The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, 1

BY SAINT JOHN (MAXIMOVITCH)
OF SHANGHAI & SAN FRANCISCO

Second and Concluding Part

WHY, at the present time (1960), does the Soviet regime give the appearance of favouring the Church? Firstly, because it does not feel itself to be sufficiently strong as yet to engage in battle with the believing people inside Russia and enter into conflict with them, especially in view of the possibility of international complications. Secondly, because for the time being it needs a cover for its present aims and it uses the clergy in order to create a good opinion of itself among free peoples. Thirdly, because, through the clergy under its control, the Soviet government wishes to exert influence on the Russian diaspora and keep the Russian emigration in its hands. Knowing that Russians unite themselves primarily around the Church, the Soviet government, not having the power now to destroy the Church, wishes for the time being to have influence through her on those who are not subject to it: holding the clergy in its hands, by this very fact it calculates on beginning to act on the flock as well. From this comes the demand, through the head of the Church which is subject to it, of a signature of loyalty to the Soviet regime on the part of all clergy. Is such a demand lawful, and can it be fulfiled? Russians who live outside Russia are not subjects of the Soviet regime. Remaining faithful to our homeland, we do not acknowledge as lawful a government which goes against the thousand-year world-view of our people, and we have gone abroad in order not to submit to it. Why, then, should hierarchs and other clergy promise loyalty to it? Does the Archbishop of Constantinople, the Œcumenical Patriarch, demand loyalty to the Turkish government from his flock of Greek and other descent who are in America and other parts of the world? Does the Patriarch of Antioch, whose Patriarchate embraces Syria and Lebanon, demand loyalty to one or the other government from the people subject to him? Did the Holy Synod of Russia demand loyalty to the Russian Government, or even to the Most Pious Emperor himself, from the Orthodox faithful who were citizens of America or were subjects of other governments?

At the time of the Russo-Japanese War, the Enlightener of Japan, the Russian Archbishop [now Saint] Nicolas, who remained in Japan, blessed the Orthodox Japanese soldiers who went to war to fight for their own homeland. Although he himself did not celebrate services, since he could not pray for victory over his native Russia, he nonetheless permitted the Japanese clergy who were subject to him to do so. After the end of the war, for the fulfilment of his pastoral duty he was decorated by the Russian Holy Synod and by the Russian Tsar himself. If the Most Pious Tsar and the Holy Governing Synod acted in this way, does anyone have the right, and is there any moral justice therein, to demand from people who are fighting against an atheist regime, through their spiritual pastors, submission to this regime?

When the Serbian Patriarch Arsenius III, and after him Arsenius IV, together with their flock left their homeland, which was under the rule of the Turks, and settled in another country, the archpastors and pastors of the resettled Serbs did not submit themselves any more to the Patriarchs of Serbia, which was enslaved by the Turks, in order to be free.