Pan-Orthodox Council and "conspiracy theory"

Viewing the news feed of any religious resource in recent weeks, you realize that the most top-end topic now is the Pan-Orthodox Council. There is a reason for such close attention paid to it. In fact, the first in thousand years Council must unite representatives of all the local Churches of the Orthodox world and solve a number of pressing issues of pastoral and missionary character. It is the Council, whose decisions may become a serious factor in the life of 300 million inhabitants of the planet Earth.

Orthodox believers are closely watching the developments and discussions around the issues that are prepared for consideration by the Council. It is only the Kiev Patriarchate that considers the agenda of the Council "irrelevant." In February 2016 the head of the UOC-KP Filaret said that "the issues under consideration there are not relevant" because the only relevant question, in his view, is "autocephaly." "Relevant is the question of autocephaly, but it will not be considered," lamented the aging head of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

It is similar to the anecdote about the international contest dedicated to elephants. In our case, it will sound like this: someone will write "Everything about elephants"; someone will write "Everything you wanted to know about elephants, but feel shy to ask"; another one – "Our elephant is the largest elephant in the world ", while dissenters will formulate it the following way – "Elephants. Autocephaly". Whatever the events are taking place in the world, whatever their causes are, the proverbial Kiev Patriarchate ends up talking about a well-worn theme of autocephaly. There are no other questions which could be interesting for them.

However, ostentatious indifference and condescension ignorance of the Council is only a mask. It can be assumed that burning envy lives inside schismatics.  They haven’t been invited to the Council. Whatever it ends with, whether it will be a success or failure – it all concerns the life of the Church, while the Kyiv Patriarchate remains outside. Yes, there are heated debates and in the Orthodox world today, there are some conflicts and disturbing news. But all this is inside the Church! All this is fatal; all this is what we belong to and bear responsibility for! The Kyiv Patriarchate is on the sidelines, it has no place in this "celebration of life", it may not affect anything, and nobody gets interested in its opinion in the Orthodox world. But they want so much to be paid attention to, to be in the focus, as a youngster who wants to be allowed to enter the circle of "adult uncles."

Every time there is news of the Pan-Orthodox Council, "somewhere little "Zorya" is crying". And I might have passed by, but so obsessive is the attention of the UOC-KP to the events that do not relate to them, that it is simply amazing. However, the content of these comments is quite predictable – "the hand of Moscow", "ROC ears", etc.  Anatomy of conspiracy, philosophy of suspicion – a gentleman set of offended "water carriers". In history there are three philosophical areas that are called the "philosophy of suspicion" - Nietzscheism, Marxism and Freudism. Apparently, today was born a new trend. Let's call it "Zorizm". The essence of this new-found ideology comes to the following: the only significant motivation for the believer is the presence or absence of the "hand of the ROC."

The UOC-KP suspects only one local Church to blame all the criticism concerning the organization and preparation of the Pan-Orthodox Council on. The Bulgarian Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Antioch, Greek metropolitans and even Athos (!) – all as one follow the "hand " of the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the logic of the Speaker of the Kiev Patriarchate. The content and the logic of their objections? Forget – the UOC-KP has no idea about that. Well, manic-paranoid delusions about the "conspiracy theory" apart, let’s try to analyze, from a phenomenological point of view, the reasons why a number of local churches have expressed their disagreement with many aspects of the organization and preparation of "the Holy and Great Council".

Here immediately arises the question, why the criticism intensified after the Pan-Orthodox meeting in Chambésy, not before or during it? This question was answered by representative of the Bulgarian Patriarchate Metropolitan Gabriel: "Because when someone wanted to introduce corrections, the one who presides over a meeting of the commission said," We do not have regulations to make these amendments, we were told at the Synaxis of the Primates to make only small corrections. "And they [Metropolitans] sign because if someone does not sign up for these commissions, decisions are not valid, but there was hope that these issues could be reconsidered at the Council. As a result, the Synaxis adopted the Rules, which – I told you this – does not allow making any amendments at the Council. So in the end, what was accepted as a compromise at the commissions could not be changed at the Council. This is what these commission members do not know. They thought, "Well, we will sign for the sake of the matter not to fail the meeting of the commission, then after all comes the Council," - yes, but it turns out that what was decided at the Commission, in fact, cannot be changed at the Council. It's true. Read about it. Who wants to, let them read. It's true".

Cleric of the ROC, priest Alexiy Knutov said the same thing. In his opinion, the Rules do not imply approval or disapproval of the submitted documents, as there are no clear references to a vote on the draft documents. Article 12 ("Voting and approval of the text") upon closer examination applies only to the procedure of consideration of amendments to the texts and parts of the texts prepared for signing. In addition, the procedure of voting on the amendments also raises questions. Firstly, the vote shall be taken only in respect of amendments to the previously agreed texts. Secondly, "the amendments that were not adopted unanimously are not approved." It turns out that the discussion of a document within a single local Church cannot influence the fate of a particular document. After all, only one voice is enough for any of the amendment to be rejected by the Council.

Metropolitan Gabriel also sheds light on the mechanism of decision-making at the Council: "We can go to the Council, but under the Rules of the Council, no amendments will be accepted there. Because according to the Rules, at first the commission must decide on what issues to consider and further vote for at the Council, and even whether it will be accepted, if the Council does not vote for it unanimously, and therefore, it may not be changed . What does it mean? That a particular document is adopted by the Commission, but the Commission is not the Council, they're not the Council. It is not the Council, but Primates who voted for the Rules, and they are also not the Council either. And ultimately no correction can be made, say, in this document, but in any other too, because in any case, all of the Churches will not vote unanimously, still there will be some who disagree. So, we are going to the Council, whose decisions are predetermined."

I would like to ask, "Where is the "the hand of the ROC "? Are the critics’ arguments of the proposed Rules of the Council and the situation around it artificial or exaggerated?

Perhaps, some of the draft documents submitted for the consideration by the Pan-Orthodox Council have become the main object for criticism. Among them is the draft document called "The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World", which causes the greatest perplexity and indignation of the clergy and the laity. It is absolutely logical, because this document addresses the issues associated with the Orthodox doctrine of the Church, its essence and nature, as well as its limits. Anyone who believes that this is unimportant things is either a fool or a manipulator.

Many bishops, theologians and representatives of Orthodox monasticism negatively commented on the phrase in paragraph 5 of the "restoration of unity among Christians", pointing to its inaccuracy and incorrectness. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol (Church of Cyprus) said that the phrase "the restoration of unity among Christians" is a mistake, since the Church has never lost unity with God, and therefore it is not necessary to seek this unity. The well-known Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) also believes that the expressions, which speak about the loss of the unity of the Church, should be corrected, as the "unity of the Church cannot be broken."

According to the Holy Kinot (the governing body of Mount Athos – ed.), "The meaning of the unity of the Church needs to be clarified. Only members of the Orthodox Church are in the unity of the Church, the Body of Christ." In this regard, representatives of Athos suggested replacing the phrase "search for the lost unity of Christians" in paragraph 5 of the document "The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World" by "return to the truth of Christians withdrawn from her (from the Church – ed.)" The message of the Holy Kinot emphasized that the term "Church" is allowed to use only in relation to the Orthodox Church." The non-Orthodox should be referred to as "Christian doctrines and practices".

Because of contrary to Orthodox ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church – ed.) points in the mentioned document, a number of local Churches rejected it and express concern that it could be adopted by the Council without amendments. As such, this document would divide the Orthodox community. To assume that all the objections of dozens of Orthodox influencers are caused by a "political game" of the ROC is simply to mock at reality. But this is only half of serious reasons to worry about the fate of Council 2016 decisions.

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