Priest George Maximov | January 10, 2019
Intrusion into
Ukraine
The decision of Constantinople
patriarch Bartholomew to intrude in Ukraine has caused huge upheavals in the
entire Orthodox Church, and they haven’t ceased for many months now. The
Orthodox of various countries are looking on in perplexity and horror as the
primate of a respected Church suddenly proclaims as his own canonical territory
what has for over 300 years been accepted by everyone without exception as part
of another Local Church, and pronounces those whom the entire Orthodox Church
has unanimously recognized as schismatics to be part of the canonical Church—at
the same time threatening to pronounce as schismatics those who have been
abiding in Eucharistic unity with all the Local Churches.
Meanwhile, Patriarch Bartholomew
as if doesn’t notice that his actions have set a flywheel in motion of
government persecutions against the canonical Church of Ukraine. After all, the
“received tomos” is one of the main points in the pre-election program of the
current Ukrainian president, who wants to be elected for a second term this
spring. So now the hierarchs of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church are
being called to the carpet by secular officials who hand them letters from the
Constantinople patriarch; priests are being taken in for “prophylactic talks”
to the special services—the Ukrainian successor to the KGB—and monastics are
being threatened with eviction from their monasteries.
Patriarch Bartholomew calls his
actions “granting autocephaly to Ukraine,” but at the same time two thirds of
the Ukrainian Orthodox are parishioners of a Church that never asked him for
autocephaly and refuses to accept it. Probably for the first time in history,
we are seeing a forced “granting of autocephaly”, which gives us pause to think
about many things.
Over the recent months, many
articles and speeches have appeared from Local Churches criticizing the actions
of the Constantinople Patriarchate. There have also been apologetic articles
written by Constantinople’s representatives, and the ensuing polemic basically
plunges the reader into the thickets of history, where he is offered various
interpretations of one or another combination of words from seventeenth century
texts. These themes are undoubtedly also important, but we can imagine that it
is much more important to look at what is happening in the broader context and
understand what caused the current upheavals. For this we need to answer two
questions.
The first question:
Are the current
actions of the Constantinople Patriarchate in Ukraine something unprecedented?
Alas, no. The same invasion took
place in Estonia in 1996, when Patriarch Bartholomew received those schismatics
into communion. We will say right off that it would have been a mistake to look
for an explanation of this action in the personality of this specific
patriarch, because his predecessors made similar actions in the early 1920s,
from the time of the ill-famed Patriarch Meletius IV (Metaxakis). In 1923 he
took over the parishes of the Russian Church in Finland and Estonia, subjecting
them to his jurisdiction, and the next year his tore the diocese in Poland from
the Russian Orthodox Church, self-willfully declaring it “autocephalous”. In
1936, the Constantinople patriarch proclaimed his jurisdiction in Latvia, five
years earlier, against the will of the Russian Orthodox Church, included the
Russian émigré parishes of Western Europe, turning them into his own exarchate
(recently dissolved by Patriarch Bartholomew).
We can’t help but note that these
acts of intrusion and capture were perpetrated right during the time when the
Orthodox Church in Russia was literally bleeding, enduring unprecedented
persecutions from a godless regime. If the Communists confiscated churches and
monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church within the USSR, then the
Constantinople Patriarch was doing this beyond its borders.
But it would be wrong to say that
similar actions have only been taken against the Russian Orthodox Church. In
the 1920s, the Constantinople Patriarchate obtained from the Greek Church its
cessation of ecclesiastical presence in the U.S. and Australia, in 1986 it
managed to dissolve and swallow up the Alexandrian Church’s American exarchate,
and very recently, in 2008, Patriarch Bartholomew forced the Jerusalem Church
to give up its parishes in the U.S. and transfer them to the Constantinople
jurisdiction.
These actions did not always end
in victory for Constantinople. For example, in 1931, Constantinople Patriarch
Photius II tried unsuccessfully to transfer the Serbian parishes outside of
Serbia to his jurisdiction. He wrote to Patriarch Barnabas: “All the Church
communities located in the diaspora and outside the borders of the
autocephalous Orthodox Churches, regardless of nationality, should be
ecclesiastically subject to our Most Holy Patriarchal Throne.” But the Serbian
Church did not give in to this demand, nor did the Romanian Church.
If in the twentieth century the
efforts of the Constantinople Patriarchs were mainly concentrated on subjecting
the Orthodox diaspora to itself, then in the twenty-first century their
expansion has reached into the territory of the autocephalous Churches
themselves.
In speaking about criticism of
their actions in the Ukrainian question, Patriarch Bartholomew recently tried
to explain it away through national differences—so to say, it’s all a matter
of: “Our Slavic brothers cannot endure the primacy of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate and of our nation in Orthodoxy.” This remark in and of itself
racist, which falls under the category of the heresy of ethnophyletism, was
calculated to gain support in Greek society. It is a sort of attempt to play on
the Greeks’ feeling of national solidarity. However, it by no means reflects
the real situation, because the Constantinople Patriarchate acted no less
cruelly with regard to the other Greek Churches than it has with the Russian
Church.
For example, in 2003 Patriarch
Bartholomew suddenly demanded that the Greek Orthodox Church transfer to his
control thirty-six dioceses in the so-called “new territories” of Greece—at
least regarding the appointment of bishops to these cathedras. The Synod of the
Greek Church refused to submit, and its primate at that time, Archbishop Christodoulos
of Athens, said that submitting to that demand would discredit the very fact of
the Greek Orthodox Church’s autocephaly.
After new bishops were chosen
without his consent, on April 30, 2004 Patriarch Bartholomew announced a break
in Eucharistic communion between the Constantinople Church and the Greek
Church. When the Russian Church recently broke communion with Constantinople as
a protest and extreme measure against Constantinople’s unlawful intrusion into
Moscow’s canonical territory, many criticized this decision as too harsh.
However, the Constantinople Patriarchate itself used the same measure to
pressure another, likewise Greek, Local Church.
The Greek Church was unable to
withstand this pressure and in the end submitted, giving over the “new
territories” to the rule of the Constantinople Patriarchate. Did this happen
because the Greek Church’s hierarchs were convinced of Patriarch Bartholomew’s
correctness? No! The Greek Church called its decision an “act of sacrifice for
the sake of peace in the Church.”
But did this sacrifice truly
preserve peace? Alas, no. Even the historical facts cited above show that the
sacrificial acts and concessions by various Churches did not appease but rather
whetted Constantinople’s appetite even more and encouraged it to launch new
raids.
And now, after its intrusion into
the canonical territory of the Greek Church, an even larger-scale and more
outrageous intrusion has taken place on the canonical territory of the Russian
Orthodox Church, namely on the autonomous Ukrainian Church. And what if the
Russian Church were to respond in this conflict as the Greek Church ultimately
did? Would it appease the Constantinople patriarch’s appetite, and could we
expect that no more Churches will be subjected to such violations from it? Will
it all end after Ukraine?
Alas, no. Patriarch Bartholomew
has already announced that he is getting ready to do the same thing in
Macedonia, which is the canonical territory of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
From the start, the “Ukrainian” and “Macedonian” questions were reviewed together.
On April 9, 2018, Patriarch
Bartholomew met with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, and on April 10 with
Macedonian president George Ivanov. Both presidents asked that canonical status
be granted to the schismatic groups of their respective countries. And both
presidents came away from their meetings with the patriarch optimistic about
the future.
On May 30, the Synod of the
Constantinople Patriarchate took up a “review of the status” of the schismatic
“Macedonian Orthodox Church”, which, just like the Ukrainian schismatics, sent
a request for recognition. On June 11, Patriarch Bartholomew publicly
announced: “When the Mother Church seeks the path of salvation of our brothers
from Ukraine and Skopje, it is fulfilling its apostolic duty. It is our
obligation and responsibility to bring these peoples back to ecclesiastical
rightness and canonical order.”
All of these steps point to the
fact that Constantinople proposed a dual intrusion into Ukraine and Macedonia
with recognition of their schismatics contrary to the will of the Local
Churches, whose canonical territories those lands are. However, judging by
everything going on, precisely the Russian Orthodox Church’s tough position
regarding the intrusion into Ukraine, as well as the obvious displeasure on the
part of other Local Churches have forced Patriarch Bartholomew to set aside his
intrusion into the territory of the Serbian Church. He decided to return to the
already proven tactic of breaking the Local Churches one at a time. But without
a doubt, if world Orthodoxy resigns itself to the lawlessness perpetrated in
Ukraine, then Macedonia will be next.
But will Macedonia be the last
intrusion? This is a rhetorical question, for the answer is clear. Not a single
Local Church is insured against intrusion from Constantinople. And even if
there is no base assumption to this, for example in Romania or Bulgaria, then
when the situation changes and the occasion arises, Patriarch Bartholomew or
his successors will no doubt take advantage of it.
After Serbia, the very likely
candidate for intrusion is the canonical territory of the Georgian Orthodox
Church due to the complex situation in Abhazia, where there already are
schismatics fighting for the resolution to the local ecclesiastical question by
addressing it to the Constantinople Patriarchate. They proclaimed themselves
the “Holy Metropolia of Abhazia” and in 2012 had already visited Patriarch
Bartholomew, turning to him again in 2016 with a request for “the resolution of
the Abhazian church problems.”
Within the current geopolitical
conditions an intrusion is not likely, but if the situation changes in the
future, then undoubtedly it will happen and nothing will hinder the
Constantinople patriarch from again announcing that he is “fulfilling his apostolic
duty” to “save our brothers” in Abhazia.
“A new ecclesiological
concept”
Now let us go on to the second
question: What stands behind these actions of the Constantinople patriarchs?
Why do they consider that they have the right to takeover, and what aims are
they pursuing? To answer this question, we do not need to rely on conspiracy
theories or guessing games. It is sufficient for us to pay attention to words
that were publicly pronounced.
Behind all the expansions
mentioned above, as well as many others that we have not even mentioned, and in
order not to drag this article out longer than needed, stands a particular
ecclesiological teaching on the exclusive position of the Constantinople patriarch
in the Orthodox Church.
In early September, at the
Synaxis of bishops of the Constantinople Patriarchate, Patriarch Bartholomew
announced that “for Orthodoxy the Ecumenical Patriarchate serves as a leaven
that leavens the whole lump (Gal. 5:9) of the Church and history... The beginning
of the Orthodox Church is the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in it is life, and this
life is the light of the Church”... “Orthodoxy cannot exist without the
Ecumenical Patriarchate... the Ecumenical Patriarch as the head of Orthodox
Body... If the Ecumenical Patriarchate... leaves the inter-Orthodox scene, the
Local Churches will become like ‘sheep having no shepherd’” (Mt. 9:36).
These remarks can be supplemented
by remarks made by other representatives of the Constantinople Patriarchate.
For example, the words of Metropolitan Amphilochius of Adrianopolis: “What
would the Orthodox Church be without the Ecumenical Patriarchate? A form of
Protestantism... It is unimaginable that some Local Church... should break
communion with [with the Ecumenical Patriarchate], because the canonicity of
its existence comes from it [the Ecumenical Patriarchate].” [1]
And here are the words of
Protopresbyter George Tsetis: “The Constantinople patriarch, whether someone
likes it or not, is the Primate of Orthodoxy, the visible sign of its Unity and
the guarantee of the normally functioning institution that we call the ‘Orthodox
Church.’” [2]
As we see, the matter has gone
very far. If it all began with the assertion that all the Churches in the
diaspora should be in submission to him, now it has reached a point where the
Constantinople patriarch, as it turns out, is the primate of all Orthodoxy, the
head of the Orthodox Body; all the bishops of all the Churches are subject to
his judgment, and the primates of all the other Local Churches are like sheep
to their shepherd. And without him, the Orthodox Church would not even be
Orthodox.
Is this what everyone, always and
everywhere has believed? Don’t these statements shock anyone who is even a
little acquainted with Church history? As we know, even claims to exclusive
primacy by the bishop of Rome were rejected as heresy by the Orthodox world,
but the bishops of Constantinople have even less grounds for such claims—if
only because before the fourth century, Constantinople didn’t exist. Who at
that time was the source, leaven, life and light of the Church? The Church did
just fine without the Constantinople Patriarchate during one of the most
glorious periods of its history. And after the creation of the Constantinople
See, as everyone knows, there were heretics seated there many times. It would
be no mistake to say that in the history of the Constantinople throne, heretics
occupied it more often than any other ancient patriarchal see. And these
periods stretched on for years, even decades. How, after this, can anyone say
that Orthodoxy cannot exist without the Ecumenical Patriarchate and that all
the other Churches receive their canonicity from it? In those times it was
precisely the opposite—canonicity and belonging to Orthodoxy was determined by
the break in communion with the Constantinople throne (and the preservation of
purity of faith, of course).
As it is not hard to see, we have
to do with a new, false teaching being preached by the Constantinople
Patriarchate. This teaching is the very source, and at the same time,
theoretical basis for all his anti-canonical intrusions over the past 100
years, beginning with Finland and ending with Ukraine.
Any new false teaching that arose
in the Church has met opposition and criticism—and this is how it is with the
teaching we are talking about.
Back in 1924, the holy confessor
Patriarch Tikhon wrote to Constantinople patriarch Gregorios VII: “We are not a
little disturbed and surprised that... the head of the Constantinople Church, without
any prior communication with us as the lawful representative and Head of the
whole Russian Orthodox Church, is meddling in the internal life and affairs of
the Autocephalous Russian Church. The Holy Councils (see canons 2 and 3 of the
Second Ecumenical Council and others) recognized only the primacy of honor of
the bishop of Constantinople, but did not nor does recognize primacy of
authority.”
This was said in response to the
Constantinople patriarch’s recognition
of the schismatic-renovationists supported by the Communist regime,
and that he called for Patriarch Tikhon to step down and revoke the
establishment of patriarchy in the Russian Church.
St. John (Maximovitch) also noted
in 1938 that the appearance of this false teaching coincided in time with the
Constantinople Patriarchate’s loss of almost its entire flock on its own
canonical territory as a result of the wars at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Thus, the Constantinople patriarchs decided to compensate for this
loss at the expense of expansion into other Churches.
In the words of St. John, “the
Ecumenical Patriarchate wanted to compensate for the loss of the dioceses that
went out from under its possession, as well as the loss of its own political
significance within the boundaries of Turkey, in regions were there had never
been an Orthodox hierarchy up till this time, as well as the Churches of those
states where the government is not Orthodox... At that time there was a
subjection of separate parts of the Russian Orthodox Church that found
themselves cut off from Russia... Limitlessly expanding its craving to subject
the Russian regions to itself, the Constantinople patriarchs even began making
statements that the joining of Kiev to the Moscow Patriarchate was unlawful...
The next step for the Ecumenical Patriarchate would be to announce that all of
Russia is under the jurisdiction of Constantinople.”
But in fact, as St. John says,
“The Ecumenical Patriarchate... having lost its meaning as the Pillar of Truth
and itself become the source of division, at the same time seized with
exorbitant love of power, presents itself as a pitiful sight that reminds us of
the worst days in the history of the Constantinople See. [3]
The disciple of St. Siluoan of
Mt. Athos, Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), spoke even more specifically
about this problem. In 1950 he wrote:
At the present
time, in the bowels of our Holy Church, a great danger has appeared that
threatens to pervert the dogmatic teaching on it... You ask: In what is this
distortion now seen? We reply: In Constantinopolitan neopapism, which is trying
to move quickly from the theoretical phase into the practical...
[Adherents of
this teaching] at first accepted that Constantinople has jurisdictional
rights... then they began insisting that it has the right of highest appeal in
the universal Church, forgetting that it was precisely these claims by Rome
that lead to the great and final separation of the Churches (1054)... After
assuming the Roman Catholic principle of development, they have accepted that
Constantinople has exclusive rights to the entire Orthodox diaspora in the
world, and rejected this right for all the other autocephalous Churches with
respect to the diaspora... [Constantinople] thinks that other autocephalous
Churches are reduced before it: Constantinople is everything, it is the
Ecumenical [universal] Church, and all the rest are parts, which only belong to
the Ecumenical [universal] Church to the extent that they are connected with
Constantinople.
What true
Christians will accept this? And if, shall we suppose, due to one or another
catastrophe the First and Second Rome disappear from the face of the earth,
does that mean that the world will be left without a true connection with God,
because the connecting links with Him disappeared? No, this is a strange
voice (Jn. 10:5). This is not our Christian faith.
Need we say that
this form of papism is also an ecclesiastical heresy, just like Roman papism?..
We reject any “Rome”—the First, Second, and Third—if this means the
introduction of a principle of subordination into the life of our Church. We
reject any Constantinople, Moscow, London, Paris, New York, or any other papism
as an ecclesiological heresy that distorts Christianity. [4]
Not only Russian ecclesiastical
authors have written about this problem, but also authors from other Local
Churches. Thus for example, after the above-mentioned teaching of the
Constantinople Church was stated, Archpriest Radomir Popovich of the Serbian
Church noted that “this type of thinking reminds us of Rome... here they are
talking not only about the bishop of Constantinople’s primacy of honor, but
about a whole package of prerogatives of exclusive powers over the whole
Orthodox world. This, unfortunately, is identical to the pretenses of the Roman
bishop, and therefore many are justifiably talking about the appearance of a
new pope.” [5]
And here are the words of one
bishop of the Antiochian Church, the archbishop of Australia and New Zealand:
In educated
circles it is well known that the patriarch of Constantinople does not have the
same position in the church hierarchy of the Orthodox Church that the bishop of
Rome occupies in the Catholic church. The patriarch of Constantinople is not
the Roman pope of the East. It is also well known in educated Orthodox circles
that in the past there have been cases when the Constantinople patriarchs at
Ecumenical and other Local Councils were recognized as heretics... The
Constantinople patriarch is not the voice of Orthodoxy and cannot set the
standards in Orthodoxy, [6]
Disagreement with Patriarch
Bartholomew’s actions, which contradict the holy canons and sow temptations and
schisms, was expressed in a Statement by Metropolitan Seraphim of Kithyra and
Antikythera of the Greek Orthodox Church. [7]
More commentary could easily be
cited here, including by representatives of other Local Churches. But
non-acceptance of the Constantinople Patriarchate’s false teaching is not
limited to the words of various hierarchs and priests—there has also been a conciliar
condemnation of it. This took place in 2008 at the Council of Bishops of the
Russian Orthodox Church. In this special resolution is stated:
The Council
expresses its deep concern regarding the tendencies... appearing in the
statements of certain representatives of the Holy Constantinople Church.
Based upon the
understanding of canon 28 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council by the indivisible
fullness of the Orthodox Church, these hierarchs and theologians are developing
a new ecclesiological concept that is becoming a challenge for all-Orthodox
unity. According to this concept: a) Only the Local Church that is in communion
with the Constantinople See is considered as belonging to world Orthodoxy; b)
The Constantinople Patriarchate has the exclusive right of church jurisdiction
in all the countries of the Orthodox diaspora; c) In these countries the
Constantinople Patriarchate alone represents the opinion and interests of all
the Local Churches before the government authorities; d) Any bishop or
clergyman who serves outside the canonical territory of its Local Church is
under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Constantinople, even if he doesn’t
recognize this himself... e) The Constantinople Patriarchate determines the
geographical boundaries of the Churches, and if his opinion does not correspond
to the opinion of one or another Church on this matter, it can institute its
own jurisdiction on the territory of that Church...
This view by the
Constantinople Patriarchate of its own rights and powers enter into
insurmountable contradiction with many-centuries-old canonical traditions upon
which the existence of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Local Churches are
built.” [8]
Although in this council
resolution, out of economia the word “heresy” is not stated,
the rejected and condemned teaching is defined as a “new ecclesiological
concept,” which marks the problem as being in the sphere of dogma and not only
canons—for ecclesiology (the teaching about the Church) is a part of dogmatics.
In 2013 the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church accepted the document, “On the
question of primacy in the Universal Church”, in which it explains why it does
not accept the Constantinople Patriarchate’s new teaching:
“In the Holy
Church of Christ, primacy belongs in all things to its Head—our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ... Various forms of primacy in the Church are secondary in
relation to the eternal primacy of Christ as the Head of the Church... On the
level of the Universal Church as a community of autocephalous Local Churches,
united in one family by the common confession of faith and abiding in
sacramental communion with each other, primacy is determined in accordance with
the tradition of the holy diptychs and is a primacy of honor... The order of
the diptychs has historically changed... Canon law, upon which the holy
diptychs are based, does not grant to the one in the first position any
privilege of power on the Church-wide scale... The ecclesiological distortions
that ascribe the function of rule to the hierarch in the first position... have
received the name ‘papism.’” [9]
Also, in a more recent statement
of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church dated September 14, 2018 are
comments on the above-mentioned words from the Constantinople patriarch: “These
statements are difficult to assess in any other way than an attempt to remake
Orthodox ecclesiology according to the Roman Catholic model... in attempts to
assert its power, which does not exist and never has, over the Orthodox
Church.”
All these cited quotes prove that
the appearance of a new false teaching that distorts the dogma of the Church
has not gone unnoticed—individual authors as well as councils have raised their
voices to expose it.
It is very sad to admit that the
ancient Constantinople See is again infected with a heresy, but this is no
longer just a suspicion—it is a committed fact that has been witnessed many
times. It is this very heresy, as we have already noted, that is motivating the
Constantinople patriarchs to commit their lawless acts aimed at solidifying
their self-ascribed power over the Orthodox Church. And this process will not
end in Ukraine or Macedonia—after all, not every Church has given
Constantinople its diaspora parishes and agreed with its claims.
This problem cannot be solved by
any diplomatic maneuvers, compromises, or attempts to come to an agreement. All
of this has been done, to no positive effect. According to the words of St.
Mark of Ephesus, “Nothing that has to do with the Church can be corrected
through compromises. There is no middle ground between Truth and falsehood.”
[10]
A Pan-Orthodox
Council is needed
As always in the Church, dogmatic
problems are healed only by condemning heresy and heretics, deposing them and
placing Orthodox bishops on the cathedrae that had been held captive to
heretics. This path is of course painful, but it is the only way to heal the
Body of the Church. But modern events show that putting off a church decision
on this problem is also by no means painless. It is already painful for the
faithful of the canonical Church in Ukraine. But they could become the final
victims if only all the Local Churches would find the will to gather for a
common conciliar condemnation of neopapism. Furthermore, any attempt at papism
needs to be condemned once and for all, so that no other Church would be
tempted to fall into it in the future; so that no one would follow in the
footsteps of the first and second Rome.
A Pan-Orthodox Council should be
called, which would make a sober assessment of the new teaching, as well as its
practical expression in the form of lawless intrusions upon the territory of
other Churches. Of course, Patriarch Bartholomew is not likely to visit such a
Council—after all, within the framework of his false teaching he is pushing the
idea that only he can call a Pan-Orthodox Council. Then he won’t have to face
anyone’s judgment, because it’s obvious that Patriarch Bartholomew himself will
never call a Council to judge his own speeches and actions.
History contradicts this idea—not
one Ecumenical Council has ever been called by the Constantinople Patriarch;
moreover, some of the Councils deposed and anathematized the heretical bishops
of that cathedra. And after the epoch of the Ecumenical Councils, the Church
also enacted its judicial power over Constantinople patriarchs. Thus, for
example, after the Ferrara-Florentine Unia in 1443 a Council was held in
Jerusalem of three Eastern patriarchs, who deposed the heretical Constantinople
Patriarch Mitrophan. In those days, for many years the first in honor in the
Orthodox Church was the patriarch of Alexandria, until an Orthodox patriarch
was placed in the Constantinople cathedra.
In 2005, Patriarch Bartholomew
called a Pan-Orthodox Council, at which he succeeded in deposing Patriarch
Ireneus of Jerusalem, although the accusations against him were not about
canonical violations that would have merited deposition, never mind the subsequent
defrocking. The actions and assertions of Patriarch Bartholomew himself are
much more deserving of a dispassionate review at a Pan-Orthodox Council.
And with such dispassionate
review, of course it should be considered that the false teaching propagated by
the Constantinople patriarchs beginning in 1922 directly contradict the faith
that their ancient predecessors confessed on that cathedra.
For example, Patriarch Germanos
II (1222–1240) said, “There are five patriarchates with specific borders for
each, and in recent times a schism has arisen amongst them, the beginning of
which was placed by a brazen hand having predominance and lordship in the
Church. The head of the Church is Christ, and any demand of headship is against
His teaching.” [11] Unfortunately, his modern successors have themselves
decided to demand headship of the Church, apparently considering that being
under the headship of Christ is not enough for the Orthodox.
In antiquity the Constantinople
patriarchs said straightforwardly that they are counteracting the primacy of
the Roman pope not because of any desire to assert their own primacy. In part,
Patriarch Nilos Kerameus (1380–1388) wrote to Pope Urban VI: “It is not fair
what some are saying of us that we desire to have primacy.” [12] The current
patriarch has shamed his predecessors, inasmuch as he has, alas, made these
accusations entirely fair.
These words are from an
Encyclical of four patriarchs in 1848: “The dignity [of the Roman See] consists
not in lordship and not in headship, which Peter himself never received, but in
the fraternal seniority in the universal Church and advantage given the popes
for the sake of the renown and antiquity of their city... we Orthodox have
preserved the catholic [universal] Church as the unspotted bride of her
Bridegroom, although we have no secular oversight or “sacred rule”, but are
only united by the bonds of love and zeal for our common Mother, in unity of
faith, sealed with seven seals of the Spirit (Rev. 5:1); that is, the seven
Ecumenical Councils, and in obedience to the truth.”
Beneath these words is the
signature of Constantinople patriarch Anthimos, who, like his ancient
predecessors, shared the same view on the question of primacy in the Church
that the Russian Orthodox Church is now expressing. And the current
Constantinople Patriarchate has departed from this faith, in fact so obviously
that it openly criticizes and even calls it a heresy, as we can see from the
words of the former secretary of the Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate
Archimandrite Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis), now Metropolitian of Prussia. He
stated that “refusal to accept primacy in the Orthodox Church—primacy that can
only be embodied by the first [hierarch]—is no less of a heresy.”
Even the Roman Church needed more
time than this to dogmatize its teaching on the primacy of the pope.
It is sad to acknowledge that
even in the Greek Churches we have seen the rising of this heresy. There was
some opposition in the Alexandria Patriarchate in the mid twentieth century,
but then it ended. Although it would be hard to call Patriarch Bartholomew a
popular figure, and in the Greek language one can find quite a lot of criticism
against him. He is accused of canonical crimes, and of various heresies; but in
the Greek language we don’t find anything accusing him of neopapsim.
Papism in the
documents of the ill-famed Council of Crete
Let’s take also the ill-famed
Council of Crete, which was the cause of so many temptations and divisions. How
much criticism extremely intelligent people have aimed at it! There have even
been accusations voiced of dogmatic mistakes in it documents; but at the same
time, no one noticed the multiple metastases of the heresy of Constantinople
papism that had crept into various council documents. Although, as we are
convinced, that council was called precisely in order to have those
self-ascribed privileges of the Constantinople Patriarchate recognized on the
pan-Orthodox level. Its documents are of no value for any other Local Orthodox
Church, and they did not resolve any relevant pan-Orthodox problems. However,
there is much written in the documents in favor of the Constantinople
Patriarchate, and we will cite a few examples of this below.
It is worth stipulating here that
the Constantinople version of papism does not correspond one hundred percent
with the Roman version. There are some differences. For example, if in Roman
papism the figure of the pope is exalted but all other bishops are thought to
be equal to each other, then in the Constantinople version of papism, special
rights and privileges extend to some degree to the bishops of the
Constantinople Church. This is written in the document accepted at the Crete
Council called, “The Orthodox Diaspora”. In section 2b is outlined the order of
procedure of bishops’ councils in non-Orthodox countries of the world, and in
part it is determined that “the assembly shall consist of all the bishops of
every region and will proceed under the chairmanship of the senior bishop in
submission to the Constantinople Church.”
As we can see, not only the
Constantinople patriarch, but also all bishops in submission to him possess the
right of primacy in relation to all the other bishops of all other Local
Churches, inasmuch as they should preside at local assemblies of Orthodox
bishops of various jurisdictions.
Even the Latins didn’t think of
that.
In many places in the Crete
documents, the Constantinople patriarch is given power over all the Orthodox
Churches, including judicial. In part:
- “In matters of common interests and demanding...
pan-Orthodox review, the chairman [of the bishops’ assembly] shall address
the Ecumenical Patriarch for further actions” (Orthodox diaspora, 6).
- “In the course of the following pan-Orthodox
discussion the Ecumenical patriarch shall determine the unanimous
consensus of Orthodox Churches” (Relationship of the Orthodox Church with
the rest of the Christian world, 10).
- On the territory of the Orthodox diaspora, autonomous
Churches shall not be established except in cases of pan-Orthodox
agreement provided by the Ecumenical patriarch” (Autonomy and the method
of proclaiming it, 2d).
- “In case differences of opinion arise... the
participating sides shall jointly or separately address the Ecumenical
patriarch, so that the latter would find a canonical solution to the
problem” (Autonomy and the method of pronouncing it, 2e).
In the Missive of the Council of
Crete, it is proposed that a Holy and Great Council be instituted as a regular
institution, the Constantinople patriarch for some reason having the only right
to call it, which is something that has no basis in either the history or
theology of the Orthodox Church.
However, the right to call a
Pan-Orthodox Council should belong not only to the first primate in the
diptychs, but to any primate of a Local Church. Limiting this right only to the
Constantinople patriarch makes it impossible to call a council in the case of a
Local Church’s claim against the Constantinople patriarch, and in fact makes
the patriarch of that Church not subject to any judicial proceedings, which
contradicts the canonical order of Orthodoxy, according to which any bishop is
subject to the judgment of a court of bishops.
Why have Greek authors passed
over all of this, as well as other more outrageous expressions of the heresy of
Constantinople papism that we have cited above? Could it really be that they
share in that heresy? Or are they ready to make peace with it simply for the
sake of national solidarity? This is hard to believe; after all, the glory of
the Orthodox Greek people always consisted in its dedication to the truth, for
the sake of which its best representatives were not afraid to expose the
Constantinople patriarchs who fell into heresy. Thus it was for St. Maximos the
Confessor at the time of the monothelite patriarchs, thus it was for St. Mark
of Ephesus at the time of the Ferrara-Florentine Unia, thus is was for St.
Meletius the Confessor at the time of the Lyon Unia... We could go on. For all
of these holy Greeks, faithfulness to the truth always took first place. What
has changed?
After all, we are not talking
about “taking the side of the Russians” or the “Slavs”, but about standing on
the side of the truth. How many confessors and martyrs from among the Greek
people have suffered in order not to accept Western papism? Could it really
only all have been for their descendants to submissively accept the very same
heresy, only this time wrapped in an Eastern, Greek wrapper? May it never be!
We must talk briefly about the
claims of the Constantinople patriarch to judicial authority and arbitrage
throughout the entire Orthodox Church, inasmuch as these claims are part of
that same wrapper. Of course, this article is dedicated to the dogmatic issue,
and therefore we are not discussing canonical matters, which have been
sufficiently covered in other articles. In view of the systematic violations
and infringements of many canons by the Constantinople Patriarchate we are
simply taken aback when at the same time we hear the announcement that the
“Ecumenical Patriarchate bears responsibility for bringing matters into
ecclesiastical a canonical order.” And these statements are being voiced at the
same time that this Patriarchate is revoking canons altogether—for example the
apostolic canon that forbids clergy from marrying twice.
But does
Constantinople have the right of appeal?
Although we can discuss many
things in this regard, it would drag this article out longer than necessary.
But nevertheless, it is worth discussing one example of specific claims on
judicial powers over the whole Church. In his already mentioned recent speeches,
Patriarch Bartholomew spoke of the “unique privileges of the Constantinople
Church to accept appeals from hierarchs and clergy seeking refuge from all the
Local Orthodox Churches.” And these statements are made with reference to the
ninth and seventeenth canons of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, as if they
bestowed that privilege on the Constantinople Patriarchate. And by this he
justifies, in part, his intrusion into Ukrainian affairs and the acceptance
into communion of defrocked schismatics.
We can understand just to what
extent this interpretation of the canons agrees with Church Tradition by
comparing it with the explanation of St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite in his famous
“Pedalion” (“Rudder”):
The
Constantinople [Patriarchate] does not have the authority to act in dioceses
and within the boundaries of other patriarchs, and the given canon does not
grant him the right of appellate instance throughout the whole Church...
Therefore, Zonaras in his explanation of the 17th canon of this Council says
that Constantinople is not placed as judge over all metropolitans in general,
but only over those in submission to him.
The
Constantinople [Patriarchate] is the only first and last judge for
metropolitans in submission to him, but not for those in submission to other
patriarchs, because the unity of the Ecumenical Council is the final and
all-encompassing judge of all patriarchs, and no one else.
As we see, the false teaching on
the dogmas is based upon a false interpretation of canons, which, of course
unsurprisingly, inasmuch as we are talking about teachings, is alien to the
Orthodox Church. Of course, adherents of this teaching, like any other
heretics, can seek out various separate citations from old texts that are
amenable to them, especially ones coming out of Constantinople; they can recall
also the engulfment by Constantinople of the Bulgarian and Serbian Churches
during the time of the Ottoman Empire—quite dubious and contentious actions,
which Constantinople later had to correct. But all of this cannot change the
fact that any papism is alien to Orthodox teaching, be it Western or Eastern.
As the holy hieromartyr Gorazd of Czechia wrote, “The Eastern Church accepted
only Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church and rejected the very idea of
accepting an [ordinary] man as the head... because it saw this idea as the
consequence of a lack of faith in the invisible Head—Jesus Christ—and His
living rule over the Body of the Universal Church... as well as incompatible
with the apostolic principle of conciliar decision of Church matters, which was
expressed in its highest form at the Ecumenical Councils.” [13]
The Constantinople
Patriarch, and not the “Ecumenical” Patriarch
It is also worth talking about
how the Constantinople Patriarchate uses its various titles of honor as the
basis for promoting his papism—first of all the title, “Ecumenical (Universal)
Patriarch”. If earlier this title was one of his titles of honor, like for
example the Alexandria patriarch’s title of “Ecumenical Judge (Judge of the
Universe)”, then in recent times it has become in fact the Constantinople
primate’s official and main self-name. They have called themselves exclusively
by this name for a long time, with their own understanding that their
ecclesiastical jurisdiction extends literally over the whole universe.
As an example of this term’s use,
we can cite the words of Metropolitan Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis):
The primacy of
the archbishop of Constantinople has nothing in common with the diptychs, which
only express hierarchical order... If we talk about the source of primacy, then
the source is the very person of the archbishop of Constantinople himself, who
as a bishop is the “first among equals”, but as the archbishop of
Constantinople, and correspondingly, Ecumenical (Universal) patriarch he is the
first without equal. [14]
Such an understanding of his
“ecumenical (as in “universal”) jurisdiction” was also expressed in that during
the twentieth century the hierarchs of the Constantinople Church have divided
amongst themselves all countries of the world with the exception of those which
they themselves recognize as belonging to other autocephalous Churches. So,
even the countries in which there is not a single Orthodox Christian have found
themselves written into the canonical territory of one or another bishop of the
Constantinople Church. And that bishop can get angry and even furiously protest
if some other Church opens its mission in a country wherein he has never even
stepped foot and where he doesn’t have a single believer—simply by force of the
above-mentioned allocation. That this allocation of the world, which originated
only within the twentieth century, again exposes this teaching as new and
previously unknown in the Church—because had it been ancient, the
Constantinople bishops would have introduced that allocation much earlier.
It is sufficiently well known
that even when the title “Ecumenical” began to be used by the Constantinople
bishops, the holy Pope Gregory the Dialogist categorically denounced it. He
wrote in part to Patriarch John of Constantinople:
As a result of
your criminal and pride-filled title, the Church is divided and the hearts of
your brothers are led into temptation... If the apostle Paul avoided submitting
the members of Christ in their parts to a certain head, as if going around
Christ, though these heads were the apostles themselves, then what will you say
to Christ, Who is the Head of the Universal Church, when tried at the Last
Judgment—you, who with your title of “ecumenical” are trying to subject all His
members to yourself?
And here are his words from a
letter to Patriarchs Eulogios of Alexandria and Anastasios of Antioch:
None of my
predecessors agreed to use this dishonorable title (ecumenical) because, in
fact, if any patriarch will call himself ecumenical, then by this he takes away
the patriarchal title from others.
Nevertheless, the Constantinople
patriarchs did not heed the words of the Orthodox pope, St. Gregory the
Dialogist, who was at that time first in honor. And this title continued to be
used. Some try to defend its use by saying that it supposedly is not used in
the sense that St. Gregory wrote about, that it was no more than an elegant
title, something like “Ecumenical Teacher” and “Ecumenical Librarian”, which
they also had in the imperial capital. Perhaps that is how it was at the
beginning, but if we look at how this title has finally come to be used, then
we can count St. Gregory’s words as prophetic.
St. Gregory was not the only pope
who came out against the use of the title “ecumenical”. In the second act of
the Seventh Ecumenical Council, we read that the epistle that Pope Adrian of
Rome wrote to the emperor was read aloud. In the original text of this epistle,
besides a condemnation of iconoclasm, were these words:
We were very
surprised when we found that in your imperial edicts published about the
patriarch of the ruling city, that is, about Tarasius, he is also called
ecumenical. We do not know whether this was written was out of ignorance or at
the suggestion of impious schismatics and heretics; but we strongly ask your
most merciful imperial power that he never, not in a single of his writings
sign as “ecumenical”; because it is clear that this is against the
establishment of the holy canons and traditions of the holy fathers...
Therefore, if anyone should call him ecumenical or give consent to this, then
let them know that it is alien to the Orthodox faith.
Although there is a great
probability that these places in the epistle were not translated into Greek
during its reading at the Council, nevertheless we see for the second time that
the first primate of that time directly criticized and forbade the use of the
title “ecumenical” by Constantinople patriarchs. These testimonies give us
grounds to talk about the unlawfulness of using this title. Therefore, Orthodox
writers should not use the name, “Ecumenical Patriarch”, but call him the
“Constantinople Patriarch”, in order not to support the very use of this title
and the spreading of the heresy of new papism.
The Mother Church?
Another title actively being used
by Constantinople as a basis for its ambitions is “Mother Church”, although
this title, like those before it, was never given to the Constantinople throne
by any Ecumenical Council, but was in fact self-willfully assumed.
It is fully justified only in the
historical context and only in relation to Churches that received their
autocephaly from the Constantinople Church. However, it is being used in a much
broader sense. For example, in the above-mentioned speech, Patriarch
Bartholomew talks about his Patriarchate as a “caring Mother and parent of the
Church” in his claims on a special place in the pan-Orthodox communion. But
this understanding of the Constantinople Church as the Mother of all Churches
is obviously absurd, because many ancient Patriarchates historically preceded
the appearance of Constantinople. Then how could it be their mother? If any
Church could lay claim to this title, it would be the Jerusalem Church. All the
Churches have always recognized its special historical contribution, but it was
never understood as a right to lordship and power.
But Constantinople uses the
self-ascribed title of “Mother Church” as grounds for its striving to subject
to its authority all the other autocephalous Churches, which are supposed to be
submissive and obedient like daughters to their mother. Although as Archimandrite
Sophrony (Sakharov) noted, even if we were to allow that Constantinople
can truly call
itself the Mother of all Churches... in any case, extrapolating submission from
the fact of historical motherhood would be a departure from Orthodox triadology,
according to which Fatherhood or Sonship does not remove the fullness of
equality. The One Who is born from a being is equal to the One from Whom He was
born. That is how the holy fathers thought. [15]
And the words “caring mother”
sound especially cynical from the lips of Patriarch Bartholomew. No caring
mother would ever do to her children what Constantinople is doing to the
Russian Church, and not much earlier than that to the Greek Church. If we had
to apply the word “mother” to the Constantinople Patriarchate, then its actions
more closely illustrate the sickening pagan image of a mother who devours her
own children. And who can blame the children who decide to leave such a
“mother”?
That the Russian Church has
broken Eucharistic communion with Constantinople would be justified even if
this matter were limited only to its desire to protest this evildoing on the
scale of the entire Church, and to protect its children from communion with
those who have entered into communion with schismatics. But in fact it is all
much more serious than that. The Russian Orthodox Church has become the first
to refuse to submit to the heresy of papism that is being imposed on all the
Churches by the Constantinople Patriarchate.
And all the other Local Churches
will sooner or later have to make the same choice—not between the “Russians”
and the “Greeks”, but between Orthodoxy and heresy.
NOTES
1. https://cognoscoteam.gr/αρνούμενος-το-οικουμενικό-πατριαρχε/.
2. «Ορθόδοξος
“Εκκλησία” ή “Συνομοσπονδία” Τοπικών Εκκλησιών»--“Orthodox ‘Church’ or
‘Confederation’ of Local Churches?”
3. Citations
from the report, “The state of the Orthodox Church after the war” at the Second
All-Diaspora Council (Sremski Karlovsti, August 1/14, 1938)
http://orthochristian.com/115619.html.
4. Hieromonk
Sophrony (Sakharov), “Unity of the Church in the image of the Unity of the Holy
Trinity (Vestnik of the Russian Western European Patriarchal Exarchate, 1950,
No. 2-3), 8-32.
5. Archpriest
Radomir V. Popovic, Ангажована теологиjа Цариградске Патриjаршиjе // www.svetosavlje.org/angazovana-teologija-carigradske-patrijarsije/.
6. Archbishop
Pavel of Australia and New Zealand, “Friendship with other Churches”, www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=7&id=27764.
7. https://mospat.ru/ru/2018/09/18/news163919/.
8. Determination
of the holy Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow, June
24-29, 2008), “On the Unity of the Church”.
9. http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/3481089.html.
10. St. Mark
of Ephesus, Epistle to Scholarius, II.
11. Cited
from: I. I. Sokolov, Lectures on the history of the Greek-Eastern
Church (St. Petersburg, 2005), 129.
12. Ibid.,
186.
13. Gorazd,
biskup Českэ a Moravsko-Slezskэ. Život sv. Cyrila a Metoděje a jejich poměr k
Řнmu a Cařihradu // http://www.orthodoxia.cz/gorazd/pavlik2.htm.
14. http://history-mda.ru/publ/pervyiy-bez-ravnyih-otvet-na-dokument-o-pervenstve-v-tserkvi-prinyatyiy-na-zasedanii-svyashhennogo-sinoda-russkoy-pravoslavnoy-tserkvi_3650.html.
15. Hieromonk
Sophrony (Sakharov), “Unity of the Church in the image of the Unity of the Holy
Trinity, p. 25.
Russian
original:
https://pravoslavie.ru/118507.html
English
source (typos corrected):
https://orthochristian.com/118982.html
Greek
translation:
https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2019/01/blog-post_25.html
