.png "English"){kind=small}
The decision was announced on the evening of 13 June, after the
Patriarchates of Antioch, Bulgaria and Georgia pulled out: Moscow has
now made the same request as these Churches. The Russians are refusing
to attend if the Council is not postponed as requested. But the
assembly is to go ahead as scheduled
In order to take place on the scheduled dates – which all
Orthodox Churches unanimously agreed upon –, if it goes ahead, the
Council in Crete, which is due to take place from 19 to 26 June, will be
attended by 10 out of the 14 existing Orthodox Churches. The Russian
Church and the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill – whose jurisdiction extends
to over half of the Orthodox world’s faithful - will not be attending.
The Extraordinary Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church reached this
decision at a meeting held after some other Churches pulled out in
recent days. In doing so, the Russian Church joins these other Orthodox
Churches in their request for the Council to be postponed. If it is not,
then the Russians will not take part in the Council meetings.
“All Churches must participate in the pan-Orthodox Council,” stated
Metropolitan Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Church
Relations, “only in this case will the decisions taken by the Council be
valid”. At the same time, the metropolitan sought to play things down a
bit, saying: “The situation is not catastrophic, it is a regular
situation”.
Moscow’s intention to postpone the Council, the first pan-Orthodox
Council to be held in more than a thousand years and an event which has
been over 50 years in the making. After Sunday 12 June’s liturgy,
Metropolitan Hilarion said “it is best to postpone” the event rather
than “do things in a hurry”.
“In the 55 years it has taken to organise the pan-Orthodox Council we
have talked about the fact that this needs to be a unifying factor for
the Church, in any case it should not cause divisions,” Hilarion
underlined. “If we deem preparations not to be complete and that some
problems have not yet been resolved, it is better to postpone this
Council than to do things in haste and above all in the absence of many
local Churches. There cannot be a pan-Orthodox Council if one or more
local Churches is not present,” he warned.
The first Church to announce it was not attending the Council, was
the Bulgarian one, followed by the Serbian Church – which then did a
U-turn – and the Patriarchate of Antioch. The latter decided to pull out
because of an age-old dispute between it and the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem regarding territorial jurisdiction over Qatar. The Georgian
Church talked about “obstacles” to its own participation, while the
opposition of the monks on Mount Athos is well known. The disagreement
is over the contents of some documents, which the Council will have to
discuss and promulgate, including the one on the relationship between
the Orthodox Churches and the other Christian denominations. Critics
have asked for amendments to be made, as well as for the postponement of
the Council. This has met with the opposition of ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is responsible for the
organisation of the event in Crete.
In actual fact, the decision of the above-mentioned Churches to pull
out, came as a surprise given that, as is traditional in some Orthodox
Churches, all decisions relating to the Council, dates, procedures and
texts to be discussed were always taken unanimously by Church leaders or
representatives. Why was the event schedule initially approved by
everyone only to then be called into question? What is it that made
Churches reconsider, portraying Orthodoxy as a world with many internal
divisions? The Patriarchate of Moscow may have played a significant role
in this.
The Russian Church, which is numerically, economically and
structurally stronger, also has a strong national identity and
iron-strong ties with the Russian presidency. The same can be said of
the other Churches, which are now in two minds about attending the
Council given their solid relations with the Russian Church. It could be
that Moscow did not wish to give too much importance to the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew’s role. The Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honour over all Orthodoxy
but is weak in terms of numbers and more importantly represents a
minority Church in the big Muslim country that is modern-day Turkey. But
the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s strength lies in this very
weakness: it was bright figures like Athenagoras in the 1950s and 1960s
who gave an extraordinary impulse to ecumenical path of Christians, a
legacy which has continued under Bartholomew’s leadership. Under
Bartholomew’s leadership, the Patriarchate has managed to speak to the
world and establish itself as a recognised moral authority.
On Sunday, Hilarion also said that the decision of the Russian Church
was “very important and the fate of the Orthodox Church will depend on
it to a large extent: we will either live in peace and harmony with the
other local Churches or we will face conflicts, disputes and arguments”.
“We know that the Holy Spirit,” he concluded, “has always intervened in
the history of the Church and will continue to do so and we believe
that the Holy Spirit will guide us in making the right decision”. In the
end, the Russian Orthodox Church decided not to attend. Conflicts,
disputes and reconsiderations won. Bartholomew meanwhile, had hoped that
all doubts, disputes and disagreements would be aired during the
Council debate.
What will happen next remains to be seen. Constantinople has said
that the meeting in Crete on 19 June will be going ahead: since everyone
unanimously agreed on it, only Patriarch Bartholomew can decide to
defer it. It will mark the start of a discussion and of work, the start
of a process and of a long journey, in the hope that the Churches which
have decided not to take part, may change their minds in the future.
