HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL DOCUMENT

Draft Synodical Document

Πέμπτη 25 Οκτωβρίου 2018

HERE'S WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON WITH THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA: HISTORY, DOCTRINE, AND RELIGIOUS LIFE ALL MATTER AND CANNOT BE IGNORED


Here's What's Really Going on with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Russia: History, doctrine, and religious life all matter and cannot be ignored.

I am starting to get annoyed at the number of commentators who have no background in Orthodox ecclesiology and scant knowledge of Byzantine, Ukrainian and Russian history or about the contemporary realities of religious life throughout the former Soviet Union. These pundits nevertheless feel confident to deliver sweeping pronouncements about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church situation and its ramifications for the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church as a whole. At a minimum, one would hope that anyone offering commentary would be well versed in the disputes over the interpretations of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (451), the controversy over the creation of the Autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church nearly a century ago (in 1924), and the significance of the Pochaiv conclave (which attempted to create a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1942). Ignorance of these and other developments should be seen as disqualifying to offering anything that purports to be an expert opinion on the matter.
These historical points are raised not to play at trivia but to suggest that the crisis besetting Ukrainian Orthodoxy is not a result of the 2014 Maidan uprising and the subsequent Russian intervention, but has been percolating for a long while. Recent events have brought matters to a head, but did not create them. All of the above are playing themselves out in a fashion that, while overlapping with current geopolitical developments, have and will continue to exist independently of them.
Additionally, there is too much of a focus on top-down solutions; that somehow the pronouncements of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will settle the matter. Some of the confusion here is assuming that the Ecumenical Patriarch enjoys a status in the Orthodox world akin to that of the Pope of Rome for the Catholic Church; that he has the ability to deliver a “final word” on any issue. The bottom line is that Orthodox Ukrainians will continue to determine what sort of Church administration they want.
Orthodox Christians in Ukraine—both those who would be considered active believers and those whose allegiance to religion is more nominal—can be subdivided into three broad groups.
The first and smallest—generally comprising those who would identify as ethnic Russians or who view Ukrainianess as a subset of a larger “all-Russian” identity— see no differences between Russians and Ukrainians and therefore no reason for separate church administrations. The separation of Crimea and the migrations from Donbass into Russia have reduced the numbers of adherents to this position remaining in Ukraine.