The Shepherd, August 2007
CONTINUING-ROCA CONFERENCE
A CONFERENCE of clergymen and parish representatives from the former ROCA (the term is used interchangeably with ROCOR), was held at the Holy Trinity Parish in New York City in mid-July, presided over by His Grace Bishop Agafangel of Taurida and Odessa, the sole Bishop of the former ROCOR who stood fast and did not accept the union of the Synod of Metropolitan Lavr with the Moscow Patriarchate. The conference issued an Epistle, headed with a citation from Saint Tikhon the New Confessor, whom the Church Abroad hitherto accounted the last canonically elected Patriarch of Moscow. In their epistle, the conference participants state: “We share the sincere desire of all faithful members of our Church to see a united Russian Orthodox Church. We desire no less, though, to see the Russian Church based in Truth. In this instance, we observed how the representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate demanded loyalty to their principles of ecumenism and sergianism, while our representatives surrendered to their insistence. At the same time, having strayed from one of the fundamental tenets of the Russian Church Abroad – the free existence of the Church in the world around it, they entered into a type of dependence to (sic) this world, to the extent which results from the participation in matters of ecumenism and sergianism. The assertion of some of the ROCA representatives that one can avoid involvement in heresy and be in Eucharistic communion at the same time, contradicts the dogmas, canons and the entire Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church.” Further on, mentioning the other groupings to which the untimely rapprochement has given rise, the Epistle says: “We consider it possible to begin a dialogue with representatives of the other parts of ROCA on the basis of the principles proposed by Bishop Agafangel. In the future, with God’s help, we hope also to begin a dialogue with other parts of the divided Russian Orthodox Church, so as to not give credence to the false assertion that we do not wish to see a united Russian Church. In the meanwhile, we will concern ourselves with the building and strengthening of ROCA , as much as it is possible in our current circumstances. To that end, we place great importance on the furthering and widening of brotherly relations between our Church and the Old-Calendar Churches of Greece, Romania and Bulgaria.” In mentioning ROCA here, the participants naturally, and with justification, mean themselves, and not that part which, with Metropolitan Lavr, has now joined the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Synod of Resistance, under the presidency of Metropolitan Cyprian, and its Sister Churches in Romania and Bulgaria, have addressed appeals to Bishop Agafangel and his followers, and to Archbishop Tikhon and his synod, exhorting them to find unity among themselves and offering them the hand of friendship in these perilous times for the Russian Church.
THE RAPPROCHEMENT AS SEEN BY OUTSIDERS
THE “WALL STREET JOURNAL” published an article by Suzanne Sataline on 18th June, recording the heroic stand that a Matushka Adelaida Nekludoff of Buena, New Jersey, is taking against the compromise that ROCOR has made with the Moscow Patriarchate. In her article Ms Sataline states: “But dissidents [those who oppose the rapprochement] believe the Moscow church hasn’t adequately repented for its sins and is still too close to the Kremlin. About 100 of the 340 Church Abroad clergy around the world have broken away in the past four years, particularly in recent months. At least 10 of the Church Abroad’s estimated 145 U.S. parishes have asked other Russian or Greek Orthodox bishops to lead them instead, while many parishioners have joined Greek, Serbian or Russian Orthodox churches unaffiliated with the Church Abroad.”
The Synod of Metropolitan Lavr met in San Francisco at the end of June and on the 30th of that month issued an Epistle to its flock. Taking notice of the exodus from the former ROCOR described above in Sataline’s article they remark rather diffidently: “One cannot but notice that not all the children of our Church, and not all of Her pastors have accepted what occurred in the same way. Some have even left Her, departing for various groupings which have no canonical foundation, or even formulating new pseudo-ecclesial entities.” It seems as if they had only just noticed the exodus, but surely, it was to be expected! Even if one were to accept, for the sake of argument, that the rapprochement was wholly a good thing, the paucity of information given to the clergy and people to prepare them for this move, the failure to answer letters, to address hearfelt quesions, the shallowness of the answers which were given, and the dereliction of their duty in trying to prepare their flock for the momentous event would have engendered some sort of exodus in any case. The letter of our Brotherhood addressed to our bishop about the proposed rapprochement and its implications, dated 20/11/03, was acknowledged but never answered.
In its July/August/September 2007 issue, the “Catholic,” a Roman Catholic magazine, also carries a piece on the union. After reporting the facts briefly, it comments that in the past “ROCOR, with its strictly un-ecumenical, anti-Communist stance, maintained a veneer of sanity in our day and age.” One presumes it was only a “veneer” because they did not accept the Roman primacy. The article continues: “serious institutions such as Keston in the United Kingdom maintain they are sure that patriarch Alexis was an agent of the KGB in the past, while pictures like that below speak for themselves with regards to ecumenism” - to this they append a picture of Patriarch Alexis at a WCC ceremony. They quote “one Russian” on the rapprochement: “United by the very KGB they hated so much.” However, they do not name this commentator, and so it is impossible to ascertain how much weight his opinion carries.
THE LAST SURVIVING SOVIET INSTITUTION
INTERFAX reports that Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, the Moscow Patriarchate’s deputy head for external relations, told leaders of the Nashi youth movement at their summer camp on Lake Seliger, that “Russia will not survive a new revolution.” The possibility of large-scale street protests like those that shook Ukraine last year was a frequent topic at the two-week camp. Nashi is seen by many as a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to build a bulwark against a potential popular uprising in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. Fr Vsevolod’s speech was notable as an explicitly political address by a church representative -- since the apparent fall of the Soviet regime something of a rarity in spite of the church’s increasing presence in the secular sphere. His speech came after a round table last month on “The Orthodox Question and the Threat of an Orange Revolution in Russia,” which explicitly addressed ways to use religious tradition to combat revolutionary tendencies. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution has been a sore point for the Russian Orthodox Church for several reasons. “Members of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine acted as agents of secular Russian political interests” during the 2004 elections, it is reported. A commentator has astutely remarked: “The Moscow Patriarchate is the last surviving Soviet institution both in terms of its statist mentality and its imperialist mentality,”
BISHOP AMBROSE OF METHONI TO VISIT AGAIN
HIS GRACE, Bishop Ambrose of Methoni, from the Sacred Monastery of Sts Cyprian & Justina in Fili, Attika, hopes to visit England at the beginning of September to bless the New Monastic House. We had hoped that he would be able to come for Saint Edward’s day (Sunday, 16th September) but, because of his many commitments, this has proved impossible, and so he hopes to be with us on Saturday 8th (Vigil) and Sunday 9th September (n.s.) (Liturgy); this is the feast of the great monastic father, St Pœmen the Great. He will serve at the Convent of the Annunciation on the feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist on the following Monday evening and Tuesday morning. Please keep these dates and the feast of St Edward in your diaries. Fuller details in the Calendar insert.
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