian dioceses to the Synod Abroad contradicts the second point
of Ukaz no. 362. The Russian Church is faced directly with the
necessity of moving to independent administration in accordance with
this Ukaz. After the sergianist schism Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan
called for such a move, considering Ukaz no. 362 as the only possible
basis of Church organization. Incidentally, Metropolitan Cyril also
indicated to Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky that he had to follow
Ukaz no. 362 instead of usurping ecclesiastical power. Metropolitan
Cyril and the other bishop-confessors tried to organize the
administration of the Russian Church on the basis of this Ukaz, but they
couldn’t do this openly. Now for the first time the Russian Church has
the opportunity to do this. We could say that this is an historical
moment. The Temporary Higher Church Administration that has been created
is the first legal one in Russia since the time of the sergianist
schism. The Centre of Church power ceased its existence after the death
of Metropolitan Peter more than half a century ago, but we have not yet
arrived at the Second All-Russian Council which has the power to
re-establish Central Church power."[28]
On March 9/22 the THCA, which now contained three new
bishops: Theodore of Borisovsk, Seraphim of Sukhumi and Agathangelus of
Simferopol, together with many clergy, monastics and laity, informed
Metropolitan Vitaly and the Synod of the ROCA of their decision.
On March 23 / April 5 the Synod of the ROCA rejected
this declaration and the new consecrations, and decided to break
communion in prayer with the newly formed Autonomous Church, but without
imposing any bans.[29] In this decision the ROCA Synod called itself
the "Central Church authority" of the Russian Church, which contradicted
both its own Fundamental Statute and the simple historical fact that,
as the FROC bishops pointed out, since the death of Metropolitan Peter
in 1937 the Russian Church has had no "Central Church authority".[30]
Then, in order to strengthen the ROCA’s hand in the
coming struggle with the FROC, Archimandrite Eutyches (Kurochkin) was
consecrated Bishop of Ishim and Siberia on July 11/24.[31]
Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), however, who had not been
admitted to the sessions of the ROCA Synod, fully approved of the
actions of the Russian Hierarchs in a letter to Bishop Valentine dated
March 24 / April 6. And on the same day he wrote the following to
Metropolitan Vitaly: "We have brought the goal of the possible
regeneration of the Church in Russia to the most undesirable possible
end. Tormented by envy and malice, certain of our bishops have
influenced the whole course of our church politics in Russia. As a
consequence of this, our Synod has not understood the meaning of the
mission of our existence abroad.
"As I warned the Synod in my last report, we have
done absolutely everything possible to force the Russian bishops to
separate from us administratively. They have had to proceed from
Resolution no. 362 of Patriarch Tikhon of November 7/20, 1920 in order
to avoid the final destruction of the just-begun regeneration of our
Church in our Fatherland. But our Synod, having nothing before its eyes
except punitive tactics, proceeds only on the basis of a normalized
church life. Whereas the Patriarch’s Resolution had in mind the
preservation of the Church’s structure in completely unprecedented
historical and ecclesiastical circumstances.
"The ukaz was composed for various cases, including
means for the re-establishment of the Church’s Administration even in
conditions of its abolition (see article 9) and ‘the extreme
disorganization of Church life’. This task is placed before every
surviving hierarch, on condition that he is truly Orthodox.
"The Russian Hierarchs felt themselves to be in this
position when, for two years running, their inquiries and requests to
provide support against the oppression of the Moscow Patriarchate were
met with complete silence on the part of our Synod.
"Seeing the canonical chaos produced in their
dioceses by Bishop Barnabas, and the Synod’s silent collusion with him,
the Russian Hierarchs came to the conclusion that there was no other way
of avoiding the complete destruction of the whole enterprise but their
being led by the Patriarch’s Resolution no. 362.
"Our Synod unlawfully retired Bishop Valentine for
his reception of a huge parish in Noginsk,.. but did not react to the
fact that Bishop Barnabas had in a treacherous manner disgraced the
Synod, in whose name he petitioned to be received into communion with
the Ukrainian self-consecrators!
"I don’t know whether the full text of Resolution
no. 362 has been read at the Synod. I myself formerly paid little
attention to it, but now, having read it, I see that the Russian
Hierarchs have every right to cite it, and this fact will come to the
surface in the polemic that will inevitably take place now. I fear that
by its decisions the Synod has already opened the path to this
undesirable polemic, and it threatens to create a schism not only in
Russia, but also with us here…
"There are things which it is impossible to stop,
and it is also impossible to escape the accomplished fact. If our Synod
does not now correctly evaluate the historical moment that has taken
place, then its already profoundly undermined prestige (especially in
Russia) will be finally and ingloriously destroyed.
"All the years of the existence of the Church Abroad
we have enjoyed respect for nothing else than our uncompromising
faithfulness to the canons. They hated us, but they did not dare not to
respect us. But now we have shown the whole Orthodox world that the
canons are for us an empty sound, and we have become a laughing-stock in
the eyes of all those who have even the least relationship to Church
affairs.
"You yourself, at the Synod in Lesna, allowed
yourself to say that for us, the participants in it, it was now not the
time to examine the canons, but we had to act quickly. You, who are at
the helm of the ship of the Church, triumphantly, before the whole
Sobor, declared to us that we should now hasten to sail without a rudder
and without sails. At that time your words greatly disturbed me, but I,
knowing your irritability with me for insisting on the necessity of
living according to the canons, nevertheless hoped that all was not lost
yet and that our Bishops would somehow shake off the whole of this
nightmare of recent years.
"Think, Vladyko, of the tens of thousands of
Orthodox people both abroad and in Russia who have been deceived by us.
Do not calm yourself with the thought that if guilt lies somewhere, then
it lies equally on all of our hierarchs. The main guilt will lie on you
as the leader of our Sobor…"[32]
Unfortunately, however, Metropolitan Vitaly was
beginning to show the same kind of condescending and contemptuous
attitude to the Russian flock which had suffered so much in its struggle
for the faith, as Archbishop Mark had been demonstrating for some time.
Thus in one letter to Bishop Valentine, after rebuking him for
receiving the supposedly homosexual Archimandrite Adrian, he wrote: "We
understand that, living in the Soviet Union for these 70 years of
atheist rule, such a deep seal of Sovietism and of departure from right
thinking has penetrated into the world-view of the Russian people that
you, too, were involuntarily caught up by the spirit of this wave…"[33]
Perhaps this was the reason why he and his Synod now proceeded to
dispense with the Russian bishops without even the semblance of
canonical order as if they were so much "Soviet filth", and attempted to
rule the flock they so distrusted in the most "hands off" manner
possible - from several thousand miles away, declaring that the Centre
of Ecclesiastical Administration for the whole of the vast Russian
Church resided in an old man in New York who had never set foot on
Russian soil!
4. The Second Separation.
In spite of receiving no reply to their repeated
requests that the ROCA Synod re-establish canonical order in Russia,
Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine accepted an invitation from
Abbess Macrina of Lesna monastery – not, significantly, from the Synod
or any individual hierarch – to go to the Lesna Sobor of the ROCA in
November, 1994. Here, in spite of a very cold reception, - "both of us,"
as Bishop Valentine later wrote, "were in fact isolated from the
Hierarchical Sobor and its acts" - they asked forgiveness and were again
received into communion.[34] None of the outstanding issues dividing
the two sides were discussed at that time, but the Russian bishops did
manage to ask Bishop Hilarion for explanations of two things that
worried them: the ROCA’s entering into communion with the Greek Old
Calendarist Metropolitan Cyprian of Fili (which Bishop Gregory (Grabbe)
had strongly protested against), and its forthcoming negotiations (at
Archbishop Mark’s insistence) with members of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Then they were invited to join the Sobor. However, as
they crossed the threshold of the monastery church where the Sobor was
in session, the Russian bishops were handed an "Act" – Bishop Valentine
later called it an "Act of capitulation" – which had already been signed
by all the ROCA bishops and which the two Russian bishops were now told
to sign.[35] "When we had cursorily looked through this Act," writes
Bishop Valentine, "I began to protest, to which Archbishop Mark said
that if we didn’t want peace and did not want to sign, we could leave
the hall." Vladyka Valentine said that both sides had to participate in
drawing up such an act, after which Bishop Hilarion, deputy secretary of
the Synod, promised "that they would edit the act, taking into account
our remarks and suggestions". Then Archbishop Lazarus agreed to sign,
and Bishop Valentine, though unwilling to sign, did not want to create a
schism among the Russian bishops by not following the lead of his
senior, Archbishop Lazarus. So they both signed. Two hours later,
overcome by the extreme tension of the occasion, Bishop Valentine
suffered a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in Paris, where he
was placed in intensive care.
While Vladyka Valentine was still in hospital and in a
very weak condition, two ROCA bishops came to him, gave him communion
and asked him to sign two more documents (he does not remember what was
in those documents). On returning to Lesna, Vladyka offered a second
variant of the Act to Vladyka Lazarus. Lazarus did not want to sign this
second variant, but he suggested to Vladyka Valentine that he sign in
the capacity of his deputy. So Valentine signed his own variant of the
Act and gave copies of it to both Vladyka Lazarus and the ROCA
Synod.[36] Bishop Eutyches later witnessed that Bishop Valentine’s
proposed changes to the original Act were not accepted by the other
bishops at the Sobor.[37]
Another important result of the Lesna Sobor was the
decision, on November 17/30, to divide the parishes of the ROCA-FROC in
Russia into six dioceses with newly-defined boundaries.[38] This
ill-considered decision, as we shall see, was to elicit serious
discontent among the Russian clergy because of the threat it posed to
the registration of their churches. Bishop Valentine did not sign it –
probably because he was already in hospital.
On the same day, still more seriously, the Synod
published an epistle declaring that "the time has come to seek living
communion with all the parts of the One Russian Orthodox Church,
scattered by dint of historical circumstances". This serious compromise
in the confessing stance of the ROCA vis-à-vis the Moscow Patriarchate,
with which it quite clearly said that it wanted "better relations"[39],
was signed by Archbishop Lazarus – but, again, not by Bishop Valentine.
It was later to be used by Archbishop Mark as an excuse for his
treacherous relations with the patriarchate.
The next day, in two special ukazes, the ROCA
confirmed Bishop Valentine as ruling hierarch of the Suzdal diocese and
recognized that the accusations of immorality which had been hurled at
him two years before, and which Archbishop Mark had insisted on bringing
before the Synod, although the canons forbade it, were completely
unfounded.[40]
On November 22 / December 5, having returned from
hospital in Paris to the Lesna monastery, Bishop Valentine wrote a
letter to the Sobor once again explaining the serious problems caused to
the FROC by the canonical transgressions of the ROCA. And he appealed
to the ROCA bishops to relate to the FROC bishops in the same way that
the famous ROCA theologian Archbishop Averky had once (in 1971)
recommended that they relate to the Old Calendarist Greeks: "Our
interference must be limited to giving the Greeks grace-filled bishops,
and then we must leave them to live independently."[41] It was evident
that, in spite of the restoration of communion with the ROCA, Vladyka
was still deeply worried by the intentions of the ROCA with regard to
the Russian dioceses – a fear that was to prove to be more than
justified…
On January 12/25, 1995 there was a meeting of the
bishops and clergy of the FROC in Suzdal to discuss the results of the
Lesna Sobor. Besides the Act, of particular concern to many of the
clergy was the fact that the redefining of the diocesan boundaries
proposed at the Sobor would involve the necessity of re-registration for
very many parishes. Since they had achieved registration only with the
greatest difficulty in the first place, they did not of course welcome
this prospect. But more importantly, it would very probably mean that
they would be refused any registration, since the Moscow Patriarchate
representatives would insist that changing names and diocesan boundaries
was unacceptable. This in turn would very likely mean that their
churches would be handed over to the patriarchate.
Thus the Moscow Protopriest Michael Ardov said:
"Concerning the church building which I occupy, I must say that if I
transfer to Vladyka Eutyches [to whom the ROCA had given the Moscow and
St. Petersburg dioceses], what will happen? The building is registered
with the Suzdal diocese. They tell us that we are in this building
unlawfully, and that we still have to secure its transfer to us. It is
well know that [Moscow Mayor] Luzhkov is categorically against our
parish. They forced us to change our parish rules sixteen times before
registering it. Of course, I submit to the Ukaz of the Hierarchical
Synod, but I have a request for our bishops: they must take into account
that this is not Canada and not America, but a different state, and we
have different perspectives."[42]
Several other priests spoke against re-registration for similar reasons.
Towards the end of the meeting, Protopriest Andrew
Osetrov posed the following question to Bishop Eutyches: "Which do you
consider preferable for Russian believers – the Resolutions of the
Hierarchical Synod and Sobor of the ROCA and its First-Hierarch, or the
Resolutions of the All-Russian Sobor of 1917-18 and the holy Patriarch
Tikhon?"
Bishop Eutyches replied: "Preferable are the
Resolutions of living hierarchs, and not dead ones. Even if the
Resolutions of the Synod of the ROCA will be uncanonical, for me this
has no significance, I must fulfil them."[43]
This summed up the difference between the two sides.
For the ROCA (and the Russian Bishops Benjamin and Eutyches) obedience
to the Synod was the ultimate value, more important even than the holy
canons which every bishops swears to uphold at his consecration. For the
FROC bishops, on the other hand, the authority of the ROCA could not be
placed higher than the objective good of their own flock, which could
be preserved only by faithfulness to the canons of the Seven Ecumenical
Councils and the highest authorities in the post-revolutionary Russian
Church – the decisions of Patriarch Tikhon and the 1917-18 Council.
The next day, January 13/26, the seven FROC bishops
met and decided to put off a final decision on the thorny question of
the territorial division of dioceses. When discussion passed to the Act,
Bishop Eutyches said that the Act had not been fulfilled by the Russian
bishops and refused to take any further part in the Conference. Later,
in a letter to Metropolitan Vitaly dated January 17/30, he wrote that
"Bishop Benjamin, convinced that the meeting completely supported Bishop
Valentine and was hostile to the Church Abroad and himself personally,
left the meeting [on January 12/25]. I participated in the meeting to
the end and was struck by the general anti-ROCA mood of the hierarchs,
priests, nuns and laymen."[44]
On January 14/27 the Hierarchical Conference
(excluding Bishops Eutyches and Benjamin) approved a letter to the ROCA
Synod, in which they wrote that the Act approved by the Lesna Sobor "was
in extreme need of a series of substantial changes to the points, and
additions". Below we quote the Act, together with the comments of the
FROC bishops (in italics):
"‘We, the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA, under the
presidency of the First-Hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan Vitaly of
Eastern America and New York, and the Most Reverend Hierarchs:
Archbishop Lazarus of Odessa and Tambov and Bishop Valentine of Suzdal
and Vladimir, taking upon ourselves full responsibility before God and
the All-Russian flock, and following the commandments of the One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the name of peace and love, for the
sake of the salvation of our souls and the souls of our flock, declare
the following:
‘1. We recognize our mutual responsibility for the
disturbances that have arisen in the Russian [Rossijskoj] Church, but we
consider that certain hasty actions of the Hierarchical Synod cannot
serve as justification for a schism in the Russian Church and the
establishment of the Temporary Higher Church Administration.’
Comment by the FROC bishops: We definitely do not
agree with the definition of the actions of the Russian hierarchs as a
schism, for these actions were a forced measure aimed at guarding the
canonical rights of the Bishop in his diocese, and the created Temporary
Higher Church Administration was formed, not in spite of, but in
accordance with the will and ukaz no. 362 of the holy Patriarch Tikhon,
at a time when the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA left the Russian
hierarchs without any communications, directives, holy Antimins or holy
Chrismation.
If we recognize our mutual responsibility for the
disturbances that have arisen in the Russian Church, then it is our
right to recognize certain hasty actions of the Hierarchical Sobor and
Synod as uncanonical and as inflicting direct harm on the work of
restoring true Orthodoxy in Russia, which has served as the terminus a
quo for [our] conditional administrative separation and the formation of
the Temporary Higher Church Administration.
The concrete intra-ecclesiastical situation has
dictated such a course of action on our part, but at the same time we
have admitted that administrative independence must in no way
automatically lead to canonical and eucharistic independence. Such
communion has not been broken by us, in spite of the one-sided decision
of the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA.
‘2. We ask each other’s forgiveness, so that from
now on we should not reproach anybody for the actions which lead to the
division and the founding of the THCA.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: It is not a matter of
reproaches but of the essence of the actions of both sides, which have
led to administrative division and the founding of the THCA. By
examining each concrete action, we would be able mutually to understand
the depth of the causes, and proceeding from that, calmly and without
detriment, remove their consequences in the present.
‘3. We consider the organization of the THCA to be an unlawful act and abolish it.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: The very formulation of
this point seems to us to be faulty in view of the final aim of our
joint efforts.
‘4. We consider the consecration of the three
hierarchs: Theodore, Seraphim and Agathangelus, which was carried out by
their Graces Lazarus and Valentine, to be unlawful. Their candidacies
should be presented in the order that is obligatory for all candidates
for hierarchical rank accepted in the ROCA, and, if they turn out to be
worthy, then, after their confession of faith and acceptance of the
hierarchical oath, they will be confirmed in the hierarchical rank.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: We do not agree at all
that the episcopal consecrations performed by us were not lawful. The
obligatory order for all candidates for hierarchical rank accepted in
the ROCA could not be a guide for us in our actions since at that time
we were administratively independent of the ROCA. If we approach this
demand from a strictly formal point of view, then the Hierarchical Synod
should have asked us concerning our agreement or disagreement with the
new consecrations, especially the consecration of his Grace Bishop
Eutyches – which was not done. In spite of your limitation of our
rights, we have recognized these consecrations and are far from the
thought of demanding a confession of faith and acceptance of the
hierarchical oath a second time, specially for us.
‘5. In the same way, all the other actions carried
out by Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine and the THCA organized by
them which exceeded the authority of the diocesan bishops, but belonged
only to the province of the Hierarchical Sobor and Hierarchical Synod
of the ROCA, are to be considered to be invalid.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: Until the moment that we
ceased to be members of the ROCA, and the THCA was formed, all our
actions and suggestions were presented for discussion and confirmation
by these higher church instances. Having conditionally separated from
the ROCA in administrative matters, we were entitled to carry out these
actions.
‘6. Archbishop Lazarus is reinstated in the rights of a ruling hierarch with the title "Archbishop of Odessa and Tambov".’
Comment of the FROC bishops: The formulation of this
point admits of an ambiguous interpretation and is therefore on
principle unacceptable for us. Judging objectively, his Grace Archbishop
Lazarus did not lose his rights as a ruling bishop, in spite of the
ukaz of the Hierarchical Synod concerning his retirement. The ukaz seems
to us to be canonically ill-founded, and therefore lacking force and
unrealized. We suggest the formulation: ‘In view of the erroneous
actions of the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA, Archbishop Lazarus is not
to be considered as having been retired and is recognized as having the
rights of the ruling hierarch of his diocese with the title (Archbishop
of Tambov and Odessa).
‘7. Bishop Valentine will be restored to his rights
as the ruling hierarch of Suzdal and Vladimir after the removal of the
accusations against him on the basis of an investigation by a Spiritual
Court appointed by the present Hierarchical Sobor.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: The given point is excluded, in agreement with the Ukaz of the Hierarchical Synod.[45]
‘8. To bring order into ecclesiastical matters on
the territory of Russia a Hierarchical Conference of the Russian
Hierarchs is to be organized which does not encroach on the fullness of
ecclesiastical power, but which is in unquestioning submission to the
Hierarchical Sobor and the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA. One of the
member of the Hierarchical Conference will be a member of the Synod, in
accordance with the decision of the Hierarchical Sobor.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: It is suggested that
this formulation be changed, and consequently also the meaning of the
eighth point: ‘The THCA does not encroach on the fullness of
ecclesiastical power. In certain exceptional situations it recognizes
its spiritual and administrative submission to the Hierarchical Sobor of
the ROCA. One of the members of the Hierarchical Conference will be a
temporary, regular member of the Synod, in accordance with the decision
of the Hierarchical Sobor of the ROCA and the Hierarchical Conference of
the Russian Bishops.
‘9. After the signing of the Act it will be
published in all the organs of the church press, and in particular in
those publications in which their Graces Lazarus and Valentine published
material against the Hierarchical Sobor and Hierarchical Synod of the
ROCA.’
Comment of the FROC bishops: The formulation should
be changed as follows: After the signing of the Act it will be published
in all the organs of the church press, and in particular in those
publications in which their Graces Lazarus and Valentine published
material explaining certain hasty actions of the Hierarchical Synod and
Sobor of the ROCA."[46]
Now on January 3, Bishop Hilarion on behalf of the
ROCA Synod had sent a respectfully worded invitation to Bishops
Theodore, Agathangelus and Seraphim to come to New York for the February
9/22 session of the Synod and "for the formalities of re-establishing
concelebration".[47] It is significant that the Synod had also invited
Bishop Eutyches, who was not a member of the Synod – but not Archbishop
Lazarus, who was a member of the Synod, as agreed at the Lesna Sobor.
When Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus arrived in New
York, they were listened to and on the next day, in Bishop
Agathangelus’ words, "we were handed a ‘Decree of the Hierarchical Synod
of the Synod of the ROCA’, in which their Graces Lazarus and Valentine,
and also Bishops Theodore, Seraphim and I, were declared to be banned
from serving.[48] For Vladyka Theodore and me this was like a bolt from
the blue… We were told that the reason for this decision was our
supposed non-fulfilment of the conciliar Act, which had been signed by,
among the other Hierarchs, their Graces Lazarus and Valentine. The point
was that the conference of Russian Bishops which had been formed in
agreement with this same Act had asked for several formulations in the
Act to be changed, so as not to introduce disturbance into the ranks of
the believers by the categorical nature of certain points. This was a
request, not a demand. But, however hard we tried, we could not convince
the Synod that none of the Russian Bishops was insisting and that we
were all ready to accept the Act in the form in which it had been
composed. We met with no understanding on the part of the members of the
Synod. Vladyka Theodore and I affirmed in writing that we accepted the
text of the Act in the form in which it had been composed and asked for a
postponement in the carrying out of the ‘Decree’ until the position of
all the absent Russian Bishops on this question could be clarified. In
general we agreed to make any compromises if only the ‘Decree’ were not
put into effect, because in essence it meant only one thing – the final
break between the Russian parishes and the ROCA.
"We gradually came to understand that it was not any
canonical transgression of the Russian Bishops (there was none), nor
any disagreement with the text of the conciliar Act, nor, still less,
any mythical ‘avaricious aims’ that was the reason for the composition
of this document, which, without any trial or investigation, banned the
five Hierarchs from serving. It was the Hierarchical Conference of the
Russian Bishops, which had been established by the Council that took
place in Lesna monastery, that was the real reason giving birth to the
‘Decree’. The Sobor of Hierarchs, moved in those days by ‘Paschal joy’
(as Metropolitan Vitaly repeated several times), finally came to create
an organ of administration in Russia which, if not independent, but
subject to the Synod, was nevertheless an organ of administration. When
the ‘Paschal joy’ had passed, the Synodal Bishops suddenly realized:
they had themselves reduced their own power, insofar as, with their
agreement, Hierarchs could meet in vast Russia and discuss vital
problems. Before that, the Church Abroad had not allowed itself to
behave like that. And it was this, unfortunately, that the foreign
Archpastors could not bear. On receiving for confirmation the protocols
of the first session of the Hierarchical Conference with concrete
proposals to improve Church life in Russia, the foreign Bishops were
completely nonplussed. Therefore a reason that did not in fact exist was
thought up – the supposed non-fulfilment of the Act.
"The members of the Synod, exceeding their
authority, since such decisions are in the competence of the Sobor,
decided, by means of canonical bans, to confirm their sole authority
over the whole of Russia – both historical Russia and Russia abroad. The
very foundations of the Church Abroad as a part of the Russian Church
living abroad were trampled on, and the Synod on its own initiative
ascribed to itself the rights and prerogatives of the Local Russian
Church.
"It did not even ponder the fact that, in banning at
one time five Hierarchs, it was depriving more than 150 parishes – that
is many thousands of Orthodox people – of archpastoral care. Cancelling
the labour of many years of Hierarchs, priests and conscious, pious
laymen in our Fatherland.
"In Russia a very real war is now being waged for
human souls; every day is full of work. Depriving Orthodox Christians of
their pastors without any objective reason witnesses to the haughtiness
and lack of love towards our country and its people on the part of the
members of the Synod Abroad. We, the Orthodox from Russia, are called
‘common people’ by Metropolitan Vitaly (thank you, Vladyko
Metropolitan!).
"Vladyka Theodore and I were promised that, in
exchange for our treachery, we would be confirmed in our hierarchical
rank. And it was even proclaimed that we would be appointed to foreign
sees. For us personally, who were born and brought up in Russia, this
was very painful to hear…"[49]
This act of blackmail – we recognize you if you
accept a foreign see, but do not recognize you if you stay in Russia –
exposed the complete lack of canonical justification in the acts of the
ROCA Synod. Let us recall that: (a) Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus
had just been formally recognized as canonical bishops, (b) they had
agreed in writing to fulfil all of the ROCA Synod’s conditions,
including the signing of the Act without any alterations, (c) they had
not been accused of any canonical transgressions, and (d) they had not
been subjected to any investigation or trial, as the canons demanded.
Their only crime, it would appear, was that they lived in Russia – a
novel charge against a bishop of the Russian Church!
On February 11/24 the ROCA Synod issued an epistle
which for the first time contained a semblance of canonical
justification in the form of a list of canons supposedly transgressed by
the five Russian bishops. Unfortunately, they clearly had no relevance
to the matter in hand. Thus what relevance could the 57th Canon of the
Council of Carthage – "On the Donatists and the children baptized by the
Donatists" – have to the bishops of the Free Russian Orthodox
Church?![50]
On February 15/28, Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) wrote to
Bishop Valentine: "I cannot fail to express my great sorrow with regard
to the recent Church events. Moreover, I wish to say to you that I was
glad to get to know Vladykas Theodore and Agathangelus better. They
think well and in an Orthodox manner. It is amazing that our foreign
Bishops should not have valued them and should have treated them so
crudely in spite of all the acts and the whole unifying tendency which
was just expressed by Metropolitan Vitaly at the last Sobor. The whole
tragedy lies in the fact that even the latter wanted to construct
everything solely on foreign forces that do not have the information
necessary to decide problems which are strange and unfamiliar to them.
Therefore they do not want to offer this [task] to the new forces that
have arisen in Russia.
"As a result, we are presented with the complete
liquidation of these healthy forces. This is a great victory of the dark
forces of our Soviet enemies of Orthodoxy in the persons of the Moscow
Patriarchate.
"I am glad that you will not give in to them, and I
pray God that He help you to carry on the Orthodox cause, apparently
without the apostate forces of Orthodox Abroad…"[51]
The next month Archbishop Valentine recounted these
events in a Lenten letter to his flock, and continued: "This second
instance of administrative pressure on the Russian Hierarchs, and,
moreover, in such an undisguisedly cunning form, when flattering
mentions and assurances of friendship and invitations came in the name
of the Synod of the ROCA, while in fact another attempt to usurp power
over the Russian flock was taking place, forces me to make certain
clarifications.
"On November 7/20, 1920 the holy Patriarch Tikhon
together with the Sacred Synod and the Higher Ecclesiastical Council of
the Russian Church passed the exceptionally important Resolution no. 362
concerning the self-governing of Dioceses in the case of the absence of
a canonical Higher Church Administration or the impossibility of
communicating with it. On the basis of this Ukaz, Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky) organized the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad. In Russia on the basis of this Ukaz there was organized
the Catacomb or "Tikhonite" Church under the leadership of its inspirer,
the holy New Martyr Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd. In its time the
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad helped in the establishment of a lawful
hierarchy in Russia, consecrating to the Episcopate their Graces
Lazarus, Valentine and Benjamin. Instead of expanding the Church in the
Homeland, there appeared the temptation of ruling it from abroad,
declaring itself the ‘Central Church Authority’, which is what the
Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA did in practice in April, 1994 (cf.
Suzdal’skij Palomnik, special issue, NN 18,19,20). But then a
declaration was made concerning the supposedly ‘unlawful’ creation by
the Russian Hierarchs, on the basis of Ukaz no. 362, of a Temporary
Higher Church Administration, whereas the Ukaz no. 362 of Patriarch
Tikhon of November 7/20 said directly: ‘The care for the organization of
a Higher Church authority… is the unfailing duty of the eldest
according to rank of the Hierarchs in the indicated group.’
"Intra-ecclesiastical freedom and the dignities of
the Bishops based on the Holy Canons do not permit administrative
arbitrariness and do not give the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA the
right to the supreme administration of the Church. And our following of
the Canons and Ukaz no. 362, which was specially written for the Russian
Dioceses existing in identical conditions, cannot give an excuse to
whoever it may be to declare the Russian Hierarchs to be in some kind of
‘schism’. Having neither reasons, nor lawful authority or canonical
rights to ‘ban’ the Russian Hierarchs, the Chancellery of the Synod of
the ROCA is only witnessing, in the latest incident, to a deep crisis in
the administration of the ROCA itself, when the President of the
Hierarchical Synod Metropolitan Vitaly is not able to control the
resolutions and ukazes issuing from the Chancellery of the Synod. It is
impossible to take the documents signed by Vladyka Metropolitan Vitaly
seriously when in the course of less than a year their meaning has
several times changed to the complete opposite.[52] It is impossible to
believe that in the ‘punitive actions’ of the Russian Hierarchs that
have now become quite usual there is contained love for Russia, about
which the hierarchs of the ROCA speak so eloquently. It is impossible to
look on with indifference as, instead of building up the Church in the
much-suffering Homeland, they incessantly ‘divide territory’, as a
result of which churches of the FROC fall into the hands of the Moscow
Patriarchate."[53]
On February 27 / March 12, 1995 Archbishops Lazarus
and Valentine and Bishops Theodore, Seraphim and Agathangelus met in
Suzdal and re-established the THCA which had been created on March 5/18,
1994. Then they decided: "To qualify the Decree of the Hierarchical
Sobor [sic – Synod would have been more accurate] of the ROCA of
February 9/22 and the claims contained in it to leadership of the whole
Russian Church by the Hierarchical Synod and the First-Hierarch of the
ROCA as exceeding their authority and a transgression of the Holy Canons
and the Statute of the ROCA. In particular, the 8th Canon of the Third
Ecumenical Council has been transgressed, which declares: ‘May the
haughtiness of secular power not creep in under the guise of sacred
acts; and may we not lose, little by little and without it being
noticed, the freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ, the Liberator of all
men, has given us through His Blood. And so it is pleasing to the Holy
and Ecumenical Council that every Diocese should preserve in purity and
without oppression the rights that belonged to it from the beginning…
And if anyone should propose any resolution contrary to this, let it be
invalid.’"[54]
It is significant that it was precisely this Canon
that was quoted by Hieromartyr Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd, when
he laid the foundations for the Catacomb Church in January, 1928. And
indeed, the arguments between the ROCA and the FROC increasingly came to
resemble the arguments between Metropolitan Sergius and the Catacomb
Church, on the one hand, and Sergius and the foreign bishops who
separated from him, on the other. The issue in 1928-30, as in 1995, was
the question: who, if anyone, had the power to create a central organ of
Church administration having full patriarchal power to rule over all
the bishops of the Russian Church? Metropolitan Sergius then, like
Metropolitan Vitaly today, claimed that he had such power, and proceeded
to act with greater fierceness and disregard for the canons than any
real pope or patriarch. But the Catacomb bishops then, like the FROC
bishops today, claimed that since the death of the last canonical
Patriarch and the imprisonment of his locum tenens, Metropolitan Peter,
there was no alternative but to return to the decentralized form of
Church administration prescribed by the never-repealed Patriarchal ukaz
no. 362.
According to the ukaz, neighbouring bishops in
identical circumstances could voluntarily unite into TCHAs and govern
themselves as autonomous Churches until the convening of the next
canonical Sobor of the whole Russian Church. But (a) bishops living in
different States and separated by thousands of miles of ocean obviously
do not live in identical circumstances, and (b) no group of bishops or
TCHA has power over any other TCHA, nor can it claim to have rule over
the whole Russian Church, so that (c) full patriarchal power can belong
only to the future Local Council of the All-Russian Church and the
organs elected by it. To these restrictions must be added, for hierarchs
of the ROCA, those detailed in its still-unrepealed Statute, that is:
(a) the ROCA is only a part of the Russian Church, like any other TCHA
or autonomous group of bishops, and certainly not its real centre, as it
has recently claimed; (b) its administrative powers extend only over
the Church Abroad, outside Russia; (c) it must continue to commemorate
"the Episcopate of the Russian Church" – that is, of the Church inside
Russia; and (d) even its powers over the Church Abroad are valid only
until the fall of the atheist power, when power returns to the Church
inside Russia…[55]
Conclusion
Today, three and a half years since the second schism
between the ROCA and the FROC, the situation has not changed in
essence. Almost immediately after the events of February, 1995,
frightened by the threat of defrocking by the ROCA Synod, Archbishop
Lazarus and his vicar, Bishop Agathangelus, left the FROC and returned,
"repenting", to the ROCA.[56] But what has always, since 1990, been the
core of the ROCA-FROC inside Russia, the Suzdal diocese, has remained
firm, and has in fact increased in strength.
In accordance with a resolution of the Hierarchical
Synod of the ROCA in 1996, the Hierarchical Conference of the Russian
Bishops was stripped of what little power it had: its representation in
the ROCA was annulled, and not one of the Russian bishops entered into
the ROCA Synod. At the same Council meeting Bishop Valentine was
defrocked. The FROC, naturally, refused to recognize this decision.[57]
The desertion of Archbishop Lazarus requires some
comment. The secret consecration of Fr. Lazarus (Zhurbenko) was the
first major mistake of the ROCA inside Russia. It was surprising in that
the ROCA might have been expected to consecrate, not the newly appeared
Lazarus, but one of the fourteen hieromonks who had been received under
the omophorion of Metropolitan Philaret on November 26 / December 7,
1977, after the death of their Catacomb archpastor, Archbishop Anthony
Galynsky-Mikhailovsky, in 1976. [58] Moreover, there were other
distinguished Catacomb pastors with links to the ROCA, such as Fr.
Michael Rozhdestvensky (+1988), who would have been eminently suitable
candidates for the episcopate.
Besides, the career of Fr. Lazarus himself had not
been without controversy. Although he had been reared in the Catacomb
Church, and had been in the camps, he had been refused ordination to the
priesthood by three Catacomb hierarchs, including Archbishop Anthony
Galynsky-Mikhailovsky – all of whom he later accused, by a strange
coincidence, of being uncanonical. He then joined the Moscow
Patriarchate and received ordination there from a certain Bishop
Benjamin of Irkutsk. Only a year later, he returned to the Catacomb
Church in Siberia, and was instrumental, according to some catacomb
sources, in sowing such suspicion against the Catacomb Bishop Theodosius
Bahmetev (+1986) that almost the whole of his flock deserted him.[59]
Some even accuse him of having betrayed Catacomb Christians to the KGB.
Be that as it may – and such accusations are easily made, but much less
easily proved – there can be no doubt that a large part of the Catacomb
Church distrusted Lazarus and refused to have anything to do with him.
This was true both of the "moderates" and the "extremists" in the
Catacomb Church, both of the "Seraphimo-Gennadiite" branch, led by
Metropolitan Epiphany (Kaminsky)[60], of the "Matthewites" led by
Schema-Monk Epiphany (Chernov)[61], and of the "passportless" branch
represented by the Catacomb Archimandrite Gury (Pavlov), who, when about
to be consecrated to the episcopate in New York in 1990 by the ROCA,
categorically refused when he heard that Lazarus was going to be a
co-consecrator.[62]
It was true also of Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky. He
was "the initiator of the complete rejection of the then priest Lazarus
Zhurbenko because of the latter’s departing to the MP for his
ordination. At a meeting of catacomb clergy in the city of Tambov in
1978, in the presence of the still-flourishing Abbot P, Fr. Vissarion
and others, Fr. Michael confirmed this position. This decision was
supported in those years by all without exception of the catacomb
clergy. But later, when Vladyka Barnabas was searching for a worthy
candidate for consecration to the rank of Bishop of the Catacomb Church,
Fr. Lazarus (then already a hieromonk) craftily suggested the widowed
Fr. Michael and himself was called to invite him to be consecrated to
the episcopate. On receiving the invitation with the signature of
Hieromonk Lazarus (Zhurbenko), Fr. Michael Rozhdestvensky, naturally,
did not go. Vladyka Barnabas was left with neither a choice nor time,
and he was forced to consecrate Hieromonk Lazarus to the episcopate. Fr.
Michael’s position in relation to Vladyka Lazarus remained unchanging
to the very end of his life [in 1988]."[63]
But not only did the ROCA consecrate Fr. Lazarus
instead of eminently more suitable candidates such as Fr. Michael: they
used his testimony as their sole guide to the canonicity or otherwise of
the other Catacomb bishops in Russia. Thus on May 5/18, 1990 the ROCA
Synod reversed the previous decision of the Synod under Metropolitan
Philaret to recognize Archbishop Anthony-Mikhailovsky and his
ordinations, and told the priests ordained by him "to regulate their
canonical position by turning towards his Grace Bishop Lazarus of Tambov
and Morshansk". Again, on August 2/15, 1990 another Ukaz was
distributed (but not published in the Church press) which rejected the
canonicity both of the "Seraphimo-Gennadiite" and the "Galynskyite"
branches of the Catacomb Church, causing widespread havoc in both. Thus
one "Seraphimo-Gennadiite" priest from Moscow took off his cross, saying
that he was not a priest according to the ROCA and went to Bishop
Lazarus to be reordained. His flock, suddenly abandoned, scattered in
different directions.[64]
The main accusation against the hierarchs of these
branches was that they could not prove their apostolic succession by
producing ordination certificates, as required by the 33rd Apostolic
Canon. This was, of course, a serious deficiency; but in view of both
groups’ favourable attitude towards the ROCA, it would seem to have been
more reasonable and charitable to have talked with them directly,
learned their history and their point of view on the problem, and
discussed with them some way of correcting this deficiency without
resorting to the punitive measures of a papal curia. And such a
charitable, unifying attitude to the various Catacomb groups had been
urged – alas, without success - by Bishop Gregory (Grabbe).
As Archbishop Hilarion has recently admitted to the
present writer: "The statement which I signed as Deputy Secretary of the
Synod was based entirely on the information given to us by Archbishop
Lazarus. He reported to the Synod on the different groups of the
Catacombs and convinced the members of the Synod (or the Council – I
don’t recall offhand which) that their canonicity was questionable and
in some instances – their purity of doctrine as well (e.g.
imyabozhniki). The Synod members hoped (naively) that this would
convince the catacomb groups to rethink their position and seek from the
Russian Church Abroad correction of their orders to guarantee apostolic
succession. We now see that it was a mistake to issue the statement and
to have based our understanding of the catacomb situation wholly on the
information provided by Vl. Lazarus. I personally regret this whole
matter very much and seek to have a better understanding of and a
sincere openness towards the long-suffering confessors of the Russian
Catacombs."[65]
So Bishop Lazarus used the authority of the ROCA to
take his revenge on Catacomb bishops who had displeased him and to have
himself exalted above the Russian flock in their place.[66] He was
therefore the first instrument - and the first beneficiary - of the
ROCA’s policy of "divide and rule" towards the Catacomb Church. As such,
he could not afford to break his links with the Synod that had promoted
him, and ran back to it with his tail between his legs.
But his return to the ROCA has not meant better times
for his flock in the Ukraine. Thus Hieromonk Hilarion (Goncharenko), in
a petition for transfer from the ROCA to the FROC, wrote: "Vladyka
Lazarus together with the Synod Abroad has cunningly and finally
destroyed the whole Church in the Ukraine. My former friends and
brothers in the Lord have.. turned to me with tearful sobs and the
painful question: 'What are we to do now in the stormy and destructive
situation that has been created?’"[67]
Similar disturbances have taken place in other
dioceses of the ROCA inside Russia. Thus Bishop Eutyches has been
accused of serious dogmatical errors related to ecumenism.[68]
Thus the ROCA, which had a golden opportunity to
gather all the anti-MP Catacomb Church forces under its wing in the
early 1990s, only succeeded in creating further divisions and weakening
the witness of the True Church. The good it did by consecrating such
good pastors as Bishop Valentine was almost outweighed by the harm it
did by undermining Bishop Valentine and the Suzdal diocese, by
consecrating hirelings and wolves who only brought division to the flock
of Christ, and by in general acting like foreign dictators reminiscent
of the MP hierarchs. Experienced Catacomb Christians soon discerned the
signs, and fled from the spirit of sergianism (and ecumenism) in the
ROCA as they had fled from it in the MP.
It has been left to the FROC to take up the burden
which the ROCA has failed to carry. Thus it is she, rather than the
ROCA, which is now gathering the Catacomb Christians under her wing -
but without issuing bans against those groups which do not recognize her
authority. In accordance with the Patriarchal Ukaz, she has sought
friendly relations with, but not administrative rule over, the other
truly Orthodox groups in Russia in the spirit of love that must
characterize all relationships within the Church. She claims neither to
be the one and only Russian Church, nor to be the administrative centre
of the Russian Church. But she has pledged to work towards the convening
of that future canonical Local Council of the Russian Church which she,
like the ROCA in previous decades, recognizes to be the highest
authority in the Church and the only competent judge of the actions of
all her constituent parts.
What are the prospects of reunion between the FROC
and the ROCA? In the present writer’s opinion, this can only take place
under one or other of two possible conditions:-
1. A complete change of heart in the ROCA Synod
towards the FROC and repentance for its past canonical transgressions,
involving: (a) fitting punishment of those who have wrought such havoc
in Russia in recent years, especially Archbishop Mark of Berlin; (b) the
removal of all bans on the FROC bishops; (c) the recognition of the
FROC’s autonomy in accordance with the Patriarchal Ukaz.
Such a change of heart looks unlikely in view of the
events of recent years, when the ascendancy of Archbishop Mark over the
ROCA Synod has become more and more marked. His shameful negotiations
with KGB Agent "Drozdov", i.e. "Patriarch" Alexis Ridiger, in December,
1996, and his part in forcing Metropolitan Vitaly to expel the
confessors of Hebron and Jerusalem and apologize before the PLO
President Arafat in July, 1997, have shocked the Orthodox world. In the
Sobor of May, 1998, after Mark had been removed from the Synod by the
First-Hierarch, a golden opportunity presented itself to have this evil
genius of the Russian Church finally removed from power; but the
opportunity was lost.
And so the ROCA’s drift towards unity with the MP
continues unabated; having rid itself of the "Soviet filth" of the FROC,
the majority of its bishops are now hypocritically ready to unite with
the "Mother Church" of the Soviet MP. Indeed, having renounced the great
majority of the truly confessing Christians in Russia, it is only
logical that the ROCA should seek an alliance with the other side,
perhaps on the basis of an autonomous status for the ROCA within the
Moscow Patriarchate. After all, Church life does not stand still, but
continually moves between the poles of good and evil, life and death; so
that a movement away from one pole inevitably involves a movement
closer to the other pole…
In view of this there remains the other possibility:
2. A schism in the ROCA allowing the right-thinking Christians in it
both inside Russia and abroad, to separate from their Sovietizing
hierarchs and be reunited with the confessing Christians of other
Russian Church jurisdictions. Already there are many members of the ROCA
inside Russia who sympathize with, and by no means reject, their
brothers in the FROC. Both they and the FROC are suffering persecution
from the MP; both they and the FROC have suffered the effects of the
ROCA’s maladministration and (in the case of certain hierarchs) outright
treachery. It is only logical, therefore, that these two groups, having
an identical faith and being "in identical conditions" (to use the
language of the Patriarchal Ukaz), should reunite when the time is right
– that is, when the complete failure of the ROCA’s mission inside
Russia becomes evident to all.
But there must be no forcing, no exertion of power at
the expense of love. That is the primary lesson of these tragic years
since the fall of Soviet power. "Lest little by little and without it
being noticed, we lose the freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Liberator of all men, has given us through His Blood…"
September 26 / October 9, 1998.
Repose of St. John the Theologian.
NB: By November, 2000, the Russian Orthodox
Autonomous Church had eight bishops, six in Russia, one in the Ukraine
and one in Latvia, with about 150 above-ground parishes and 300 catacomb
parishes.
APPENDIX 1: LETTER OF BISHOP GREGORY GRABBE TO METROPOLITAN VITALY
Most Reverend Vladyko!
For a very long time now – in fact, since the first
days of your leadership of our Church Abroad – I have with great anxiety
and turmoil of heart been tracing how quickly she has begun to slide
into the abyss of administrative disorder and canonical chaos.
All this time I have suppressed within myself the
desire to express openly to you my anxiety for the destinies of our
Church Abroad, mainly out of worry that every utterance of mine will be
taken by you as an expression of personal offence.
Believe me, Vladyko, although I could not fail to
have the feeling of a certain chagrin in relation to members of the
Council and you personally, by the mercy of God I have nourished no
unfriendly feelings towards anyone. As you yourself know, I have by all
means tried, and I am still trying, in the first place to be ruled by
the interests of our Church, both abroad and in Russia.
I very much beseech you patiently to listen to my
observations concerning the years when I ceased to be secretary of the
Synod. Although I no longer bear any formal responsibility for the later
destinies of our Church, I cannot look with indifference at what is now
happening before my eyes.
Our woes began with the first Hierarchical Council to take place after the death of Metropolitan Philaret….
In order to illustrate the relationship of the
members of the Council of that time to myself, please recall the speech
made at the banquet on the occasion of your election. Then Protopriest
Ioann Legky, as he then was, in greeting you, said that he was glad that
in my person you would have such an experienced and faithful assistant
as had had your three predecessors.
To my extreme surprise, in looking through the
protocols at the end of the Council, I saw that his speech had been
received as ‘an insult to the whole Hierarchical Council’. This amazing
resolution remained in the protocol as ‘an instruction to posterity’.
At this time you suggested that I keep the parishes
in my jurisdiction and add to them some more from Pennsylvania. In
accordance with your direction, I then composed a list of the parishes
which should enter my diocese. But when I arrived at the session, you
detained my report on this matter and sharply attacked me for my
‘bankruptcy’ as an administrator and in effect gave me an ultimatum:
either I myself had to put in an application for retirement, or I would
be judged by the Council, although it was not known what for. Seeing
that both you and the majority of the members of the Council were
seeking an opportunity to drive me out of your midst, I made a
declaration about my retirement for the sake of ecclesiastical peace,
although I felt absolutely no guilt that would have merited a trial or
dismissal. It was said that the reason for the Council members’
dissatisfaction was my unskilful administration of affairs in Rome,
although at that time I had completely supported the opinion of the
person sent there as investigator, Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles.
Only the reposed Archbishop Seraphim of Chicago, in
spite of being ill with the illness that led to his death, wrote you a
decisive protest against my illegal dismissal from the see of Washington
and Florida.
At the same Council there was an unexpected
declaration that Archbishop Laurus had been appointed as Secretary of
the Synod, and Bishop Hilarion – as his Deputy. This change in Secretary
did not figure on the Council’s agenda. I myself had to point out to
the Council that in appointing whoever it may be to a post, one must
first make that post free from the other person occupying it. I
immediately announced my retirement. However, I could not fail to be
worried by the fact – which the members of the Council did not want to
take into consideration – that the new Secretary of the Synod would be
living 200 kilometres from the Chancellery, while his deputy was a man
completely inexperienced in chancellery procedures.
This my very hasty removal from the post of Secretary
of the Synod (although it was called different things at different
times) after 55 years of service to the Church Abroad must have
demonstrated to our enemies that a revolution had taken place among us,
which would undoubtedly be badly reflected on the prestige of the Synod.
I myself had to point this out to you in my concern for preserving the
dignity of the Synod at the given time. Apparently you yourself felt a
certain awkwardness at that time, and you expressed your gratitude to me
in a laconical way. It is also worthy of note that I was treated like a
guilty chamber-maid precisely in the year in which the Council resolved
triumphantly to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of
Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky]. The Council completely ignored the
fact that I was not only appointed to work in the Synod by the personal
desire of the Metropolitan, but also that I was one of his closest and
most trusted co-workers.
In view of this, my daughter [Matushka Anastasia
Georgievna Shatilova] refused the responsibilities of Record-Keeper of
the Chancellery. For the last four decades she had been my unofficial
secretary and closest co-worker. She already had enormous experience of
work in ecclesiastical administration. In unconditionally accepting her
resignation, you thereby deprived the Synodal Chancellery of its main
worker.
With my and her departure, the Department of External
Relations of the Synod was immediately closed. This Department had been
acquiring a greater and greater significance in the eyes of the other
Orthodox Churches. Reprints from the "Newsheet" that it published had
already begun to appear in the official organs of some local Churches.
This was a fresh blow at the prestige of the Synod.
On the disorganisation of our Chancellery I can judge
from a series of signs. Thus I was sent from Russia copies of your
letters to Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine. First, I very soon
managed to find out that these documents were unknown to both
Secretaries of the Synod, to whom I handed over these copies. Moreover,
the very subject of these letters, by the delicacy of their content,
demanded their presentation by you for discussion in the Hierarchical
Synod. But it turned out that the letters were not only dispatched
without the knowledge of the Secretaries, but also had a whole series of
other defects which quite clearly demonstrated the bankruptcy of your
personal Chancellery. Although Russian notepaper was available, the
letters to Russia were sent on English notepaper; they not only had no
numbers, but even no dates. In the letter to Archbishop Lazarus there
was no indication of whom it was being sent to, while Bishop Valentine’s
title was incomplete. Finally, the very text of the letters was by no
means brilliant grammatically and stylistically. Moreover, it also
emerged (which is especially terrible) that at the bottom of both
letters was not your signature in your own hand, but a facsimile!…
The Synodal House ceased to exist as the centre of
our administration. The sessions of the Synods and Councils were usually
arranged in any place, only not in the Synodal House. Besides, you are
rarely in New York, Vladyka Hilarion is often away, and the Chancellery
in his absence does not function – in our former centre there is often
not a single responsible person capable of giving correct information,
or of understanding what to do with information received from outside.
Often the ‘responsible’ person turns out to be the telephonist on duty
at the time.
There have been many complaints against your
secretary on the part of clergy visiting the Synod, mainly because of
her crudeness and unwelcomingness. I know of cases when she refused to
connect you by telephone even with Bishops. I personally have more than
once been in such a situation. However, in refusing to connect me with
you, she was polite to me. But her often provocative behaviour has drawn
censure also on you personally, for much is said and done by her in
your name.
The Synodal cathedral, which was always famous for
its well-ordered and very majestic cathedral services, has for a long
time now not had even one permanent priest. Vladyka Hilarion tries to
fulfil the role of such a priest as well as he can. But people who turn
to the Synod for the carrying out of needs in his absence are often
refused in a less than polite manner.
The constantly changing priests in the cathedral read
Church Slavonic with evident difficulty, making mistakes even in
often-repeated Saturday Gospels.
Things are no better in the Eastern American diocese.
I have often had to hear the complaints of our priests about the fact
that since the time you became the head of this diocese there has not
been a single diocesan Congress, in spite of the fact that at pastoral
congresses you have been asked insistently about this by the father
rectors. Many priests feel that you have abandoned this diocese when
they learn that there have been diocesan congresses in Canada.
Some have begun to be concerned at the danger of
losing the guarantee of keeping their parish property. Thus the property
of the Eastern American diocese and of the parish at Glen Cove attached
to it has suddenly been declared to be the property of the Hierarchical
Synod. For a long time now the Synod has been aiming to close down this
parish, and to sell the diocese’s property for its own profit.
As regards our affairs in Russia, you yourself know
how many reports I have made on this issue. Not once have I received any
kind of reaction, neither from you personally, nor from the Synod
Chancellery.
I was particularly distressed by the ban you imposed
on me in March preventing me from personally presenting my report to the
Synod and from taking part in the deliberations on its contents. This
is a completely unprecedented case in the history of the Church Abroad. I
do not know of a single case in which a Bishop was refused the right of
publishing his report to the Synod.
The actuality of my report has been confirmed by the
events that took place one after the other in Russia. A correctly
ordered administration should anticipate events, and not simply react to
them hastily, which is quite obviously what is happening now. As a
result we have brought the matter of the possible regeneration of the
Church in Russia to the most undesirable of ends.
Spurred on by envy and spite, certain of our Bishops
have influenced the whole course of our Church politics in Russia. As a
consequence of this, our Synod has not understood the meaning of the
existence of our mission abroad.
As I warned the Synod in my last report, we have done
absolutely everything possible to force the Russian Bishops to separate
from us administratively.
They have had to proceed from Resolution No. 362 of
Patriarch Tikhon of November 7/20, 1920, so as to prevent the final
destruction of the just-beginning regeneration of the Russian Church in
our Fatherland. But our Synod, having nothing before its eyes except
punitive tactics, has proceeded only from the positions of normalised
ecclesiastical life. But the Patriarch’s Resolution had in mind the
preservation of ecclesiastical construction in completely unprecedented
historical and ecclesiastical circumstances.
The ukaz was composed for various cases, including
the means of restoring the Church Administration in conditions when it
had even ceased to be (cf. article 9) and "the extreme disorganisation
of Church life". This is the task placed before any surviving hierarch,
provided only that he truly Orthodox.
The Russian Hierarchs felt themselves to be in this
position when, for almost two years in a row, their enquiries and
requests to receive support against the oppression of the Moscow
Patriarchate were met with complete silence on the part of our Synod.
Seeing the canonical chaos caused in their dioceses
by Bishop Barnabas, and the silent connivance towards him of the Synod,
the Russian Hierarchs came to the conclusion that they had no other way
of preventing the destruction of the whole enterprise than by being
ruled by the patriarchal Resolution No. 362.
Our Synod unlawfully pushed Bishop Valentine into
retirement for accepting the huge parish in Noginsk, which Bishop
Barnabas hoped to receive for himself, but did not react in any way when
the same Bishop Barnabas treacherously shamed the Synod by petitioning
to be received into communion with a Ukrainian self-consecrator in the
name of the Synod!
I do not know whether you have read the full text of
the Resolution of November 7/20 at a session of the Synod. I myself
earlier paid little attention to it, but now, on reading it through, I
see that the Russian Bishops have every right to refer to it, and this
fact will be revealed in the polemic that will now inevitably develop. I
fear that the Synod has already opened the way to this undesirable
polemic by its decisions, and it will betoken a schism not only in
Russia, but also with us here…
There are things which cannot be stopped, and it is
also impossible to walk away from an accomplished fact. If our Synod
does not now correctly evaluate the passing historical moment, then its
already infinitely undermined prestige (especially in Russia) will be
finally and ingloriously destroyed.
For all the years of the existence of the Church
Abroad we have enjoyed respect and glory for nothing else than for our
uncompromising faithfulness to the canons. They hated us, but they did
not dare not to respect us. But now we have shown the whole Orthodox
world that the canons are for us just an empty sound and we have become a
laughing-stock in the eyes of all those who have any kind of
relationship to Church questions.
Look: you yourself, at the Council in Lesna,
permitted yourself to say that for us, the participants in it, this was
not now the time to examine canons, but we had to act quickly. You,
holding the tiller of the ecclesiastical ship, triumphantly, in front of
the whole Council, declared to us that now we had to hasten to sail
without a rudder and without sails. At that time your words appalled me,
but I, knowing of your irritation towards me because I insist that we
have to live in accordance with the canons, still hoped that all was not
lost and that our Bishops would somehow shake off the whole nightmare
of these last years.
Think, Vladyko, of the tens of thousands of Orthodox
people we have deceived both abroad and in Russia. Don’t calm yourself
with the thought that if there is some guilt somewhere, then it lies
equally on all our hierarchs. The main guilt will lie on you, as the
leader of our Council. I have had to hear from some Bishops that
sometimes the Synod decrees one thing, and then you, taking no account
of previous resolutions, on your own initiative either change them or
simply rescind them.
And look now, as has already become quite well known,
after the stormy March session of the Synod, it dispersed without
making a single resolution. During it the question was discussed of
banning the Russian Hierarchs from serving. Nevertheless, you demanded
that the Secretariat that it send of an ukaz banning bishops who were
not even under investigation. Both from the point of view of the 34th
Apostolic canon, and from an ecclesiastical-administrative point of
view, this is unprecedented lawlessness.
Remember, Vladyko, your reproachful speech against
Metropolitan Philaret, when in 1985 you for ten minutes non-stop
fulminated against him for transgressing the 34th Apostolic canon. The
crimes of Metropolitan Philaret seem to me to be miniscule by comparison
with what is happening now. He only occasionally gave awards to clergy
of other dioceses at the request of his cell-attendant, but never
interfered in the affairs of the dioceses of his brothers. But that is
what both you personally and certain of our Bishops have begun to do.
Fr. Nikita was not able to get the reposed Metropolitan Philaret to
commit those uncanonical acts in which the activity of Bishop Barnabas
and certain other bishops abound – with the silent agreement of you as
the First Hierarch, who must know all these circumstances well.
Forgive me, Vladyko, if my letter grieves you. My aim
is not, and never has been, to wound or offend you. In going through
the results of your rule in recent years in chronological order… my aim
was by no means to complain about my own fate. You of course must know
that I have not once expressed any offence or complaint of a personal
character. I write this letter only in order to show you clearly how we
have come off the canonical rails since 1985, we have more and more
begun to depart from the basic ecclesiastical canons and rulers of our
Local Church and now we have reduced all our affairs in Russia and
abroad to the saddest condition.
I was a witness of, and participant in, the glorious
period in the life of the Church Abroad, and now with pain I look on
what I consider to be what is already its inglorious end.
The growth of our parishes abroad has ceased since
the death of Metropolitan Philaret. We have no candidates to fill the
hierarchical sees, which witnesses to the fact that we are gradually
becoming smaller. And now at this portentous moment we are simply
renouncing the link with Russia that was established with such labour.
Our Synod must understand that we by our actions have
elicited the speedy administrative departure from us of the Russian
Hierarchs. It had to happen one way or another on the basis of the
Resolution of Patriarch Tikhon of November 7/20, 1920 and of our own
"Statute concerning the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad". If we do not
now understand this, then we only demonstrate before the whole world our
bankruptcy and our failure to understand the whole historic mission
laid upon us by the Providence of God.
In their resolution of March 22 the Russian Hierarchs
declared that they remained in communion of prayer with us and
commemorated you in the Divine services, but we, instead of
understanding the unprecedented state of ecclesiastical affairs in
Russia, and not thinking about building up the Church or of the tens of
thousands of people deceived by us – reply to everything only with
canons which were meant to be used in normal conditions.
It is absolutely necessary for you sharply and
decisively to turn the rudder of our administration in the direction of
keeping the canons, before it is too late.
Vladyko, do not allow your name in the history of the
Russian Church to be linked, not with the peaceful construction of
Church life, but with its abrupt and shameful destruction both in Russia
and abroad.
March 24 / April 6, 1994
APPENDIX 2. ON RECENT EVENTS IN CHURCH LIFE IN RUSSIA AND ABROAD
(The Independent Opinion of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe))
The conciliar decrees on the matter of the Russian
bishops that have come to me cannot fail to elicit perplexity in all
those who have any acquaintance at all with the canons of the Russian
Orthodox Church.
The very fact that Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus
were summoned, without the slightest qualifications, to a session of the
Synod witnesses to the recognition of their hierarchical consecrations.
This is especially obvious if we remember the joyful declarations of
the President of the Council [in Lesna, in December, 1994] concerning
the decrees that had previously been accepted opening the way to a
peaceful resolution of all the problems of the Church Administration in
Russia. Bishops Theodore and Agathangelus came to the session of the
Synod on the basis of precisely this understanding of their status.
However, completely unexpectedly for us, the Synod raised the question,
not even of whether their episcopate should be doubted, but of banning
them from serving with the threat of defrocking five out of the seven
Russian Bishops, which, if the Bishops from Russia had entered the ranks
of the Church Abroad should have been carried out in the definite legal
procedure laid out in the Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad. But we should not forget that one of the especially important
legal principles of the above-mentioned Statute was that all its rules
had in mind only the affairs of the Church Abroad, but by no means the
affairs of the Church in Russia. In the whole Statute there is not one
word about entrusting the Hierarchical Synod or its President with
authority over the Church in Russia. Of course, this does not exclude
help for the Church in Russia. However, there is a great difference
between help and jurisdiction.
If we turn to the decree of his Holiness Patriarch
Tikhon of November 7/20, 1920, there hierarchs are allowed to render
help in the forming of a temporary Administration in Russia, but not to
assume for themselves ecclesiastical authority over the whole of Russia.
It was this kind of help that the Church Abroad rendered when she
consecrated Bishops for Russia, because of the communists’ annihilation
of the whole lawful Russian hierarchy. That was enough for a beginning.
When local parishes began to appear, together with
local legislation concerning them, a series of completely new questions
arose. With the growth in the number of parishes in the conditions of
competition with the Moscow Patriarchate that had betrayed the truth,
problems began to arise that were not always comprehensible for the
[bishops] abroad. The administration abroad, not being sufficiently
acquainted with all the aspects of Church life in Russia, as often as
not was silent, but from time to time took upon itself the labour of
issuing decrees for the Church in Russia. Besides this, the Synod
Abroad, submitting to the promptings of conscious provocateurs, burned
with distrust for the Russian Bishops, while at the same time having no
other candidates for archpastoral service. Hence a series of mistakes,
and as a result, with the aid of the enemies of the Church, the
relations between the Russian hierarchy and the Hierarchical Synod
became extremely complicated.
Finally, we see the Resolution of the Synod dated
February 9.22 of this year, which simply abolishes the missionary gains
in Russia, handing over all the open.. parishes that have not taken part
in the missionary work to the hierarchy, and even to Vladyka
Metropolitan, who has not once been in Russia.
Glory to God, our Russian Bishops remain faithful to
the principles of the preservation of Orthodoxy that have guided them in
their missionary work. If our Bishops abroad also preserve faithfulness
to these principles, then the two parts of the Russian Church can again
be united. The erroneous bans on Archbishops Lazarus and Valentine and
their vicars cannot be carried out, for they were issued in violation of
all the canons of the Holy Orthodox Church and her holy Canons,
including the Statute on the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
No hierarch who understands his responsibility can
take part in the dissolution of the Church discipline that has been
formed in the course of past years, substituting anarchy for the order
ordained for the regeneration of the Russian Church by the Holy
Patriarch Tikhon.
February 20 / March 4, 1995.
APPENDIX 3. EPISTLE OF THE TEMPORARY HIGHER CHURCH ADMINISTRATION
OF THE RUSSIAN (ROSSIJSKOJ) ORTHODOX CHURCH
TO THE FLOCK BELOVED OF GOD
Beloved in Christ Jesus Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, Children of the persecuted and tormented Russian Church!
The Russian Orthodox Church is living through a harsh
time, constricted now not by bloody persecutors, but by false brethren,
who imitate Orthodoxy and call themselves the Russian Orthodox Church
of the Moscow Patriarchate, the supposed successor of the Church of his
Holiness Patriarch Tikhon. Its main aim is "to deceive, if it were
possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24.24), so that there should be
forever lost in our poor Fatherland the feeling of truth and the right
understanding of what the Church really is. The gaze of the majority of
Russian (rossijskikh) people, deprived in the course of seventy years of
the opportunity of confessing the true faith and acquiring the first
principles of Orthodox teaching, is directed at externals, at the
superficial content of this heretical and traitrous organization. Its
influence has now embraced a significant part not only of the Russian
(rossijskogo) people, which has lost the foundations of its statehood
and nationality, but also a large part of the other peoples of the
earth, their views of life and social structures, which gives us the
right to speak of it as an institution of the Antichrist[69], who is
striving by his speedy coming to take the place of Christ in the hearts
and minds of the whole human race.
We must admit that the work of Judas has had great
success in recent years. Witness to this is the departure from the Holy
Canons of almost all the Local "Orthodox" Churches of the world, and the
presence of an extensive net of informants and agents, thanks to which
no event in the life of these Churches that have fallen under the
influence of the source of world evil is free from control by the
God-fighting powers, if they are not directly inspired by them.
Now the turn has come to the last citadel of
undamaged Orthodoxy in the free world – the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad, now headed by his Eminence Metropolitan VITALY (Ustinov).
Unfortunately, Vladyka Metropolitan, having fallen with age under
others’ influence, is no longer the leader of the Hierarchical Synod of
the ROCA, but only formally occupies this post. As usually happens, the
enemy of the human race delivers his main blow at the weak place in
human administration. Deceived and confused, Vladyka Metropolitan fears
to change place, fears to go to Russia, and in his own residence fears
that he may be poisoned, killed, etc.
Meanwhile, a group of opponents of the commandment of
Christ on love, transgressors of the Holy Canons and Resolutions of the
Holy Fathers, having united with their pro-patriarchal supporters in
the ROCA itself, are in fact leading the matter to a rapprochement with
the Moscow Patriarchate, taking into their hands the reins of the Church
administration. These so-called "zealots of undamaged Orthodoxy", a
part of whom are without doubt agents of the MP, have been joined by
well-wishers in Russia. In their number is (the recently consecrated)
Bishop Eutyches, who, at the 5th Conference of clergy in Suzdal, spoke
about the Holy Canons as of something secondary by comparison with the
opinion of the living hierarchs of the ROCA who were in agreement with
him.
We must admit that the successes of the dark powers
that have been trying finally to destroy undamaged Orthodoxy, have been
very great. But this is no reason for the faithful children of the
Church of Christ to become despondent or to cease to struggle against
these evil forces. The hierarch Ignaty Brianchaninov wrote: "The
apostasy is allowed by God: do not try to stop it with your powerless
hand. Keep away, guard yourself from it: and this will be enough from
you. Get to know the spirit of the time, study it, so as to avoid its
influence as far as possible."
Thus it turns out that the Russian [Rossijskaya]
Church, having received the re-establishment of its episcopate several
years ago from the hands of foreign hierarchs, and thereby acquired the
opportunity to develop independently and freely from sergianism and the
other sins of the Moscow Patriarchate, is now suffering the most real
persecution from these same hierarchs. Moreover, if in the past
faithfulness to the Holy Canons was raised in the Church Abroad to the
level of primary importance and was the unfailing condition of the
choice and realization of the enterprises of Church life, now, some
three or four years later, almost every action of the ROCA Synod is a
crude trampling on the Holy Canons and on the Statute of the ROCA
itself, which declares in its first paragraph that "the ROCA is a part
of the Russian [Rossijskoj] Church, temporarily governing itself until
the removal from Russia of the atheist Soviet power".
As if without noticing this, the Synod of the ROCA
now imposes its will on the Russian believers instead of giving an
account, in an atmosphere of love, agreement and respect for the
persecutions they have undergone in Russia, to the Orthodox people – the
hierarchs, pastors and simple believers who do not recognize the
schismatic Moscow Patriarchate. It would be good if the will of the
Chancellery of the ROCA Synod were really the will of all the hierarchs
of Russia Abroad, a will in agreement with the Canons of the Holy
Apostles and Fathers of the Church! But nothing of the sort. The far
from canonical decisions of three or four hierarchs take the place of
the Sobor’s decisions and resolutions, and, published and distributed
through Russia by agents of the MP, they sow division, distrust and
enmity in our much-suffering Fatherland.
To our great misfortune and shame, it has already
become a habit for the ROCA Synod to deprive bishops of their sees, ban
or defrock several Hierarchs at once, not only without trial or
investigation, but even without any reason, simply on the basis of
slander. They can "see better from beyond the ocean"!, as Vladyka
Metropolitan Vitaly expressed it. All this, without any doubt, is one of
the greatest achievements of the secret antichristian forces in recent
times.
More and more threats are piled on the Russian
Hierarchs, Archbishops Lazarus and Valentine, and Bishops Theodore,
Seraphim, Agathangelus, Alexander, Victor and Arsenius, by the
Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA, by false brothers of the Moscow
Patriarchate and by bold enemies of Orthodox teaching. Making use of the
ambiguity of the situation, the Moscow Patriarchate, with the help of
the authorities, is striving to take away the churches of the Russian
[Rossijskoj] Orthodox Church, the Church of God that is free from
sergianism, and inspire believing people with the thought that the
Hierarchical rank of the Russian Hierarchs is invalid.
It is especially distressing to see that one part of
the believers is submitting to this propaganda and is taking steps to
embrace the heretical sergianists and transgressors of the Holy Canons.
They are taking a step into the abyss of hell, from where "weeping and
gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8.12) are heard.
The most recent Resolution of the Hierarchical Synod
of the ROCA forces us once more to remind people of the power of the
bans placed by the canons for these transgressions, of which that part
of the hierarchs of the ROCA which has ascribed itself the right to
speak and act in the name of the whole Church Abroad, is now guilty.
- If a Bishop receives church servers banned by another bishop as members of his clergy, let him be expelled as a teacher of lawlessness (16th Apostolic Canon).
- Let a Bishop who dares to carry out an ordination beyond the bounds of his Diocese without the agreement of the Diocese in which the ordination takes place, be defrocked, together with those ordained by him (35th Apostolic Canon).
- If a Bishop teaches publicly in a city that does not belong to him, let him be removed from the episcopate and do the works of the priesthood (20th Canon of the 6th Ecumenical Council).
- Let no Bishop dare to move from one Diocese to another. If he decides to carry out Church affairs that do not belong to him, then let everything he has done be invalid and let him be punished for his lawlessness and foolhardy undertakings by speedy defrockment from his rank by the holy council (13th Canon of Antioch; 59th Canon of Carthage).
The Canons demand that every Diocese should preserve
in purity and without oppression the rights that belonged to it from the
beginning, and if anyone suggests anything contrary to this, let it be
invalid (8th Canon of the 3rd Ecumenical Council; 9th Canon of Antioch;
64th and 67th Canons of Carthage). It is precisely these Canons that
FORBID the ROCA Synod FROM MAKING ANY ATTEMPT TO RULE the Russian
Orthodox Church and call itself the HIGHER CHURCH AUTHORITY!
We call on all the faithful children of the Church of
God to firmly remember the covenants of the holy Fathers of the Church
and not to give in to any attempts to persuade them, from whatever
quarter these may come, to carry out the affairs of Church life in
violation of the Holy Canons. Any resolutions of the Hierarchical Synod
or of the Moscow Patriarchate which are aimed at interfering in the
affairs of the Russian [Rossijskoj] Orthodox Church in the Homeland, are
not to be recognized or carried out.
Dear in the Lord Children of the Orthodox Church of
God, who remain faithful to the Holy Canons and covenants of the
Hierarch Tikhon, Patriarch and Confessor of Moscow and All Russia and of
the Holy New Martyrs of Russia! We call on you to cleanse yourselves
from sergianism and the other sins of the Moscow Patriarchate that have
penetrated the Russian Church Abroad. We have no right to interfere in
the affairs of the Dioceses Abroad, but it is painful for us to see how
this part of the Russian Church, which preserved, throughout all the
decades of atheism in the Homeland, in persecution and dispersion, the
light of the Orthodox Faith, is now being subjected to humiliation and
mockery according to the will of those who are guilty of the present
division, and whose leader is the devil. May the Lord preserve us all.
With much love,
ADMINISTERING THE AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
PRESIDENT OF THE TEMPORARY HIGHER CHURCH AUTHORITY
+Valentine, Archbishop of Suzdal and Vladimir
CONSTANT MEMBERS OF THE TEMPORARY HIGHER CHURCH AUTHORITY
Theodore, Bishop of Borisovsk
Seraphim, Bishop of Sukhumi and Abkahzia.
October, 1995.
Suzdal. [70]
APPENDIX 4. AN ANATHEMA AGAINST THE SERGIANISTS
On the Sunday of Orthodoxy, 1999, the Synod of the
FROC (now officially called the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church)
declared: "A resolution was passed concerning the hierarchs and
representatives of the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate who received
their rank through the mediation of the authorities and organs of State
Security. In relation to such it was decided that every year on the
Sunday of Orthodoxy ANATHEMA should be proclaimed, using the following
text: ‘If any bishops, making use of secular bosses ["nachal’nikov],
have seized power in the Church of God and enslaved Her, let those and
those who aid them and those who communicate with them without paying
heed to the reproaches of the Law of God, be ANATHEMA."[71]
APPENDIX 5. EPISTLE OF THE HIERARCHICAL SYNOD OF
THE RUSSIAN (ROSSIJSKOJ) ORTHODOX CHURCH TO THE HIERARCHICAL COUNCIL OF
THE RUSSIAN (RUSSKOJ) ORTHODOX CHURCH ABROAD
21 August / September 3, 2000. No. 70.
Your Eminence, honourable Archpastors – members of
the Hierarchical Council, and also clergy and children and of the
Russian Orthodox Church Abroad!
The Hierarchical Council of the Church Abroad opens
at a time when, on the one hand, the whole world is being shaken by
events, each more terrible than the one before – catastrophes, elemental
disasters, wars… On the other hand, the whole world is seized by a
certain fever for unification: this is observable not only in the
political life of the world, but also in its religious life. On the one
hand, endless disputes, on the other – a haste to unify everyone and
everything: states with states, churches with churches, religions with
religions…
The fever for unification that embraces the earthly
globe manifests itself in various external forms – sometimes political,
sometimes economic, and sometimes also in an ecclesiastical-ecumenical
form – but its profound essence remains unchangingly the same…. And in
this the zealots of unification place definite hopes on the hierarchs of
the ROCA.
But can the Orthodox Church surrender to this spirit
of the times – that Church which is unshakably "built on the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
cornerstone" (Ephesians 2.20)?
"Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel
which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,
by which also you are saved", says the holy Apostle Paul in his Epistle
to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 15.1-2). In another epistle, to the
Galatians, he says: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any
other gospel that what we have preached to you, let him be accursed"
(Galatians 1.8). But to those who have preserved the holy gospel there
is the promise of being comforted… "by the mutual faith both of you and
of me" (Romans 1.12).
If we open the Acts of the Holy Ecumenical Councils,
we see that the holy builders of the Church struggled for nothing more
than for the preservation and support in its unchanging form of the
faith of the fathers. "We pray you that you keep the faith of the
fathers unchanged". "We beseech you to investigate the novelty that has
been introduced against the former faith" – this is how the zealots of
the Orthodox Faith addressed the Holy Councils. And, having investigated
the novelty, and rejected the innovations, and confirmed the Dogmas of
Orthodoxy unshaken, the Holy Fathers exclaimed: "Yes, this is the faith
of the fathers! This is how we all believe!"
If we open the works of the Russian teachers of the
faith that are closer to us, we see the same care first of all for
keeping the patristic teaching unchanged. "Human teachings all strive
for that which is new, they grow, they develop… Thus is has become a
law: forward, forward! But in regard to our faith it was said from on
high: stand… remain unmoved. All that remains for us to do is to be
confirmed and to confirm others," appealed the noted holy hierarch of
the Vladimir lands Theophan, the Vishensky recluse. "… We have to look
over all that has passed in order to see whether the order of teachings
that was outlined for us has in any way been disturbed." ("On Orthodoxy
with warnings against sins against it," Sermons of Bishop Theophan,
Moscow, 1991. From his sermons to the flocks of Tambov and Vladimir).
In 1918 "he who restrains" was taken away – and this
had fateful consequences not only for Russia, but also for the whole
world. Already within two years of the murder of the holy Martyr Tsar
Nicholas II, in 1920, the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate in the person
of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Dorotheus of
Prussa, issued an encyclical which encroached on the very foundations
of Orthodoxy. Heretical communities that have been separated by the
Orthodox Church from Her communion were declared to be "churches" having
equal rights with her, and Orthodoxy was given the aim of the speediest
possible unification with all the apostates.
In contrast to this treacherous document, which
marked the beginning of the global apostasy of "World Orthodoxy", in the
same year of 1920 the holy Patriarch Tikhon together with the Holy
Synod and the Higher Church Council – that is, undoubtedly with the
whole fullness of the Central Ecclesiastical authorities of the Russian
Church – made a most important resolution, Ukaz no. 362 of 7/20
November, 1920, on the self-definition of dioceses in conditions of
possible persecution. The other name for this Ukaz – the Ukaz on
decentralization – underlines the fact that the aim of the resolution of
the Russian Ecclesiastical Authorities was contradictory to the aim of
the encyclical of the Ecumenical throne, which called for the
centralization of all confessions of faith.
From now on the broad path and all conditions for
unification were created only for the unfaithful: but for those faithful
to Christ a violent disunion lay in store: the two parts of the Russian
Church were disunited: the one found itself exiled from its native
land, while the other was driven into the catacombs by persecutions
unprecedented in their ferocity. But in these terrible years the Church
of Russia did not cease to constitute one spiritual whole.
The force enabling both parts of the Russian Church
to hold out and preserve Their unity in all temptations, especially in
the approaching most terrible period – the epoch of the sergianist
schism – was their unanimous confession of the faith of the fathers.
"Schism is not antiquity, but novelty", pointed out
Theophan the Recluse. This remarkable definition has a universal
character and allows always accurately to establish the one who is truly
guilty of schism.
By his treacherous Declaration of 1927 Metropolitan
Sergius (Stragorodsky) opened wide the gates of the Church for
renovationism. It consisted in the undermining of the very meaning of
the existence of the Church on earth – not as the pillar and ground of
the truth and of eternal Authority, but as the weapon of earthly power.
Both parts of the Russian Church – the part in
Russia, and the part Abroad – were completely unanimous in their
attitude to the Declaration of 1927. The Hierarchical Synod of the
Church Abroad, headed by his Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony, broke
communion with the schismatic metropolitan and his synod. The bishops in
the homeland that were faithful to the Russian Church did the same. The
essence of the sergianist schism was very accurately expressed by New
Martyr Bishop Victor (Ostrovidov), when he called Sergius an
anti-ecclesiastical heretic. The faithful children of the Russian Church
did not visit the sergianist churches, they justly made no distinction
between sergianists and renovationists. "We shall not go to
renovationism," said the Orthodox. Communications were lost with
Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky), the lawful head of the Russian Church,
who was in prison, and the treachery of his Deputy forced the Church,
both in the Homeland and abroad, to be ruled in its canonical existence
by Ukaz no. 362 of the holy Patriarch Tikhon concerning the
self-definition of dioceses. With the death of Metropolitan Peter
(Polyansky), the Central or Supreme Authority of the Russian Church
ceased even its nominal existence. Such an eventuality was foreseen by
Ukaz no. 362, which contained detailed recommendations for the ordering
of the Church which would avoid schism in this event. But through the
efforts of Metropolitan Sergius, a dual authority was introduced, and
then a false patriarchate (a common phenomenon, alas, in Church history
during the periods when heresy was dominant).
From now on the Russian Church trod its path in the
conditions of the absence of Central (Supreme) Ecclesiastical Authority.
When the last Orthodox churches were closed in Russia in the 1930s, the
Russian Church finally departed into the catacombs, preserving
communion in prayer with Her half that was abroad and commemorating Her
First Hierarchs Metropolitans Anthony, Anastasy and Philaret. Following
the spirit and aim of the Ukaz no. 362 of the holy Patriarch Tikhon of
7/20 November, 1920 kept the Orthodox Church reliably free of false
strivings for unification.
This was not the case with the sergianist church – it
grew strongly into what is now commonly called "official world
orthodoxy". The latter was also ruled by a document of 1920, but the
document of an opposite tendency – the ecumenical encyclical of the
Locum Tenens of the Ecumenical Throne Dorotheus. "World Orthodoxy"
became an inalienable part of the ecumenical movement and dragged the
sergianist church after it into the abyss. Into the gates opened by
Metropolitan Sergius there now poured without the slightest resistance
the false teachings by which the enemy of human salvation has, in the
course of the whole of his struggle with the Church, and especially in
the 20th century, undermined the teaching of Christ.
The sergianist church accepted all the most
destructive innovations of the 20th century – both communism, and
ecumenism, by which it clearly marked its complete attachment to the
most terrible schism that has ever tormented the Universal Church.
If Metropolitan Sergius, as the holy new martyrs
pointed out, had "distorted the dogmatic face of the Church", then under
his successors we must speak no longer of distortion, but of a complete
overthrow of the Holy Dogmas, and first of all – of the Dogma of the
Church as being one and only one. In consequence of this trampling on
the Holy Dogmas there appeared crying violations of the Holy Canons –
for example, the categorical ban on joint prayers with the heterodox
under threat of being deprived of one’s rank and expelled from the
Church.
Is it necessary to cite examples of the excesses of
the ecumenists, which are the more blasphemous in that they have been
committed in the name of Christ? In 1983 those abroad had the
opportunity of seeing on television the raising of a pagan idol by
delegates of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in
Vancouver, among whom were representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate,
while in Russia the "Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate" in its account
of this ecumenical Assembly was not ashamed to mention this hideous act
in the most positive terms.
After the ecumenical Assembly in Vancouver the
Russian Church Abroad, headed by the holy Hierarch Philaret, in its
Council in Mansonville in 1983 delivered ecumenism to anathema.
With the fall of the "iron curtain", there finally
appeared the opportunity for the forcibly divided parts of the Russian
Orthodox Church to unite. But it turned out that in the years that had
passed since the death of the holy Hierarch Philaret (1985), too much
had changed in the Church Abroad – and a significant part of Her was now
under threat of falling under their own anathema.
The concelebrations of clergy and even bishops of the
Church Abroad with the clergy and episcopate of the ecumenist Orthodox
Churches – which was to have ceased after the Mansonville council of
1983 – again became a commonplace phenomenon. The concelebrations of the
majority of the hierarchs of the Church Abroad, not to speak of the
other clergy, with the clergy of the ecumenical Serbian patriarchate
became a real scourge. And these concelebrations took place in spite of
the fact that this patriarchate almost exceeded the Soviet sergianists
in ecumenical enthusiasm, while her relationships with her local
communists was just as submissive as was that of her Soviet "sister".
These concelebrations have not ceased even now, after the recent epistle
of the Serbian patriarch to his Muscovite brother, in which he affirms
that his patriarchate no longer has communion in prayer with the ROCA.
It was also with a heavy feeling of perplexity that
we observed the hasty proclamation, in the Hierarchical Council of the
ROCA that took place in 1994, that the ecclesiology of Metropolitan
Cyprian of Fili and Orope was identical to the ecclesiology of the
Church Abroad. We cannot accept as Orthodox the basic position of this
ecclesiology – that the saving grace of the sacraments can supposedly be
guaranteed to abide in heretical communities, albeit only up to their
conciliar condemnation. One of the Greek metropolitans with his
followers calls the hierarchs of "World Orthodoxy" the "sick" members of
one and the same Body of Christ – His True Church. One branch is
healthy, the other sick. We understand that the ecclesiological
resolution of the Council of 1994 is a natural step further downwards
after the Nativity Epistle of 1986, which was distributed under the
signature of Metropolitan Vitaly, in which the meaning of the anathema
against ecumenism accepted in 1983 was restricted, against all logic, to
"members of our Church (that is, the Church Abroad)" – as if an
anathema applies, not to a heretic, but to a jurisdiction! But we also
saw, and we see to the present day, that there are enough people in the
Church Abroad who understand the whole destructiveness of the
resolutions, and that these people are trying to correct the mistake of
the Hierarchical Council in 1994.
But of course that which we perceive with the
greatest heaviness is the ever-increasing tendency of the Church Abroad
towards union with the Moscow Patriarchate. It is worthy of note that
the very possibility of negotiations with her was sanctioned in
principle by the same Council of the ROCA in 1994 which recognized the
crypto-ecumenist ecclesiology of Metropolitan Cyprian.
At a time when the Moscow Patriarchate was
preoccupied with unity with the Catholics (the Balamand unia of 1993 –
this document has not been disavowed: on the contrary, certain of its
positions have been widely realized in life) and with the Monophysites
(the Chambesy union of 1990; within the bounds of the programme outlined
in it the Moscow Patriarchate is now getting very close to the Armenian
monophysite church), certain hierarchs of the Church Abroad have been
insistently seeking to get closer to the Moscow Patriarchate – even in
spite of the fact that the patriarchate takes less and less account of
the very existence of the Church Abroad, exappropriating her property
now not only in Russia, but also abroad. This has delivered a huge blow
to the dignity of the Church Abroad and Her hierarchy even in the eyes
of "outsiders". But still sadder is the fact that this witnesses to the
apostasy of part of the hierarchs of the ROCA from the path bequeathed
to Her by the first-hierarchs Metropolitans Anthony, Anastasy and
Philaret – that is, to their apostasy from Orthodoxy.
If the other, healthy part of the ROCA does not find
within itself the strength to halt the strivings of the apostates, then
the final degeneration of the ROCA into a false ecclesiastical
organization and Her subsequent dissolution in the ecumenical "great and
spacious sea" (Psalm 103.27) of "World Orthodoxy" will become a burning
question in the nearest future.
In Russia the stand-off between the Church Abroad and
"World Orthodoxy" in the person of the MP has taken a particularly
acute form, and therefore the Russian parishes of the ROCA did not have
the possibility of waiting many years until the hierarchs abroad
re-established Church discipline and were again established on the path
of the holy Hierarch Philaret. This was the cause of the break in
eucharistic communion between the Russian [Rossijskoj] Orthodox Church
and the Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA which took place in 1995.
Unfortunately, our actions at that time did not meet with understanding
on the part of the clerical leadership of the ROCA, which, contrary to
the spirit and the letter of Ukaz no. 362 and its own evident inability
to restrain the tendencies towards apostasy from the faith in the
dioceses abroad, began to insist on his own full right to realize
supreme ecclesiastical authority in Russia.
The five years that have passed since then have shown whether or not we were right in our fears.
Our position remains: faithfulness to the dogmas and
holy canons of the Orthodox Church and, moreover, the preservation of
the Orthodox Faith without contamination from the ecumenical filth of
"World Orthodoxy" and its organic part – the Moscow Patriarchate. It was
on this path that Her ever-memorable first-hierarch, the holy Philaret,
left the Russian Church Abroad for us, his successors, and this
position of ours is similar to that of the majority of Old Calendarist
Greek hierarchs and their flock. We have no "separate" claims in
relation to the Moscow Patriarchate: it is no more than a part of the
global and now already ecumenical sergianism, which with the same zeal
that Metropolitan Sergius once served Stalin now serves the New World
Order and the coming unification of everyone and everything. It is in no
way worse or better than some Serbian or Constantinopolitan
patriarchate. With all these ecumenical jurisdictions the Russian
Orthodox Church broke canonical communion under the holy Hierarch
Philaret.
If you, your Graces, honourable Archbishops, clergy
and laymen, choose to return to the faith of the fathers – the holy
fathers of Universal Orthodoxy and the fathers of our Church Abroad –
then we shall be together again. Unity of canonical communion will be
quickly restored between us, as soon as unity of faith is restored.
But if it is not – if within the Church Abroad there
is not found the strength to stop Her slide into the quagmire of "World
Orthodoxy", then the end is inevitable: the Moscow Patriarchate will
suck up into itself her remains scattered around the world, and the
muddy waters of ecumenism will close above Her head forever.
May this not be!
The means of salvation are the same for all times: to
hear and to carry out, amidst the wavering, unstable elements of the
world, the everlasting voice of the true Mother Church uttered from on
high: As you have believed – "in that stand and be saved" (I Corinthians
15.1).
+ Valentine, Archbishop of Suzdal and Vladimir,
President of the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian [Rossijskoj] Orthodox Church
+ Theodore, Bishop Borisovskoye and Sanino
+ Seraphim, Bishop of Sukhumi and Abkhazia
+ Victor, Bishop of Daugavpilis and Latvia
+ Hilarion, Bishop of Sukhodolsk
+ Anthony, Bishop of Yaransk
Protopriest Andrew Osetrov, Secretary of the Hierarchical Synod
REFERENCES
[1] This correspondence was published in the
German Russian-language journal Posev (September, 1979, pp. 50-51) and
was therefore well known to the KGB, who, it is argued, oversaw this
whole process and "secret" consecration. Archbishop Anthony was the most
liberal and pro-MP of the ROCA bishops at that time. His continued
communion with ecumenists led to many communities in Western Europe
leaving the ROCA, and to the break between the ROCA and the Matthewite
Old Calendarists in 1976.
[2] "Zayavlenie Arkhiereiskago Sinoda Russkoj
Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi Zagranitsej", Pravoslavnaya Rus', no. 18 (1423),
September 15/28, 1990, p. 6.
[3] In 1993 Bishop Lazarus’ clergy asked the ROCA:
"We ask you to clearly answer the question: does the ROCA confess that
the Catacomb Church is her sister, as she often did earlier, and if she
does, then on what basis does the ROCA interfere in the inner affairs of
the Catacomb Church?" (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, p. 134). A
good question, but one which should also have been posed to Bishop
Lazarus himself, since his own consecration was the first concrete
"interference" of the ROCA in the life of the Catacomb Church, and he
could have refused to have anything to do with it.
[4] Matushka Anastasia Shatilova writes: "The
ordination papers (including the certificate) for Archim. Lazarus
Zhurbenko were signed by: Metropolitan Philaret, Archbishop Vitaly,
Archbishop Anthony of Geneva (though whom the appeal was sent) and
Bishop Gregory as Secretary to the Synod. The fifth person to know of
this case was I, because I typed all the documentation" (personal
communication, September 19 / October 3, 2000).
[5] "Vladyka Valentin razskazyvayet", Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 17 (1446), September 1/14, 1991, pp. 9-10.
[6] Fr. Stefan Krasovitsky, "Torzhestva v Suzdalye", Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 15 (1420), August 1/14, 1990, p. 3.
[7] "Vladyka Lazar otvyechayet na voprosy redaktsii", Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 22 (1451), November 15.28, 1991, p. 6.
[8] Pryamoj Put’, special issue; "Vladyka Valentin
vernulsa iz Ameriki", Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 3 (1456), February 1/14,
1992, p. 14. Italics mine (V.M.).
[9] Pryamoj Put’, January, 1992, p. 5; Nyezavisimaya gazeta, January 18, 1992.
[10] Pryamoj Put’, January, 1992, pp. 3-4; Pryamoj Put’, March, 1992, pp. 3-4.
[11] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, pp. 63-64.
[12] Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 17 (1470), September 1/14, 1992, p. 12
[13] Pravoslavnaya Rus’, N 18 (1471), September 15/28, 1992, p. 11.
[14] Sergius Bychkov, "Voskreseniye mifa",
Moskovskiye Novosti, March 7, 1993; "Ukazaniye Protoiereyu Viktoru
Potapovu", February 4/17, 1993 (no. 11/35/39). The official publications
of the ROCA shed little light on this about-turn, saying only that the
Synod "reviewed and changed certain of its decisions of December 12,
1992" (Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 1-2, January-February, 1993, p. 3).
[15] Emergency report to the ROCA Synod, May 16/29,
1993, Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 18-20, 1994, p. 92. In a later report to the
Synod (June 9/22, 1993, Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-10, 1994, pp.
94-95), Bishop Gregory, after enumerating Bishop Barnabas’
transgressions, appealed that he be brought to trial.
[16] Bishop Valentine’s phrase was: "such disturbance
and division of the flock as the atheists and the MP could only dream
about" (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 18-20, 1994, p. 5).
[17] Protocol no. 8, April 30 / May 13, 1993.
[18] Istoki Rossijskoj Pravoslavnoj Svobodnoj Tserkvi, Suzdal, 1997, pp. 19-20.
[19] Quoted in Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, pp. 108, 109.
[20] Bishop Valentine’s accuser turned out to be
Alexander R. Shtilmark, an assistant of the Pamyat’ leader, Demetrius
Vasilyev. His motivation was clear. Later, several of Shtilmark’s
relatives witnessed to his mental unbalance. In spite of this, and
Bishop Valentine’s repeated protests of his innocence (which appear not
to have reached Metropolitan Vitaly) the ROCA, in the persons of
Archbishop Mark and Bishop Hilarion continued to drag this matter out
for another two years (Reports of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), Suzdal’skij
Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, pp. 123, 126).
[21] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 18-20, 1994, pp. 89-90.
[22] There were objective grounds for such a
suspicion. Thus the protocols of this Council for June 9/22 record:
"Hieromonk Vladimir, superior of the Borisovsk church, says that three
months before the Session of the Hierarchical Council, his relative said
that he should abandon the Suzdal Diocese since they were going to
retire Bishop Valentine at the Session of the Sobor in France. She knew
this from a party worker linked with the KGB. And three years later he
learned that this question had indeed been discussed. He is interested
to know how it happened that the GB realized its intention in real
life?" (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 23, 1995, p. 54; letter to the author by
Hieromonk Vladimir (Ovchinnikov) of June 23 / July 6, 1993).
[23] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 18-20, 1994, p. 121; letter to the author by Hieromonk Vladimir, op. cit.
[24] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, pp. 128-129, 130.
[25] Later, on June 26 / July 8, 1994, Bishop
Barnabas was forbidden from travelling to Russia for five years
(Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 3-4, May-August, 1994, p. 5).
[26] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 5-6, September-December, 1993, pp. 7, 9.
[27] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, pp. 159-160.
[28] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, pp. 168-169.
[29] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 1-2, January-April, 1994, pp. 14-16; Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, pp. 196-198.
[30] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, pp. 198, 200-201.
[31] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 3-4, May-August, 1994, pp. 60-65.
[32] Bishop Gregory, Pis’ma, Moscow, 1998, pp. 123-125; Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 23, 1995, pp. 21-23.
[33] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, NN 18-20, 1994, p. 149.
[34] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 5-6, September-December, 1994, p. 13.
[35] A severely truncated version of this "Act" was
published in Tserkovnaya Zhizn’ (NN 5-6, September-December, 1994, pp.
13-14), but the whole "Act" has never, to the present author’s
knowledge, been published in the ROCA press, in spite of the decision to
do so "in all organs of the church press" (point 9 of the "Act", see
below). In fact, Bishop Valentine reported that the ROCA chancellery had
told him that the Act would not be published (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N
22, 1995, p. 12).
[36] This account is based Archbishop Valentine’s own
words to the present writer, together with his letter to the Suzdal
Council dated January 11/24, 1995 (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 22, 1995, pp.
6-10).
[37] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 22, 1995, p. 12.
[38] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN5-6, September-December, 1994, p. 16; Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 21, 1995, pp. 44-46.
[39] Tserkovnaya Zhizn’, NN 5-6, September-December, 1994, p. 10; Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 21, 1995, p. 49.
[40] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 21, 1995, pp. 42, 43.
[41] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 21, 1995, p. 32.
[42] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 22, 1995, p. 12.
[43] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 22, 1995, pp. 15-16.
[44] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 23, 1995, p. 15.
[45] This refers to the ukaz dated November 18 /
December 1, 1994, quoted above, which reinstated Vladyka Valentine as
Bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir. It should be pointed out that Vladyka
Valentine had been raised to the rank of archbishop by the THCA in the
previous year.
[46] The comments of the FROC were published in Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 22, 1995, pp. 26-27.
[47] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 23, 1995, pp. 32-33.
[48] This Decree, dated February 9/22, also stated
that the Odessa-Tambov and Suzdal-Vladimir dioceses were declared
"widowed" (a term used only if the ruling bishop has died) and were to
be submitted temporarily to Metropolitan Vitaly. See Suzdal’skij
Palomnik, N 23, 1995, p. 31; Tserkovniye Novosti, N 1A (43), February,
1995, p. 3.
[49] "Witness" of February 15/28, 1995, Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 23, 1995, pp. 35-36.
[50] Tserkovniye Novosti, N 1A (43), February, 1995, p. 5.
[51] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 23, 1995, p. 34.
[52] Vladyka was probably thinking of the incident, a
little less than a year before, when Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles
declared that in its session of February 21-24 the Hierarchical Synod
had banned both Archbishop Lazarus and Bishop Valentine from serving at
the same time that Metropolitan Vitaly was writing to Bishop Valentine
that he was "in no wise banned from serving" (Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 21,
1995, pp. 28-29).
[53] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 22, 1995, pp. 30-31; Tserkovniye Novosti, N 1A (43), February, 1995, pp. 7-8.
[54] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, N 23, 1995, p. 42.
[55] As Protopriest Andrew Osetrov writes: "The
Church Abroad should either transfer its Administration to Russia and no
longer call it the Synod of the ROCA (the more so in that one can enter
and leave the Homeland now without hindrance), or, if the hierarchs of
the ROCA do not want to return to the Homeland, they must recognize
their Church administration to be subject to the administration of the
Church in the Homeland" (Suzdal’skij Blagovest’, N 3, January-February,
1997, p. 3).
[56] Tserkovnaya Zhizn', NN 3-4, May-August, 1995, pp. 3-4.
[57] Suzdal’skij Blagovest’, N 3, January-February, 1997, p. 3.
[58] The full text of this resolution was as follows:
"There were discussions on the question of the fourteen clerics
accepted into communion of prayer from the Catacomb Church who submitted
their petitions to the Hierarchical Synod through Archimandrite Michael
of the monastery of St. Panteleimon on the Holy Mountain, which were
received on November 26 / December 7, 1977. At that time the
Hierarchical Synod of the ROCA in its session of November 26 / December
7, 1977 accepted the following resolution:
"Trusting the witness of the fourteen priests that
their reposed leader Archbishop Anthony (Galynsky) was correctly
consecrated to the episcopate, and carried out his service secretly from
the civil authorities, it has been decided to accept them into
communion of prayer, having informed them that they can carry out all
those sacred actions which priests can carry out according to the Church
canons, and also giving the monastic clerics the right to carry out
monastic tonsures. They are to be informed of this in the same way as
their address was received."
The following priests were accepted into communion:
Hieromonks Michael, Raphael, Nicholas, Nicholas, Nathaniel, Epiphanius,
Michael and Sergius, and Abbots Barsonuphius and Nicholas,
[59] E. A. Petrova, op. cit.
[60] See his (unpublished) letter to Metropolitan Vitaly, November 21 / December 4, 1992.
[61] V.K., Kratkij ocherk ekkleziologicheskikh i
yurisdiktsionnykh sporov v grecheskoj starostil’noj tserkvi, St.
Petersburg: Izdaniye Vestnika I.P.Ts. "Russkoye Pravoslaviye", 1998, pp.
30-31.
[62] He died on Christmas Day, 1995/96. See
Vozdvizheniye, N 2 (15), February, 1996; "A Biography of Archimandrite
Gury", The True Vine, vol. 3, no. 3 (1992).
[63] "Kritika zhurnala ‘Vosvrashcheniye’", Tserkovniye Novosti, N 11 (67), November-December, 1997, p. 10.
[64] Personal testimony of the present writer.
[65] E-mail message, 15 July, 1998. For more on
Bishop Lazarus and Archbishop Anthony, see "I vrata adovy nye odoleyut
Yeyo", Suzdal’skiye Eparkhial’niye Vedomosti, N 3, January-February,
1998, pp. 17-18.
[66] Some years ago, Archbishop Lazarus insisted on
renaming his Odessa diocese "the True Orthodox Catacomb Church", thereby
laying claim to being the sole heir of the historic Catacomb Church and
implicitly separating himself from both the ROCA and the FROC.
[67] Suzdal’skij Blagovest’, N 3, January-February, 1997, p. 3.
[68] Suzdal’skij Blagovest’, N 3, January-February,
1997, p. 3; "Stupenchatij protsess apostasii v Russkoj Zarubezhnoj
Tserkvi", Russkoye Pravoslaviye, N 4 (4), 1996, pp. 8-10.
[69] This phrase "institution of the Antichrist" was
applied by Patriarch Tikhon to the heretical "Living Church" of the
renovationists, which his Holiness anathematized and denounced as
graceless on July 2/15, 1923. See Lev Regelson, Tragediya Russkoj
Tserkvi, 1917-1945, Paris: YMCA Press, 1977, p. 313. The clear
implication here is that the present-day Moscow Patriarchate is the same
kind of organization as the "Living Church" – or rather, its direct
successor.
[70] Suzdal’skij Palomnik, 27, 1996, pp. 1-4.
[71] Suzdal’skiye Eparkhial’niye Vedomosti, N 7, March-May, 1999, p. 3 ®.
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