The Shepherd, September 2005
The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, 3
The Chairman of the Synod of Bishops abroad, Metropolitan Antony, who after the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon was the eldest Russian hierarch still in freedom, rose up in defence of the persecuted Russian Church. In his epistles to the Most Holy Patriarchs, and to those non-Orthodox in positions of authority, he explained the true situation of the Russian Church, a situation which often was transmitted to them in a distorted form. His appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury had as a consequence the interference of the English government in the fate of Patriarch Tikhon, and the latter was freed from prison when a trial against him had already been set and an accusation had been composed with the aim of obtaining the death penalty for him.
After the death of Patriarch Tikhon, the Russian Church Abroad acknowledged the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsk; however, he was soon arrested and banished by the Soviet regime for his firmness and his unwillingness to make concessions to the atheist regime. The Church in Russia and abroad continued to regard him as her head and his name was commemorated at Divine services in all churches. Then Metropolitan Sergius became his substitute. At this time certain differences arose among the Russian hierarchs abroad, and an appeal was made to Metropolitan Sergius with the request that he make a decision on them. This allowed Metropolitan Sergius to express his view on the situation of the part of the Russian Church that was abroad. Addressing himself in a general letter to the bishops abroad on 12th September 1926, he wrote:
“My dear hierarchs, you ask me to be a judge in a matter of which I am entirely unaware... Can the Moscow Patriarch, as a general principle, be the leader of the ecclesiastical life of Orthodox emigrants?... The good of church affairs themselves demands that you, by a common consent, should establish for yourselves a central organ of church administration which is sufficiently authoritative to resolve all misunderstandings and differences and which has the power to put a stop to any misunderstanding and every disobedience without appealing for our support....”
In this letter, which is filled with love for his fellow bishops abroad, he says: “We shall scarcely see each other again in the present life, but I may hope by God's mercy that we shall see each other in the future life.”
This was the last letter of Metropolitan Sergius in which he freely wrote that which within himself he acknowledged as true. Imprisonment, threats with regard not only to himself but to the entire Russian Church as well, and the false promises of the Soviet regime broke him: within a few months after his letter, so full of love, to the hierarchs abroad, which was as it were his testament before his loss of inner freedom, Metropolitan Sergius issued a Declaration in which he recognised the Soviet regime as a genuinely lawful Russian regime which was concerned for the people’s good, a regime “whose joys are our joys, and whose sorrows are our sorrows” (Declaration of 16th / 29th July 1927). At the same time, in accordance with the promise he had given the Soviet regime, Metropolitan Sergius demanded of the clergy abroad their signatures of loyalty to the Soviet regime.
This document was in complete contradiction with his view expressed nine months before this, that the Moscow Patriarchate could not direct the ecclesiastical life of emigrants. If for those in Russia who were undergoing terrible sufferings there might be conditions that would mitigate their moral capitulation to the cruel regime, - just as the church canons at the time of the persecutions mitigated the penances of those who renounced Christ after terrible sufferings, - for those who were in freedom and comparative safety there were no mitigating circumstances or justification or even meaning at all in such a signature. It can hardly be that Metropolitan Sergius himself believed that anyone abroad would submit to his Ukase, and he clearly did this in order to fulfil the demand of the Soviet regime and thus to remove responsibility from himself.
However, Metropolitan EvIogy with his vicars and Bishop Benjamin of Sebastopol did indeed submit to the ukase. Meanwhile, in Russia itself there were courageous confessors from among the imprisoned bishops and likewise among those who remained in freedom, who declared to Metropolitan Sergius that they did not accept the concordat with the atheist regime that was persecuting the Church. Many of them even broke off communion in prayer with Metropolitan Sergius as one who had “fallen” and had entered into league with the atheists; and a part of the clergy and laity in Russia followed them. The atheist Soviet regime cruelly persecuted such steadfast hierarchs and their followers. The Soviet regime, while not fulfiling the promises to Metropolitan Sergius which had caused him to make the concordat with it, at the same time deprived of freedom, banished, and even executed many of those who did not recognise the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius
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