Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 1 – As the process of autocephaly for a unified Ukrainian Orthodox
Church has proceeded, Roman Lunkin says, it is becoming ever more obvious that
the interests of the Moscow Patriarchate and those of the Kremlin as far as Ukraine is concerned are diverging, although the church has
not felt free to express this openly.
That
is because the situation of Orthodox faith in Ukraine is very different from
the situation of the Orthodox church in Russia, although on some issues, the
head of the Center for the Study of Problems of Religion and Society of the
Moscow Institute of Europe, the hierarchs and the politicians are fellow travelers
(rosbalt.ru/moscow/2018/12/01/1750274.html).
In
Ukraine, the religious specialist says, Orthodoxy is a mass phenomenon and “people
go to various churches without making distinctions about jurisdictions,” all
the more so because “there are no visible distinctions in religious services
and behavior in the Moscow Patriarchate as opposed to the Kyiv Patriarchate.
Despite occasional clashes, “people
in Ukraine have become accustomed to the existence of several jurisdictions
which have been arguing among themselves since the start of the 1990s,” Lunkin
continues. Most view these debates and
even the shift of priests or hierarchs from one jurisdiction to another as
distant from the life of faith.
But in Russia, the situation is
quite different. There, “the Church is viewed as a structure closely connected
with the government and its ideology and to a lesser extent with genuinely
religious issues. The involvement of the ROC in political conflict in the eyes
of society shows that this is a political structure, which has little
relationship to Christianity.”
“This alienates from the Church
people who do not know the Christian life,” Lunkin continues. “This is the task
for the ROC: to be less involved in politics and to show more humanity and
openness to people.”
And that in turn raises the question:
Is the ROC independent? Or if not, can
it be? The Ukrainian crisis has forced
more and more Russians to ask that question because “objectively the interests of
the ROC and the Russian foreign ministry are ever less the same.”
To protect its bureaucratic interests,
the ROC MP “supports good relations with any government beyond the borders of
Russia. Patriarch Kirill to the maximum extent possible has tried to hold on to
the status quo in that regard. After 2014, Lunkin says, “he simply did not have
any other option.”
The increasing divide in worldwide
Orthodoxy over the Ukrainian question of autocephaly gives the ROC MP in
general and Patriarch Kirill in particular “the chance to show the position of
the Church? Will it do so or not?” That may be more important for the ROC MP
not only in Ukraine but in the Russian Federation as well than many now think.
The ROC MP could live with a
situation in Ukraine where there were multiple Orthodox jurisdictions,
especially if by trying to prevent the formation of a national church, Moscow
would lose many hierarchs and parishes.
But it seems clear that the Kremlin isn’t prepared for that and plans to
go for broke to block autocephaly even at the risk of losses for the ROC MP.
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