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.