Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 24 – Bishop Grigory
Lyurye, a leading specialist on Orthodoxy who is affiliated with the Russian
Orthodox Autonomous Church, says that the Moscow Patriarchate has no future in
Ukraine and that, as a result, has only a restricted one in the Russian
Federation and internationally.
Lyurye, an internationally
recognized scholar, in an article on Snob.ru today, says that the Moscow
Patriarchate’s demise in Ukraine is now common ground – its clergy and parishioners
are leaving it and will continue to do so regardless of the strategy Moscow
adopts now (snob.ru/profile/28614/blog/78913).
But he argues that the Moscow
Patriarchate is going to experience its most serious losses less in Ukraine
than because of what is happening there. Its standing with the Kremlin is
certain to diminish because of its inability to hold Ukraine, and its loss of
numbers as a result of Ukraine will reduce its status in the Orthodox world and
in the international religious community.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the
Moscow Patriarchate is “constantly losing parishes” and may soon remain only “a
church without a following,” at least beyond the southeastern portions of the country,
Lyurye says. And that is despite the efforts of that denomination’s leaders to “distance”
themselves ever further from Moscow.
With time, it seems obvious, Moscow’s
church in Ukraine will cease to exist and fuse with the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. Because
things have gone so far and because the risks to the Moscow Patriarchate of its
continuing are so great, Moscow has now advanced a canonical argument against
any change.
But the problem is that Moscow’s
argument is not accepted by anyone beyond the borders of the former Soviet
space and not by all even there. It
specifies that the Ukrainian church can go its own way only if Moscow approves,
something that no one can think is ever likely to be the case.
More than that, Moscow’s argument is
simply without any foundation. And “happily
for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,” cannon law is on
its side because “de jure Kyiv up to now is subordinate to [the Patriarchate
of] Constantinople, and neither in Kyiv nor and this is the main thing in
Constantinople has anyone forgotten that.”
In 1686, Lyurye continues, under
pressure from the sultan who wanted to develop relations with Russia, the
Constantinople Patriachate was “forced to give up a significant portion of its
church power in the Kyiv metropolitanate.”
But its concessions did not include making Kyiv subordinate to Moscow.
In any case, Moscow “immediately violated” the accord.
In canon law, there is no statute of
limitations, Bishop Lyurye points out. Consequently as far as the Orthodox
world is concerned, the Church has not recognized the seizure by Moscow of the
Kyivan metropolitanate as legitimate.
That did not matter a great deal as long as the Russian Empire existed,
but it mattered profoundly after its fall.
In 1924, the Constantinople
Patriarchate approved the formation of a Polish Orthodox Church on the basis of
its 1686 “concession.” That arrangement
lasted until Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War
II. Then, Polish Orthodox leaders were forced to denounce what they had
obtained in 1924.
But
Constantinople has acted toward Ukraine on the basis of the 1686 declaration.
In 1995-1996, it included within its supervision Ukrainian émigré churches on
the basis of its view that it continues to have oversight over the Ukrainian
Church. The Moscow Patriarchate was furious, Lyurye says, because it recognized
this was a step toward bringing all of Ukrainian Orthodoxy under Constantinople
rather than Moscow.
As
far as strategy is concerned, “nothing needs to be prepared for the separation
of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate from Moscow:
everything is already prepared … because there is a completely clear
understanding that for Kyiv, Constantinople, not Moscow, is the mother church
[and that] Moscow for Kyiv is a daughter church.”
Consequently,
“Constantinople has the right to offer Kyiv autocephaly and is prepared to use
this right,” Bishop Lyurye says. What
all involved need to focus on “lies only in the tactical realm.”
The
only serious obstacle to Ukrainian autocephaly lies not with Moscow but with
the divisions among Ukrainian Orthodox.
These have become fewer in recent years so that problem is being
handled. Less serious but requiring good
tactics is the process by which Moscow Patriarchate clergy and hierarchs will
be integrated into a genuinely Ukrainian church.
The
challenge in that regard lies with the fact that “by number of parishes, the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate exceeds the number of parishes
of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate by a factor of two …
but [the latter] has asserted that the picture is just the reverse with regard
to the number of believers.”
In
sum, one church has more church buildings, but the other has more people. And
that is not far from wrong, Lyurye suggests. The two will come together
especially if the Ukrainian state stays out of most of this lest it allow some
of the “Moscow” church to present themselves as martyrs.
The
Moscow churchmen are likely to continue to distance themselves from the Moscow
Patriarchate whatever the outcome of the upcoming church elections in Kyiv. They
will engage in small but meaningful acts of disobedience to Moscow in order to
hold their flocks. And they will take part in joint activities with Kyiv
Patriarchate leaders.
This
may take some time, but things are moving quickly, and Lyurye concludes that
the Moscow Patriarchate has no future in Ukraine, that its stock in the Kremlin
is lower than at any time in the past, and that, having lost almost half its
parishes with the exit of the Ukrainians, it will rank only third or fourth
among the Orthodox Patriarchates in the world and have less say among them and
less influence on religious life more generally.
No comments:
Post a Comment