In the East There Is Rupture between Kirill and Bartholomew. And the Pope Sides More with the Former

I'm not surprised. As a communist, Francis must feel kinship with the KGB operative, Putin, and his closeness to the jihad leads him to support any force that opposes the Ecumenical Patriarch. I'm sure the jihadist government of Turkey doesn't want the Church of Constantinople to gain millions of sympathisers because of Bartholomew's actions. 

From Sandro Magister

On the military terrain, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues at low intensity. But on the religious terrain, the clash has reached its peak. On October 15, the patriarchate of Moscow “and all Rus” broke off Eucharistic communion with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, led respectively by patriarchs Kirill and Bartholomew.

That means that the sacred ministers of the Russian Orthodox Church will no longer celebrate any liturgies together with those of the patriarchate of Constantinople - to which Moscow systematically refuses to attribute the qualification of “ecumenical” - and even the ordinary Russian faithful will have to abstain from participating in the sacraments administered in the churches of the Byzantine patriarchate.

The reason for the rupture is Bartholomew’s decision, announced on October 11, to create in Ukraine an Orthodox Church that is “autocephalous,” meaning independent, no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Moscow.

Strictly speaking, there are now three Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. The largest, with Metropolitan Onufry, is the one that does fall under the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Moscow. There is a second one created in 1995 as an independent patriarchate by a former high-ranking official of the Russian Church, Filaret, who as a result was excommunicated by Moscow. And there is a third, with Metropolitan Macarius, he too excommunicated, which proclaimed itself “autocephalous” in 1991 but until just recently was not recognized by any other Orthodox Church.

So then, Batholomew’s plan is to unify these three branches and to confer autonomy on a reconstituted Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in the orbit of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople. To this end he has revoked the excommunication of both Filaret and Macarius. He has sent to Ukraine as his exarchs - calling them from the United States and from Canada respectively - the bishops Daniel and Hilarion, with the task of weaving the threads of unification. He has restored in Kiev the “stavropigion” of Constantinople, which is an ecclesial jurisdiction directly dependent on the ecumenical patriarchate. And he has declared as “expired” the “juridical restriction of the synodal letter of the year 1686,” meaning the document with which the ecumenical patriarch at the time, Dionysius IV, accepted the subordination of the metropolis of Kiev to the patriarchate of Moscow.

The interpretations of this latter document given by Constantinople and Moscow are diametrically opposed. For Constantinople, that concession of rights was provisory and has not  been in force for some time. For Moscow, it was and remains definitive.

But there’s more. Kirill does not recognize Bartholomew’s “primacy” in the Orthodox camp, which the latter instead maintains he has been granted.

The primacy that the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople means to exercise is not the equivalent of the pope’s primacy over the Catholic Church, but is much more a purely “honorary” precedence, which the patriarchate of Moscow does uphold. Bartholomew claims for himself an historical role of leadership in the whole “ecumene” of Orthodoxy, and reiterated this prerogative of his at a recent conference at the Orthodox Academy of Crete:

“If the Ecumenical Patriarchate abandons its responsibilities and withdraws from the inter-Orthodox scene, then the other local Churches will be like sheep without a shepherd, engaged in ecclesiastical initiatives which mix up humility derived from faith with arrogance derived from power,” said the Ecumenical Patriarch. “Thus the coordinative role assigned to the Ecumenical Patriarchate within the pan-Orthodox family.  Orthodoxy needs the Ecumenical Patriarchate so that it does not become a loose grouping of Churches hopelessly scattered in different places.”

The patriarchate of Moscow, however, is so far from recognizing this primacy for the patriarchate of Constantinople that it did not hesitate to spoil with its absence, in 2016, the pan-Orthodox council laboriously convened in Crete by Bartholomew, just as it has not hesitated to justify its rupture of Eucharistic communion with Constantinople with “its duty to defend the fundamental principles of Orthodoxy, to defend the Holy Tradition of the Church, replaced by new and alien teachings about the universal power of the Primate.”

In boycotting the pan-Orthodox council of Crete backed by Bartholomew, Moscow was not alone. It had on its side the patriarchate of Antioch, with its see in Damascus, which also withheld its presence. And now they are on the same side again with regard to Ukraine, perhaps in part because of Russia’s role in the Syrian conflict in support of the Assad regime, which is seen by the Orthodox of that country as the last breakwater protecting their survival.

Other Orthodox Churches that have spoken out in recent days with Kirill and against Bartholomew are those of Serbia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Montenegro.

And in Ukraine? The two Orthodox Churches hostile to Moscow, of Filaret and Macarius, are naturally in favor of Bartholomew’s initiative, even at the cost of renouncing the possibility that one of them would be the head of the new “autocephalous” Church.

But it is hard to predict what the reaction will be from the bishops, the clergy, the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church subject to the jurisdiction of Moscow. Its metropolitan, Onufry, was present in Minsk, Belarus at the meeting of the synod of the patriarchate of Moscow that on October 15 broke off Eucharistic communion with Constantinople. And he reiterated that he still views as invalid the sacraments celebrated by the two “schismatic” Churches of Filaret and Macarius, thereby prohibiting the faithful from participating in their liturgies or belonging to the nascent unified Ukrainian Church.

But a recent survey shows that in Ukraine, the creation of a unified and autonomous Orthodox Church enjoys support from 31.3 percent of the population, while those against are 19.8 percent, the indifferent 34.7 percent, and those giving no answer 14.2 percent. Naturally with variations from region to region, with the largest ratio of those in favor, 58 percent, in the West, and the largest ratio of those against, 28.2 percent, in the East.

In any case, the loss of the Ukrainian metropolis would be a very hard blow for the patriarchate of Moscow. A good 40 percent of the parishes of the entire patriarchate of Moscow are located in Ukraine, about twelve thousand out of thirty thousand. And adding to these the parishes of the other two Orthodox Churches in the process of unification, the new “autocephalous” Ukrainian Orthodox Church would become the second most populous Orthodox in the world, capable of rivaling the patriarchate of Moscow, until recently the undisputed leader by number of faithful.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the ever-industrious “foreign minister” of the patriarchate of Moscow, on October 13 again accused Ukrainian president Poroshenko and the United States of acting in support of Bartholomew’s separatist initiative.

With regard to Poroshenko he is right, considering the frequent public statements of the Ukrainian president. But Hilarion has also repeatedly accused the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of acting in the same direction. The unconcealed suspicion of the patriarchate of Moscow is that the Greek Catholics may want to surreptitiously lead the new “autocephalous” Ukrainian Church to unite with them as well and thus return to obedience to the Church of Rome.

Hilarion must have expressed this suspicion personally to Pope Francis during the audience that he had with him last May 30, going by the stern warning Francis gave on that occasion to the Ukrainian Catholics, telling them “not to meddle in the internal affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church”:

> In Ukraine, Between Orthodox and Catholic, Francis Sides With Moscow

On this as on other occasions concerning the Ukrainian question, in both political and religious terms Francis showed that he was more in tune with Moscow’s reasoning than with that of Constantinople.

But in the ecumenical dialogue that is so dear to Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s heart, the patriarchate of Moscow is often more of a hindrance to him than a help.

In fact, Moscow’s hostility toward any idea of primacy for another that is not merely “honorary” is not only expressed by denying the qualification and authority of “ecumenical” to the patriarchate of Constantinople and opposing every one of its broad-based initiatives, but also by hampering the advancement of the work of that joint international commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church which has stalled for years precisely over the question of primacy, and remains stalled precisely on account of Moscow’s obstinacy in not agreeing even with the other Orthodox Churches that participate in this dialogue.

—————

On October 13, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, gave an extensive interview to John L. Allen and Inés San Martin that was published on “Crux” on October 17:

> Ukraine prelate says Orthodox independence is ‘affirmation of rights’

Shevchuk says he is “not authorized to enter in the internal affairs of the Orthodox Church.” But “as a shepherd to whom God has entrusted the care of souls” he sees as an “epochal event” the decision of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople to admit into ecclesial communion the two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches that until recently were unrecognized and excommunicated.

And the subsequent step will be the constitution of a unified and independent Ukrainian Church, because - he says - “what Ukraine needs now is the affirmation of its rights. It’s not just the right to have an independent country but also to have its own interpretation of its religious past, present and future.”

But Shevchuk says he is very critical of the behavior of the patriarchate of Moscow, with its  “logic of geopolitical debate” and with its “language of threats, blackmail, and also ultimatums.”

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)