Archpriest Valery Alexeev | June 27 / July 10, 2007
Holy Trinity Russian
Orthodox Church, Astoria, New York
When the negotiations of the
ROCOR with the MP began, in certain theological articles that called into
question the method of these negotiations, a sinister word appeared, wounding
the historical memory: unia. Let us recall that unia means a
union in which one side, in its own interests, absorbs the other.
Everyone who is familiar with the
history of the unions (we mean the unions that were concluded between a Local
Orthodox Church or its region and Roman Catholicism) knows that these unions
were accompanied by betrayal of Orthodoxy, violations of dogmatic principles
and the holy canons, hostility, hatred, hierarchical arbitrariness,
persecutions of the confessors of Orthodoxy, the arbitrariness of “outsiders,”
bloodshed, martyrdom: the unions foretold evil!
What then occurred on May 4/17 of
the current year [2007], on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, in the
Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior? Did all remain in the status of
witnesses of Christ, to which the apostolic and evangelical readings of this
feast call us, or did some, in the ongoing universal judicial process—for
now is the judgment of this world (John 12:31)—withdraw from their
testimony?
It is known that the canonical
law of the Orthodox Church does not know such a definition of falling away from
the Church as unia; [1] the unions arose already after the
Ecumenical and Local Councils of the first millennium after Christ, but it does
know such a form of preserving ecclesiastical unity as a canonical and
Eucharistic rupture, [2] “walling-off,” or “separation.” [3] St. Basil the
Great, in his first canonical rule, calls, in agreement with the ancients,
three forms of falling away from the purity of Orthodoxy: heresy (false
teaching), schism (a division), and parasynagogue (an unlawful assembly). As we
see in the recent history of the Universal Church, many Local Churches accept,
assimilate, retain, and develop within themselves signs of heresy (the
acceptance of new heretical doctrines and theories), schism, or self-willed
action (the usurpation of ecclesiastical authority), which can be healed by a
Local Council of the Church afflicted by these maladies. Let us note that
heretically-minded Churches, or heretical Confessions that have completely
fallen away from the Church, always strive to attach to themselves and subject
to themselves those Local Churches or ecclesiastical regions that remain in
dogmatic and ecclesiological purity, through unions, or unias, the
cornerstone of which is always a confessional compromise or economia,
[4] which, as we shall see below, ought not to occur.
The Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia, passing through its complex history, is well acquainted with
such phenomena as schism (a division) or parasynagogue (an unlawful assembly).
Metropolitan Laurus, in his message to the participants of the extraordinary
congress of the Sydney and Australian–New Zealand Diocese, wrote: “I would like
to remind everyone that at the present moment the discussion is not about
‘joining,’ ‘merging,’ or ‘union’ with the Moscow Patriarchate, but about the
reconciliation of the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church.” If, however,
we dare to give an evaluation of the phenomenon and call it—“conciliatory
communion passing into unification” of a part of the ROCOR with the MP—the name
unia, it is necessary for us to examine its nature in general as a
historically anti-ecclesiastical phenomenon and to clarify what actually
occurred: reconciliation through Eucharistic communion, unification on the
basis of unanimity of mind, or self-liquidation on the basis of unconditional
capitulation (let us note that capitulation is surrender into captivity, the
surrender of positions, subordination, the renunciation of one’s ideals, an
attempt at survival), that is—captivity.
Let us give an example: the
Moscow Patriarchate, and almost all the other Local Orthodox Churches, have
already reconciled themselves with the Roman Catholic Confession, declared it
their Sister Church (“Balamand”), and recognized the Monophysite Confessions as
Eastern Orthodox (Chambésy). Orthodox and Catholic bishops, as yet, do not
openly receive communion together, although certain cases of joint Eucharistic
communion are known; [5] but they already pray together, and Catholic laymen,
without converting to Orthodoxy, receive communion in Orthodox churches in
Russia.
This, indeed, is reconciliation,
with the introduction of gradual Eucharistic communion, but, for now, it is
still not full unification, and not a complete unia. Let us note that
the ROCOR will now also have to receive Roman Catholics no longer through the
sacrament of Baptism and to admit them to Holy Communion. According to the Act
that was signed, the ROCOR must present the candidacies of its bishops for approval
to the Patriarch; it must receive Holy Myron from him. And it will now also be
necessary to concelebrate not only with the Serbs-ecumenists, but also with
other ecumenical Churches—the new-calendarists and the new-paschalists… This is
not reconciliation, but unia!
But for the moment, let us
consider the lessons of the past.
The first historical lesson is
the Union of Ferrara-Florence of 1439. It is known that the episcopate, headed
by the Patriarch of Constantinople Metrophanes, and afterwards by Patriarch
Gregory Mammas, at this council betrayed Orthodoxy and accepted the Roman
Catholic dogmas. And only one hierarch—St. Mark of Ephesus, who did not sign
the conciliar decrees—remained Orthodox, broke his canonical and Eucharistic
relations with the heretically-minded uniates, that is, he acted according to
the second half of the 15th canon of the First-Second Council: “and he did not
cut off the unity of the Church by a schism, but rather hastened to guard the
Church from schism and division.” [6]
Thus, according to dogmatic
principles, “Union [of separated Churches, or regions of the Church, Archp.
V.A.] is possible only on the basis of one, single dogmatics (…), for dogmatics
is the foundation, the skeleton upon which the whole Body of the Church rests.
Remove this firm, integral dogmatics, and the Church will cease to be the
Church. The presence of two different dogmatic principles within the same
Church, or some compromise of two opposing dogmatic principles, is an absurdity
which will cost the Church its destruction.” [7]
In this case the Patriarchate of
Constantinople entered into a compromise with the Roman Catholics and accepted
the Latin doctrines; but let us also remember the following: “In Ferrara, the
principal motive of almost all the Greeks was political…” [8] How close this is
to our own time!
Let us therefore trace the
history of this union. In April 1438 a commission was formed from
representatives of the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, which was entrusted to
clarify the points of disagreement, examine them, and indicate the path toward
the conclusion of a union. These proceedings did not pass entirely smoothly,
and the Orthodox did not agree on questions concerning the Latin dogmas.
Concerning the fruitlessness of these disputations, St. Mark of Ephesus wrote: “To
say this seemed like singing to deaf ears, or boiling a stone, or sowing upon
stone, or writing upon water, or something similar that is said in proverbs
regarding the impossible.” [9]
And nevertheless, certain members
of the Orthodox delegation spoke in favor of accepting the Latin dogmas, sought
a modus unionis, and “began to work out certain formulas by which they
might unite with them, representing a certain compromise (…) as though a kind
of boot fitting both one foot and the other.” [10] In the end there took place
the promulgation—the solemn proclamation—of the union.
St. Mark of Ephesus did not
follow this path. He “did not permit any compromise in matters of faith. They
cried to Mark: ‘Find for us a way out, an economia.’ Mark replied:
‘Matters of faith do not admit economia. It is the same as saying: cut
off your head and go wherever you wish.’ ‘Never, O man, are the things that
pertain to the Church resolved through compromises.’” [11]
But the zealots of Orthodoxy
gathered around St. Mark… “Yet it was not the mighty of this world who gathered
around him. The episcopate, headed by Patriarch Metrophanes and afterwards by
Patriarch Gregory Mammas, was in the hands of the Uniates; we do not hear a
single name of a bishop among the supporters of St. Mark of Ephesus, not one
high-ranking person, whether at the court of the Emperor or of the patriarch.
But the army of St. Mark was numerous: it consisted of monks, first of all the
monks of Athos; it consisted of presbyters, often rural and unknown, of whom
the sources say ‘a certain presbyter’; it consisted of deacons; it consisted of
the little ones of this world.” [12]
St. Mark was not broken either by
persecutions, nor by imprisonment in the fortress of Mundros, nor by a severe
cancerous illness. “Therefore, brethren, flee from them and from communion with
them; for they are ‘false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves
into the Apostles of Christ. …Beware of evil workers, beware of the
mutilation.’” [13]
In a letter to Hieromonk Theophanes
he wrote: “Therefore, you also, brethren, flee from communion with those with
whom one ought not to have it, and from the commemoration of those whom it is
not fitting to commemorate (liturgically)”; [14] (…) “…for this means to mix
what cannot be mixed; but they must remain completely separated from us until
God grants correction and peace to His Church.” [15]
The Union of Ferrara–Florence did
not endure. The Orthodox hierarchy was restored and a First Hierarch of the
Church of Constantinople was elected.
More than a hundred years passed,
and a new union stirred the life of the Orthodox Church. This union received
the name Brest. Like the Florentine union, the Union of Brest had a political
background. “Being the most reliable means of assimilation, of the Polonization
of the Orthodox population of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was
intended to strengthen the political foundation of the Union of Lublin”
[16]—that is, the political union of 1569 that united Poland and Lithuania into
the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The bishops were led to the union
not by conviction in the truth—asserts the researcher of this period of Church
history—not by ideological or religious motives, but by concern that their cathedras,
villages and estates, their places in the senate and the diet, and equality in
rights with the Catholic bishops should be preserved for them.
In contrast to the Union of
Ferrara–Florence, which was conducted through theological disputations, “the
preparation of the Orthodox Church in Poland for union with Rome was carried
out in an atmosphere of secrecy, observed both by the bishops and by the
government”; [17] “…the question of the union was discussed not at the regular
councils of bishops, at which clergy and laity were present, but at secret, ‘pokutnye’
(that is, ‘in corners’) gatherings.” [18]
Even before the council that was
to decide the question of the union, Metropolitan Michael (Rogoza) and the
bishops of Vladimir, Lutsk, and Pinsk, together with the archimandrite of
Kobrin, Jonah (Gogol), signed the pope’s letter, thereby expressing their
agreement to accept the union; and in December 1595 the bishops Hypatius
(Potsei) and Cyril (Terletsky), at an audience with Pope Clement VIII,
completely betrayed Orthodoxy.
In June 1595 the protector of
Orthodoxy, Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky, wrote in his proclamation: “…In the
present times, by the evil cunning of the wicked devil, the very chief leaders
of our true faith, having been seduced by the glory of this world and darkened
by the darkness of sensual pleasure, our supposed shepherds, the metropolitan
with the bishops… secretly agreed among themselves, the accursed ones… to tear
away the pious Christians of this region without their knowledge and to cast
them with themselves into destruction, as their own most secret writings
declare. Having learned with certainty about such apostates and manifest
betrayers of the Church of Christ, I inform all of you of them, as beloved
brethren in Christ, and I desire together with you to stand united against the
enemies of our salvation, so that with the help of God and your zealous effort
they themselves may fall into the nets which they secretly prepared for us…
What benefit can we have from them? Instead of being the light of the world,
they have become darkness and a stumbling block for all.” [19]
The Council of Brest, which took
place in 1596, became divided. The defenders of Orthodoxy, among whom were
representatives of the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria,
resolved: to deprive the apostates of their episcopal cathedras, not to permit
the conclusion of the union, and strictly to adhere to the Julian calendar. The
apostates from Orthodoxy, for their part, issued an act and a conciliar charter
of union (unia) with Rome, and they anathematized the Orthodox clergy.
Now let us summarize. “The union
was the work of bishops who acted in separation from the church people, without
their free and conciliar agreement and counsel… At the same time, these Uniate
bishops considered their submission to Roman authority and jurisdiction to be a
‘union of the Churches,’ while the resistance of the people they regarded as
canonical arbitrariness and rebellion… The Orthodox, on the contrary, saw in
this disobedience and in this inevitable anti-hierarchical struggle only the
fulfillment of their Christian duty, the duty of faithfulness and faith. The
struggle against the union was above all a manifestation of the conciliar
consciousness of the church people” [20]—that is, reception.
Let us note that the idea of the
unification of the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, which became
separated after certain well-known historical events, as many now say, is
entirely natural and corresponds to the evangelical principle: “that they
may all be one, as We are” (John 17:11).
Here, first of all, I will
express an opinion concerning such a concept or definition as “a part of the
Church.” Canonical law does not know such a term or definition. In
ecclesiastical relations such a definition has developed as:
1. The Mother Church, or the
Kyriarchal Church, in relation to its canonical regions or daughter
jurisdictions, that is, Autonomous Churches, to which the Mother Church has
granted the rights of autonomy, or the rights of broad autonomy differing
little from autocephaly, or autocephaly itself.
2. Two regions (or jurisdictions)
of one historically formed Church that are in canonical separation for various
reasons, which, with dogmatic unanimity, may unite.
3. The Mother Church, or a church
region, and a schismatic society that has fallen away from it, which through
repentance may join the Mother Church. But the designation of a canonical
jurisdiction as a “part” of the Church is incorrect, for it closely touches
upon the ecumenical term “branch,” condemned as a heresy, the so-called “branch
theory.” [21] The canonical definition is a church region. [22]
Let us note that the official
negotiations between the MP and ROCOR were preceded by numerous visits of the
higher hierarchy and clergy of ROCOR to the Fatherland, and from the Fatherland
to the Council of Bishops by high officials of the Russian Federation, in which
political motives are clearly visible: as in Ferrara, and as in Brest, that is,
motives characteristic not of union but of unia. State officials do not
have the right to intrude into the sphere of ecclesiastical relations.
By concluding the Union of
Ferrara–Florence, Emperor John Palaiologos hoped to save the capital of the
empire from the Turks; the hierarchy, which received from the pope a
“considerable sum,” [23] and had reached the point where “the monetary factor
played no small role in the matter of the Union,” [24] thought to preserve
their cathedras—that is, their privileges—while the pope sought to
attach Constantinople to Rome, that is, Orthodoxy to papism.
By concluding the Union of Brest,
King Sigismund III Vasa strove to bring the Orthodox population of the
Ukrainian and Belarusian lands under his authority into obedience to the Roman
See, and consequently to his state; while the hierarchy of the Lithuanian
Metropolia, having lost its Orthodox principledness, was at that time guided
only by “ambition and the thirst for advantage.” [25]
And what political background is
present in the case of the Moscow union, which we are now considering? On the
one hand, it is the loss of the free voice of the church region in the Russian
diaspora; it is the property of ROCOR—churches and monasteries, part of which
has already been seized and which will gradually pass into the ownership of
state structures existing in the Fatherland; it is the long-desired end of the
White Movement and its historical legacy; it is the erosion of Orthodox
theology, capable of resisting the heretical ecumenical pseudo-theology. On the
side of the hierarchy that concluded the union, it is the mythical fear of
finding itself isolated from “world Orthodoxy,” which has already fallen into
dogmatic and ecclesiological heresies, although the Lord nevertheless calls: “come
out from among them and be separate” (2 Cor. 6:17); it is the attempt, by
concluding the union, to affirm its “canonical existence,” as if the bishops of
the Church Abroad had doubted their own canonicity—something of which for
seventy years they had been accused by patriarchal theologians and hierarchs of
the Sergianist tendency, namely of the “Karlovci schism.”
Then the work of the bilateral
Commissions began, which were to clarify, as once in Ferrara, the points of
disagreement. It cannot be said that the negotiations always proceeded
smoothly. Once again, as before, they were “singing to deaf ears,” “boiling stones,”
“writing on water,” and “sowing on stones.” But most important was the complete
secrecy of the negotiating process, about which the believing people of ROCOR
knew nothing, although they had the right to their reception. As once in Brest,
the negotiations were conducted “in corners,” without subsequent broad
information. It would have been possible, for example, to publish a bulletin in
which the process of negotiations, statements, arguments, and remarks, as well
as the names of the defenders of the historical principles of ROCOR and their
opponents, would be reproduced stenographically and precisely. Such a bulletin
could have provided a place for a general church discussion. This did not
occur, and the process of negotiations proceeded along the path conceived and
planned by the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate: along the path of economia,
or compromise. A departure took place from the resolutions of the Pastoral
Conference in Nyack, the Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco, and even
the Council of Bishops of ROCOR in 2006. They did not wait for a Local Council
of the All-Russian Orthodox Church, and the union was carried out suddenly and
hastily, that is, as people used to say, “at Bolshevik tempos.”
The ROCOR Commission did not
defend the principle that the election of the Moscow patriarchs during the
Soviet God-fighting era took place in violation of canonical rules; that the
Patriarch of Moscow is only the First Hierarch of the ROC MP, a church region
whose foundation was laid by a non-canonical synod that usurped ecclesiastical
authority; that this church region is not the Kyriarchal Mother Church, and
that the Patriarch is not the First Hierarch of the entire fullness of Russian
Orthodoxy. The commission also did not defend the principle that the Russian
Church Abroad is an independent canonical region, or jurisdiction, possessing
its own canonical First Hierarch in the rank of Metropolitan, having preserved
dogmatic purity and not having come into contact with the ecumenical heresy.
Which church region of the
divided Russian Church, then, should nevertheless be considered the Mother
Church? We know that the division of the Russian Orthodox Church occurred not
because one of its regions remained in the Fatherland conquered by the God-fighters,
while part of the hierarchy, on the basis of the holy canons, without
abandoning the flock that was leaving the Fatherland, shared exile with it and
formed the Refugee Church—the church region abroad, which in history received
the name Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
The prayerful and Eucharistic
separation occurred after, in the church region existing in the Fatherland,
governed by the synod of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), who had usurped
the supreme ecclesiastical administration, there appeared the most grievous
violations in the sphere of Orthodox ecclesiology—a symphony in the sphere of
church governance between the hierarchy and the structures of the God-fighting
state regime; when there occurred the appropriation of primatial authority by
Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) while the confessor–metropolitan, the Locum
Tenens Peter, was still alive at that time; when the theory was created of
transferring the rights of the Patriarchal Locum Tenens to the Deputy of
the Patriarchal Locum Tenens; when there sounded throughout the whole
world a false witness, which became a scandal both for many exiles and for the
peoples living in free countries—the interview of Metropolitan Sergius
(Stragorodsky), and later the publication of the book “The Truth about Religion
in the USSR.” It was also when even the exiles themselves were required to show
loyalty to the God-fighters and to renounce the struggle against them—the
demand to sign declarations of loyalty to the Soviet authority, which served as
the cause of a schism in ROCOR; when a systematic alteration of the episcopate
of the Russian Orthodox Church began; when the confessors and the new martyrs
were betrayed and declared schismatics and “enemies of the people,” counter-revolutionaries—when
they were suspended from priestly service and deprived of their episcopal cathedras.
These archpastors, pastors, and their flock formed yet another region of the
Russian Orthodox Church in the Fatherland—the True Orthodox Church, which
withdrew into internal emigration. This church region could rightly have been
called the Mother Church. It could, because all its hierarchs accepted a
martyr’s end, did not enter into union with the God-fighters, and did not
violate the Orthodox confession of faith. The small remnants of its pastors and
believers who survived after the shipwreck were reunited with their Sister—the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, to which there also joined certain
pastors of the Moscow Patriarchate who had entered into a canonical rupture
with the administration of the MP, according to the second half of the 15th canon
of the First–Second Council, and who formed parish communities and then
dioceses within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of ROCOR in the Fatherland, in
accordance with the Statute on the Parishes of the Free Russian Church, adopted
by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia on
May 2/15, 1990. The hierarchy of ROCOR was unable to defend its pastors and
flock in the Fatherland who had joined ROCOR and who, in violation of the
canons, were subjected to unjust condemnations and prohibitions; they were
simply pushed away, with complete trust placed in the accusations of their
accusers. Soon we heard the statement of a responsible hierarch of ROCOR that
the creation of free parishes in the Fatherland had been a mistake, an
absurdity. Could the Holy Spirit, who acts in agreement with the bishops of the
Church at the Council of Bishops, have been mistaken? This would already be
blasphemy.
The members of the ROCOR
Commission, having been enticed by the so-called “Social Concept” of the ROC
MP, which supposedly annulled the “Declaration” of Metropolitan Sergius
(Stragorodsky), failed to discern that the ROC MP, as before, remains dependent
on state structures, which it serves, as Metropolitan Sergius taught, “not out
of fear, but out of conscience”; that the MP is a component part of these state
structures; that its highest hierarchs, for example in Ukraine, are people’s
deputies from political parties. The Russian Orthodox Church is separated from
the state only formally, that is, on paper.
The Commission of the Russian
Church Abroad and its hierarchs were unable to insist that the MP withdraw from
the pan-heresy which it had conciliarily recognized—the ecumenical movement—and
humbly implored their opponents to leave it, which, naturally, did not occur.
They were unable to insist, and indeed did not insist, that the MP break
Eucharistic communion with the new-calendarists, ecumenists, and
new-paschalists, with whom it must now enter into Eucharistic communion—for
example, with the “Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America” and with the
“Finnish Orthodox Church.”
Thus, what occurred was not the
reconciliation of equal church regions, but a unia, by the signing of
which the church region of the Russian Church in the diaspora, bypassing the
All-Russian Local Council, found itself in canonical dependence upon another
church region that had refused historical repentance for the sins of Sergianism
and ecumenism, and the bringing forth of worthy fruits of repentance for these
sins, and which had proclaimed to the whole world that among the three
monotheistic religions there exists unity in the veneration of the One God and
a common ethic…
The Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia, its faithful pastors and flock, cannot agree with this.
Trusting only in God, Who at the time appointed by Him “will grant peace and
correction to His Church,” offering up their prayers, patiently and with love
addressing those who disagree with them, they will pass along their path by the
narrow way, through valleys and sorrows, in brotherly communion with the
Orthodox Churches that are of one mind with them, strengthened by the prayers
of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, of St. John of Shanghai and San
Francisco, and of the great hierarchs of the Russian diaspora, bearing witness
to the world of their standing in the Truth. The Venerable Joseph of
Volokolamsk reminds us of the words of St. Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of
Alexandria: “It is better to gather in a house of prayer without them than,
together with them, to be cast into Gehenna of fire with Annas and Caiaphas.”
[26]
[1] In the notes of Bishop Nikodim Milash to the 13th canon
of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, mention is made of Uniate priests whom Pope
Benedict XIV permitted to remain married. This relates to the second millennium
after Christ.
[2] The authoritative Russian theologian V. V. Bolotov notes
that in the third century, between the Roman and the African Churches, as a
result of the dispute concerning the baptism of heretics, “a rupture occurred,
but not a schism.”
[3] The Canons of the Orthodox Church, Vol. II. 1994,
pp. 307–308.
[4] St. John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco,
writes: “The search for compromise will become the characteristic disposition
of people. The directness of confession will disappear. People will subtly
justify their fall, and gentle evil will support such a general disposition,
and in people there will be formed the habit of apostasy and the sweetness of
compromise and sin” (See: John, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, Discourse
on the Last Judgment. — In the collection: Archbishop John (Maximovitch).
Archpastor. Man of Prayer. Ascetic. San Francisco, 1991, p. 184).
[5] See: Ludmila Perepelkina, “The Abomination of
Desolation.” Ecumenism and Church Liberalism. Saint Petersburg, 1998, p.
221.
[6] The Canons of the Orthodox Church, Vol. II. Op.
cit., pp. 307–308.
[7] Ambrose (Pogodin), Archimandrite, St. Mark of Ephesus
and the Florentine Union. Jordanville, 1963, p. 10.
[8] Ibid., op. cit., p. 17.
[9] Ibid., op. cit., p. 174.
[10] Ambrose (Pogodin), Archimandrite, op. cit., p. 220.
[11] Ibid., op. cit., pp. 226–227.
[12] Ibid., p. 322.
[13] Ibid., p. 338.
[14] Ibid., p. 357.
[15] Ibid., p. 370.
[16] Oksiuk, I. F. Union. A Historical Essay. p. 9.
[17] Oksiuk, I. F. Op. cit., p. 11.
[18] Ibid., p. 12.
[19] Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) of Moscow. History
of the Russian Church. Vol. 9. St. Petersburg, 1879, pp. 584–585.
[20] Georges Florovsky, Archpriest. The Ways of Russian
Theology. Paris, 1937, p. 38.
[21] In 1983 the Council of Bishops of ROCOR proclaimed: “To
those who attack the Church of Christ and teach that She is divided into
branches (…) ANATHEMA.” (Orthodox Russia—a church and social publication
of ROCOR issued by the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, USA, 1984, No.
10, p. 3).
[22] The Canons of the Orthodox Church. Vol. I. St.
Petersburg, 1911, p. 307.
[23] Ambrose (Pogodin), Archimandrite. Op. cit., p. 33.
[24] Ibid., p. 308.
[25] Koyalovich, M. The Lithuanian Church Union. Vol.
I. St. Petersburg, 1859, p. 89.
[26] Ludmila Perepelkina. Op. cit., p. 67.
Russian source:
https://sinod.ruschurchabroad.org/070710.htm#%D0%94%D0%9E%D0%9A%D0%9B%D0%90%D0%94_%D0%9F%D0%A0%D0%9E%D0%A2%D0%9E%D0%98%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%95%D0%AF_%D0%92%D0%90%D0%9B%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%98%D0%AF_%D0%90%D0%9B%D0%95%D0%9A%D0%A1%D0%95%D0%95%D0%92%D0%90
