Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 6 – The Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is headed toward disintegration, and
the only question is whether Moscow will simply watch as this happens or take
the lead in organizing this change, according to Sergey Chapnin, who was
recently fired as editor of the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
Patriarch Kirill fears this because
the loss of his church’s Ukrainian branch will not only mean that the Moscow
Patriarchate will lose many of its bishoprics and parishes but also much of its
influence and because he will then “go into history” as the Russian churchman
who lost Ukraine, Chapnin says (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2016/01/05/1476536.html).
But the looming loss of Patriarchal
churchs in Ukraine is interrelated with two other problems that Kirill has in
fact created: the overly rapid expansion of bishoprics in Russia which has led
to bureaucratism and degeneration and the acceptance of the Soviet past by the
church which has led to “Orthodoxy without God,” the Russian version of a civic
religion.
Much of this has been hidden in recent
years, Chapnin says, because of Kirill’s insistence on loyalty and obedience;
but the firing of Vsevolod Chaplin and his own dismissal, Chapnin says, are
opening the floodgates of criticism not just of Kirill but of the Russian
Church itself, something that will lead to many changes and may make recovery
possible.
Thirty years ago, Chapnin says,
Kirill himself was someone who campaigned for changes in the Russian Orthodox
Church because he recognized that “Orthodox consciousness had been frozen in
Soviet times and the Orthodox themselves had been kept in isolation.” He wanted to change that and was even viewed
as the supporter of “dangerous” ideas.
And at the end of the 1980s and the
beginning of the 1990s, there seemed to be “a certain chance” that the church
would come together and take advantage of all the new opportunities that the
end of the communist regime gave it, the ousted editor says. But “unfortunately,
all this ended in 1994 at a conference when Father Georgy Kochetkov and his
community were condemned for ‘liberal experiments.’”
At that time, then-Metropolitan
Kirill was harshly criticized by Russian Orthodox nationalists, the same group that
now celebrate him in all ways given that he has changed sides from the reformers
to that of the conservative and come to share their view that everything is a
battle between “us” and “them.”
Now, the results of Kirill’s turn to
the right are coming home to roost, Chapnin says; and he suggests that the
meeting of the Synod on December 24 when Chaplin was dismissed marks “the
beginning of a settling of accounts of seven years” of Kirill’s patriarchate, a
process that will affect both the church inside Russia and abroad.
The most obvious reason for that
conclusion, he suggests, is that after a period of enormous bureaucratic
growth, the Moscow Patriarchate is having to engage in retrenchment because the
resources it had have drawn up – and that development is leading to fights
among those within the hierarchy.
Under Kirill, the number of bishops
in Russia has more than doubled from approximately 70 to about 200, a
reflection of the patriarch’s view that “there should be 100 to 150 parishes”
in each bishopric so that “the bishops will be closer to the clergy and to the
people.” But things have not worked out
as planned.
Part of the reason for that is the
diversity of the Russian Federation and the difficulties of drawing church
borders different from political ones. But a larger part reflects problems of
personnel, Chapnin says. Young men,
often with minimal training and experience, all too easily rise to the status
of bishop; and many of them are not ready for such positions.
“Almost all the bishops who have
been installed over the last six years do not have the necessary experience and
habits of administration. Some are learnig but some aren’t.” They need to know
both civil and canon law, bookkeeping, and the needs and requirements not only
of monks but also of the married clergy.”
And the situation has been made
worse by the fact that priests are completely subordinate to the whims of their
bishops. They don’t have labor agreements and so can’t go to court. “In fact,
this is a kind of slavery. If the bishop is good, this slavery perhaps will
remain latent, but if he isn’t, he will pressure priests and parishioners” to
extract money from them.
The war in Ukraine has also put
pressure on the Moscow Patriarchate, Chapnin says. The Ukrainian Orthodox
Church of the Moscow Patriarchate had conducted itself correctly for such a
long time that many in Ukraine dropped the qualifier “of the Moscow
Patriarchate” and simply referred to it as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
It really was such until recently, “the
largest and most authoritative church in Ukraine;” and its canonical subordination
to Moscow was “not very essential.” “But
after Crimea, a reassessment of the role of the church took place: the
non-canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate is now considered
the national church, and the UOC-MP is called ‘the Moscow church’” – or more
pointedly “’not ours.’”
“The problem of self-identification
for Orthodox is a very sharp one,” Chapnin continues. “Even in the UOC-MP,
there are many parishes which have ceased to recall the Patriarch of Moscow in
the liturgy.” And a week ago, the UOC-MP officially and “unexpectedly” declared
that its priests have “the right not to honor Patriarch Kirill in this way.”
According to Chapnin, “this is one
of the signs of a serious geopolitical catastrophe for the church,” especially
since it is now clear that “Moscow cannot in any way influence the situation in
Ukraine” and is increasingly only an outside onlooker there.
“It is dangerous to mix religious
and national identity,” Chapnin says. These are different things because “the
church is above all a community of those who believe in Christ as savior and
jointly participate in the liturgy. Everything else including politics,
citizenship, nationality and culture must assume a secondary role.”
This has always been a problem in
Christianity, but recently it became worse when people began to insist that “the
Russian church is on the territory of church and that which unites altogether
is the Moscow Patriarchate. This was a beautiful move, but it hasn’t worked.”
At the same time, the ousted editor
continues, the ROC-MP has undergone another revolution under Kirill in terms of
its attitudes toward the Soviet past. “Today,
without any pressure from the outside, the Church recognizes the general
secretaries of the Communist Party as great rulers of the Soviet era” and that
their achievements overwhelm any misdeeds.
Many in the church have even
convinced themselves that Lenin and Trotsky destroyed the church and Stalin
rehabilitated it, but “this is not so. In the 1920s, the Church existed both
legally and illegally in the catacombs. In fact, it was destroyed in the 1930s”
by Stalin, who only changed tactics in1943 because of necessity.
“’The flourishing of the Soviet’ is
blocking the formation of contemporary Orthodox culture and a new Orthodox
identity,” Chapnin says; and Russian believers must make a choice between
praising the Soviet past and rebuilding their faith. This is an “either-or”
situation that ultimately cannot be avoided.
“By not making this choice, Russia
has fallen into ‘hybrid religiosity,’ that is we are reviving both Orthodox
traditions and soviet ones.” Such a mix, he argues, is leading “to the formation
of a post-Soviet civic religion which exploits the Orthodox tradition but in
its essence is not Orthodox at all.”
Instead, “it is a new version of ‘Orthodoxy
without Christ.” Some compare this with
America’s civic religion, but there is one important difference: in the US,
this religion still has a place for God. In the post-Soviet version, “there is
no God.”
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