Andrei Zolotov, Executive Editor (Europe) of Russia Direct, exclusively for Pravmir
In less than a fortnight, on the feast of the Holy Pentecost, the Bishops of the fourteen universally recognized local Orthodox Churches are supposed to show each other and the world their unity in Christ by serving Divine Liturgy together
and spending the following week
deliberating and adopting documents that express their unified vision of
their Church and its mission in the modern world during the Great and
Holy Pan-Orthodox Council on the island of Crete.
However, today we, unfortunately, have to forget these lofty words.
The Council that has intermittently been in the making for almost fifty
years is now on the brink of falling apart.
The
bombshell exploded on 1 June, when the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian
Church put forward six objections to the agenda and procedure of the
Council unanimously ruling that the Council was to be postponed and
that, in its present form, the Bulgarian delegation withdrew from
attending it.
Two days later, on Friday, the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate
convened and, based on its resolutions, it became known that, in
addition to the Bulgarian Church, other Churches also had objections.
The Hierarchs of the Churches of Georgia, Serbia, and of Greece, as well
as the monasteries of Mount Athos, expressed a desire to amend the
documents and procedure of the Council.
An especially difficult situation arose in connection with the
conflict between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem over the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Qatar. The Patriarchate of
Constantinople announced that a joint commission to resolve this problem
would be formed after the Council. The Patriarchate of Antioch, which
is based in Syria and Lebanon, replied that this decision “invalidates
the very purpose of the Council “as the expression of Orthodox unity”
and “threatens the convocation of the Council at its specified meeting
date,” according to the proceedings of the Moscow Synod.
Under these circumstances, recognizing the fact that Council
decisions should be made by consensus of all Local Churches and that the
non-participation of at least one of the Orthodox Churches in the
Council constitutes “an unsurmountable obstacle” to the holding of the
Council, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church proposed to the
Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew to hold an extraordinary
Pan-Orthodox pre-Council conference no later than on June 10, 2016, to
resolve the newly-arisen contradictions. This proposition appeared as a
search for compromise, as a desire to salvage the work of the Council –
both the Bulgarian and the Arabic (Antiochian) Bishops could have
attended this conference.
Two days later, on Monday, we learned of the decision of the Synod of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate to ignore this proposition as well as the
amendments of the other Orthodox Churches. According to the
announcement of the General Secretariat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
the positions and opinions expressed by the sister Orthodox Churches
were received “with surprise and wonder” by the Phanar and that “no
institutional framework allowed” for the revision of the planned Council
process. The announcement states that amendments are to be made by the
Primates in the course of the meetings of the Council itself.
“The Ecumenical Patriarchate, which bears the first responsibility
for safeguarding the unity of Orthodoxy, calls all to rise to the
occasion and participate, on the pre-determined dates, in the sessions
of the Holy and Great Council, as was decided and signed on a
pan-Orthodox level both by the Primates during the Sacred Synaxes, as
well as by those authorized by each Delegation during the entire lengthy
preparatory process of the Council,” announced the Synod of
Constantinople.
Thus, by appealing to the letter of the prior decisions, the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, drawing upon its primacy, resolved to
push the Council through. Most likely it will not work. The Bulgarian
Church already communicated expressly that the delegation would not
attend the Council on the proposed dates and confirmed that it had
cancelled the reservation of the plane which had been made available to
the delegates by the government.
The Church of Antioch, perceiving itself as a Martyred Church under
the Islamists’ terror and justifiably expecting especial support from
its Christian Brothers, will, most likely, also perceive Phanar’s
decision as a slap in the face and withdraw from participating in the
Council. In this situation, having undertaken to find a way to
reconcile the differences and receiving a brush-off in return, the
Moscow Patriarchate will probably also be compelled to renounce the
journey to Crete.
It is hard to analyse a situation that evolves day by day. You are
tempted to hope for a miracle that would allow the Hierarchs to overcome
these conflicts and to be able to serve together on the feast of the
Holy Trinity. However, we can make several sad conclusions even now.
The first of these conclusions is obvious: the attempt to demonstrate
the unity of the Ecumenical Orthodoxy to ourselves and to the world has
shown, conversely, a deep lack of unity. In reality, the Local
Orthodox Churches turn out to be far away from the ideal of the Family
of Churches that dwells in love.
It is generally accepted that, globally, the main problem of the
Orthodox ecclesiastical structure is the rivalry between the first in
honour Patriarchate of Constantinople and the largest in the Orthodox
world Patriarchate of Moscow. By this logic, the Great and Holy
Council, convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, was supposed
to assert his primacy and influence in the Orthodox world, which would
run counter to the interests of Moscow. Some voices in the Orthodox
blogosphere forecasted that Moscow would try to sabotage the Council,
while the decision of the Bulgarian Church to withdraw from the Council
was explained as the work of the “hand of Moscow.” In the last few
days, however, competent neutral experts explained that the conflicts
between Sofia and Constantinople were the result of disputes over some
holy relics.
At the same time, the position of the Moscow Patriarchate, expressed
by its Synod, was distinctly conciliatory. However, Constantinople did
not want to listen. It is safe to say that not only Patriarch
Bartholomew, but also Patriarch Kirill have put so much of themselves
into the project of the Pan-Orthodox Council that in their own way both
of them will strive for its implementation to the last.
The fact that there are almost no state interests involved is a
hallmark of this inter-ecclesiastical conflict. Apart from the already
resolved question of transferring the meeting place of the Council from
Istanbul to Crete as a result of the deterioration of relations between
Russia and Turkey, it is hard to find any other global or local state
policy factors in the current web of contradictions. It all comes down
to questions of Church politics, which the participants of the process
cannot blame on the pressures from political forces or from one
government or another. In future, of course, state governments may feel
more tempted to use for their own purposes national Churches that have
revealed their lack of unity.
It is regrettable that in the lead-up to the Council the main
discussions are about Church politics, as opposed to theology. Yet it
is even more regrettable that the fiasco of the Pan-Orthodox Council
will strengthen the isolationist and reactionary tendencies that already
exist in the Orthodox Church, and not just in Russia. The numerous
opponents of the Council process and inter-Church cooperation,
sectarians and scaremongers, acting under the banner of anti-ecumenism
and the fear of “the antichrist’s eighth ecumenical council” will think
they have won. While the majority of the faithful, who feel very
comfortable inside the framework of the faith of their fathers and of
the national ecclesiastical societies, will be quite happy that their
usual provincial religiosity will not suffer from an uneasy awareness of
being part of the Ecumenical Church of Christ. If, however, we manage
to overcome this situation, we will be able to speak of the action of
the Holy Spirit.