Among the sister Churches that are now called upon to either
recognize or refuse recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU),
a common refrain is intoned: a conciliar and synodal process needs to
take place to resolve this issue. Some would like a synaxis of primates,
and others have called for a council. The central idea is for all of
the Churches to contribute to a resolution of the Ukrainian schism.
The spirit of this proposal is sound, and it should be applied to the
Ukrainian case (and perhaps to other related contentions on
autocephaly). But a synod convoked to resolve the Ukrainian case would
be doomed to failure. A synod convoked to recognize both Orthodox
Churches in Ukraine as canonical and encourage them to restore communion
without forcing administrative union would be welcome and potentially
effective.
Here is why.
In the months preceding the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s (EP)
proclamation of autocephaly, the EP and Moscow Patriarchate (MP) visited
the sister Churches to inform, negotiate, and persuade them of their
positions. I use these verbs—inform, negotiate, and persuade—carefully.
These were political meetings designed to obtain support for one side.
Such meetings continue to take place now, in an attempt to influence the
decisions of the sister Churches on recognition.
A synod convoked to resolve the Ukrainian issue would simply intensify the campaigning for one or another side.
A synodal decision to affirm the autocephaly of the OCU and call for
the absorption of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate
(UOC-MP) into the OCU would be rejected by the MP and and UOC-MP,
immediately.
A decision to return to the status quo prior to the bestowal of the
tomos of autocephaly and refuse recognition of the OCU would be swiftly
rejected by the EP and the OCU.
On the ground, in Ukraine, the core groups within the OCU and UOC-MP
are locked in their positions. No amount of invoking “schismatic” or
“uncanonical” will persuade the core group of the OCU to return to the
MP after 100 years of a relentless struggle for autocephaly. And those
100 years witness to core groups of the UOC-MP wishing to have some kind
of autonomous status within the MP.
I’m sorry to say it, but the appeal for a synod to resolve the
Ukrainian schism is a lose-lose proposal, because some major group is
going to protest the result.
The fundamental issue for the sister Churches is not Ukraine, but the
methods and mechanisms used to grant autocephaly, as Metropolitan
Kallistos Ware mentioned in his January keynote speech at the
International Orthodox Theological Association meeting in Iasi, Romania.
Future synods and councils should return to this issue immediately, but
their decisions should not be retroactive, unless autocephaly as a
category of local Church canonical status and governance is revoked
altogether for everyone—a completely unrealistic scenario. A synodal
consensus on autocephaly should be applied to all cases after Ukraine.
What, then, can be done about the 100-year conflict inherited by today’s OCU and UOC-MP?
The synod could capture the urgency inspired by the painful wound of
broken communion in Orthodoxy and call upon all parties to restore
Eucharistic communion immediately – with this synodal decision binding
for all, beginning with the MP’s severing of communion with the EP.
As for Ukraine, the synod could appeal to the OCU and UOC-MP to
restore complete Eucharistic Communion – immediately – without forcing
union into one body. Yes, canonical plurality is a deficiency, but
canonical plurality with communion is preferable to resuming
the delegations of persuasion, the perpetuation of the blame game, and
100 years of intra-Orthodox polemics.
The North American context of jurisdictional plurality with
Eucharistic intercommunion offers a model for Ukraine. One significant
similarity is the existence of an autocephalous Church, the Orthodox
Church in America (OCA), that does not enjoy universal recognition of
its autocephaly, but is not deprived of canonical, Eucharistic
intercommunion. While the Orthodox Churches in North America have yet to
realize complete administrative unity in the fifty years since the OCA
received autocephaly from the Moscow Patriarchate, the Churches have
maintained Eucharistic communion and have addressed issues through the
Assembly of Bishops and its predecessor, SCOBA. Despite the problems of
division, the maintenance of Eucharistic communion in North America
makes the formation of a united Church plausible since the Churches are
still able to come together for common Eucharistic liturgies.
A related thorny issue is the problem of changing jurisdictional
affiliation in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has recently adopted a
new law that grants the community authority in registering a change in
their jurisdictional affiliation. The UOC-MP is protesting this law,
claiming that OCU supporters are recruiting people who have never been a
part of the parish community to attend the meeting and sway the vote
toward a pro-OCU majority. The OCU is countering with the same
accusation, claiming that the UOC-MP has likewise recruited people
outside of the parish to attend assemblies that declare their allegiance
to Metropolitan Onufry and the UOC-MP. It is difficult for outside
observers to disentangle fiction from fact in the heated exchange of
accusations of fraud playing out in the virtual reality of social media.
A pan-Orthodox synod could contribute to mediating disputes
concerning parish affiliation and property in Ukraine, with the
understanding that many parishes will vote unanimously or with an
obvious majority. The synod could initiate the process of creating a
commission overseeing cases where the parish vote is in dispute to make
sure that the process is fair. The commission would consist of
representatives from the OCU and UOC-MP, with at least one member of the
commission coming from a non-EP and non-MP sister Church that hears
cases and resolves disputes.
This proposal might be as unrealistic as the appeals for a
convocation of a synod, so this brief essay should be received as an
invitation for further discussion. The primary point of the proposal is
that the Eucharist should be the source of healing, not its outcome, especially in a Church that values the Eucharist above all.
Nicholas Denysenko is the Emil and Elfriede Jochum University Chair and Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University. He is an ordained deacon of the Orthodox Church in America.
Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a
forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to
Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely
the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors
or the Orthodox