Rector of KDAiS explains whether the UOC is in schism

Archbishop Sylvester (Stoychev). Photo: news.church.ua

The rector of the Kyiv Theological Schools, Archbishop Sylvester (Stoychev), stated that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is independent, this fact being officially confirmed by the decisions of the Council in Feofaniya. The bishop said this in an interview with dialogtut.org.

Vladyka noted that the centuries-old history of the Church knows so many different forms of ecclesiastical divisions that it is not so easy to figure them out right away, and not every ecclesiastical division is a schism.

“Thus, St. Basil the Great distinguishes between “parasynagogue” (self-organized assembly), ‘schism’ and ‘heresy’. These are different types of church divisions. However, this terminology is not enough. Often there are breaks in Eucharistic communion between the Local Churches, which can be due to various reasons. But the rupture of Eucharistic communion does not at all mean that the Churches are in schism among themselves,” explains Archbishop Sylvester.

The rector of KDAiS cited as an example the Churches of Antioch and Jerusalem, between which there is currently no Eucharistic communion, but no one will undertake to assert that they are in schism.

“Personally, I believe that the main (but not the only) sign of a split is not just a demarcation in one form or another, but the building of a parallel hierarchy. Actually, Metropolitan Filaret (Denisenko) acted precisely like that in the 1990s, when he caused turmoil and a split within the Orthodox flock of Ukraine. With regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church today, the situation is quite different. We are an independent Church, and the Council of the UOC in Feofaniya enshrined this independent status in the Charter. No other, i.e. parallel Church was created,” the hierarch added.

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the Legal Department demands the removal of biased members of the commission for the examination of the Statute of the UOC.

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