The Russian Orthodox Church. Department for External Church Relations
On the 1st of December 2017 the President of the
Russian Federation Vladimir Putin spoke before the participants of the
Episcopal Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is what His
Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said in his reply to
the head of state.
Much-esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich, my brothers the archpastors,
Today is an historic event: the head of the Russian State has visited
the Jubilee Episcopal Council to mark the one hundredth anniversary of
the restoration of the Office of Patriarch in our Church. A Council
which poses and resolves very important relevant issues linked to the
spiritual life of the human person, his prosperity and his moral and
ethical well-being. A Council which does not shy away from resolving
difficult topics, including those connected to our history. I hope very
much that the decisions of this Council will help our Church, in
dialogue with society, to move forwards, including in the resolution of
problems which the people today face.
In the year of the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution,
it is impossible not to analyze the past, and, using the occasion that
together with us here in the Hall of Church Councils is the Head of
State, I would like to say a few words on the complex path of
development of Church-state relations. In Imperial Russia the Church was
a state Church, it was headed by the emperor, while the Church was
administered bureaucratically by an institution called the Ober
–Procurator of the Holy Ruling Synod. On the eve of the Revolution the
best minds of both the Church and the state began to ponder the role of
the Church in Russian society and what had to be done in order to make
this role more evident. At a very difficult time, about one year before
the 1905 Revolution, the then Prime Minister Sergei Witte reported to
the emperor that one of the causes of the Church’s loss of influence
upon the people was that there existed between the Church and the
supreme state authorities, between the Church and the people, a
bureaucratic layer, meaning the bureaucratic institute of the state.
There indeed was no dialogue between the Church and the higher state
authorities, and with the interference of the state there was no direct
dialogue between the Church and all of society.
After the events of the Revolution, when the principle of separation
of Church and state was proclaimed, it appeared that the state would
avoid playing such a dangerous role for the integrity of the state and
people by removing the Church from a possible direct dialogue with the
people. Yet something completely different happened: literally from the
first days of the new regime, through institutions making up part of the
secret police of the then Soviet state, there were attempts to
formulate the same policy that existed before the Revolution, which was
to approve all appointments and to control everything that took place at
the level of the highest ecclesiastical decisions. In other words, to
interfere in Church life in pursing concrete goals at a time when
ideological interests had become a part of general state concerns.
And when in the 1990s there were changes and the Church roundly
declared that there ought not to be any bureaucratic layers, hot heads
were to be found among revolutionaries of that time. There were
proposals that a ministry of religious affairs be set up, and certain
well know people who took an active part in the political changes not
only wanted, but even proposed their candidacy as new Ober-Procurators.
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude that in today’s Russia
there are no bureaucratic layers. There is dialogue between the
Patriarch and the President, between the supreme Church authorities and
the corresponding ministries and government departments. A direct
dialogue is held along the vertical of our life which grants to the
Church the opportunity to formulate her understanding of what is
happening in the country and among the people, to pay attention to such
topics as public morality, social life, ecological problems and the
moral dimension of the problems of internal and external politics. All
of this forms within society a clear understanding of the Church’s
independent position. And perhaps the most important thing is that this
position is based on the same moral principles upon which our laws are
also based. These principles emerge from our spiritual and moral
tradition, which today is not disputed by the Russian state.
There is nothing more serious and important than moral consensus
within society. If there is consensus on the main moral values, then all
other social relationships are formed harmoniously – laws are made that
are acceptable to people and political practice corresponds to the
interests of the people.
Your great personal role plays a part in all that I am now saying. I
express my gratitude to you for the dialogue which we hold together, for
the dialogue which is held between heads of ministries and government
departments with the corresponding organizations and structures of the
Russian Orthodox Church, and for that atmosphere of openness in which
our society today lives. I believe that this openness will be the pledge
for the certain success of our Fatherland in the near and distant
future.
On behalf of the Episcopal Council of the Russian Orthodox Church I
would like to wish you, much-esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich, long years
of life, good health and God’s aid in the lofty mission the Lord has
entrusted to you through the will of the people. This is how we
understand that which is happening in the history of people: the free
will of people is combined with Divine Providence. May the Lord preserve
you!