Phanar’s attack on the Orthodox world: who rejoices and who grieves
The Synod of Constantinople has brought the Orthodox world to the brink of disaster, legalising Ukrainian schismatics.
Constantinople’s decision to lift from the schismatic leaders the anathema imposed on them by the Church in its communion with the Moscow Patriarchate means an unequivocal claim to absolute, dictatorial power over the entire Orthodox world — a claim that is inevitably destructive for the Church.
The reaction to this event divides people into two types. Some see this as a crack-down on Moscow and rejoice at this as a political achievement, others – the inevitable schism in the Orthodox world, and see this as a church catastrophe.
You can have certain political preferences, you can arbitrarily treat Moscow as a political centre, but the hardest since 1054 sсhism is something that cannot make a church person happy. Because for an Orthodox Christian, the Church and its unity is an absolute value. To rejoice and be delighted at the moment when the Church unity collapsed, the communion between the largest local Church of the Orthodox world (the Moscow Patriarchate) and the Constantinople Patriarchate destroyed means to show, at best, complete indifference to the Church.
No matter who to blame for this event, whose side to take – for a man of faith, the schism of such a scale is a big tragedy. Only people strongly alien to the Church, driven by purely political passions, people for whom it is important to add a few percents to the rating or give a finger to Moscow can congratulate one another on this occasion. They don’t even care if it is done at the cost of a terrible church schism.
No matter who to blame for this event, whose side to take – for a man of faith, the schism of such a scale is a big tragedy. Only people strongly alien to the Church can congratulate one another on this occasion.
But church schism is not a natural disaster, it is the result of certain actions – and we all know by whom they were taken. The initiator of the current crisis is precisely Patriarch Bartholomew. Someone can approve of his actions, but regardless of the assessment of the situation, it was he who destroyed the state of things that had existed before. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate is a responding, responsive party. It is not a question of assessment and not a question of your likes and dislikes – it is a question of facts.
The Phanar was aware of the schism. It was the Constantinople Patriarchate which decided to inflict such a disaster on the Church.
The study of canons and historical precedents can be a fascinating and, of course, important occupation – but in some situations, it fades into the background. If you see a person setting fire to a house, who says that he is the fire brigade chief, it’s not even a matter of identification documents (they definitely are not in order), but this is not the first thing we pay attention to. What matters is that before your eyes, he is engaged in arson. And the work of a fireman is to prevent and extinguish the fire. It is pointless to argue the arsonist about the place he occupies in the structure of the fire brigade and whether other firefighters should obey him.
The shepherd – and even more so, the Archpastor – is the person who shepherds the Church: protects against evil, guides in good, sets an example of faith and piety. If a person intentionally and consciously destroys the Church, then it is impossible to recognise his claims to spiritual leadership.
The shepherd – and even more so, the Archpastor – is the person who shepherds the Church: protects against evil, guides in good, sets an example of faith and piety. If a person intentionally and consciously destroys the Church, then it is impossible to recognise his claims to spiritual leadership.
For a man of faith, the independence of the Church from the non-believing world is fundamental, and it is unthinkable to let the people who do not belong to it set the tone and order how the Church should be constituted. And the current “autocephalous” project is being created by the state, politicians, religiously indifferent people (like Poroshenko, who does not care where to take communion – from the Orthodox or Uniates), or even by those who belong to non-Orthodox religious communities, like Uniate Tiagnibok or Muslim Jemilev. There are a lot of open-faced atheists among Tomos advocates. The fact that the creation of a religious community, initiated by non-believers and atheists for purely political reasons, cannot but arouse doubts and pensive thoughts in a pious person. Constantinople does not care much about this circumstance – and it easily relies on atheists and non-believers in its conflict with the Orthodox.
Certainly, such an arrangement of a religious community at the request of civilian authorities is also a gross violation of the Constitution of Ukraine as, theoretically, a secular and democratic state – but no one pays attention to such trifles.
The Patriarchate of Constantinople sides the politicians who constantly show extreme hostility towards the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, headed by Metropolitan Onufry. It cannot but know that the very purpose of autocephaly, in their eyes, is to “cut off the tentacles of the enemy”, which means the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Phanar is also fully aware of the fact that the emergence of a newly recognised structure will entail the expulsion of the “wrong” in the eyes of the authorities Orthodox from monasteries and churches. Although Constantinople spoke out against this, it cannot but know that a large church property redistribution in its favour is inevitable, as well as the brutal violence from the “Right Sector” against the Church.
In short, the Patriarch of Constantinople deliberately destroys the unity of the Church, helps his persecutors, and provokes violence against it. He is simply not a shepherd by his actions — and this regrettable fact makes his claims to the status of “first-hierarch” unworthy even of consideration.
This is a tragedy for the Church, this is a tragedy for Bartholomew himself, who prefers the position of the sole ruler in that part of the Orthodox that he can subdue to the status of the first among equals in the 300 million Orthodox community. He wished to be “Primus sine paribus”, “the first without equals”, while in the Church the first without equals is only its Head and Founder, our Lord Jesus Christ. The preference of power to service is a very understandable human trait, and not only human, as we know, for the first time it manifested itself in the angelic world, where someone preferred a power in a completely different place to serving in paradise.
In the Church, this disease of our fallen nature manifested itself already in the time of the Apostles, beginning with Diotrephes (3 Jn.1: 9), who loved to be in the lead, and there are many warnings in the New Testament against it.
Well, the Church has its head – and this is not the Pope or the Patriarch of Constantinople, but our Lord Jesus Christ. He was slandered, he was persecuted by the global empire of the time, and by religious authorities, condemned and executed – but the victory was His.
And in this difficult and tragic time, it is important to keep a firm trust in God, who will disgrace the ideas of the princes. In the time of the Cross Procession, in the face of hostility and attacks, the Church already showed its peaceful and joyful spirit – and it is important for all of us to preserve it these days. As the psalmist says, “He that hoping in the Lord, as mount Zion, shall not move: he endureth forever.” (Ps. 124: 1)
