"The Boundaries of the Church" by Protopriest Lev Lebedeff (+1998)

September 1996 | Kursk, Russia

 

I

The Church! Holy and undefiled Bride of Christ, “the wife, the bride of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:9) — where are You?! Such a cry, a wail, is at times involuntarily torn from the heart of an Orthodox person at the sight of the utter disorder, instability, and divisions that have befallen Orthodoxy in the 20th century. In this cry is both the sorrow of a son for his beloved, but seemingly hidden from view, mother, and fear for himself, for his soul, which cannot be saved without the Church.

Greece, the cradle of Orthodoxy! There now are divisions and schisms, connected to the calendar issue (“old” and “new” style), and more broadly — with the spread of ecumenism and modernism. The Greeks who have recoiled from these heresies of the new age and who wish to preserve the Orthodox faith undefiled, alas, have not formed a monolith; they have split among themselves into several “old calendar” associations, lacking Eucharistic and prayerful unity…

Russia, the stronghold of universal Orthodoxy since the 15th century! Here too is a dreadful schism. In our days — this is above all the extremely painful division between the Russian Church Abroad and the Moscow “patriarchate.”

This is what we shall speak about.

Because here, in the matter of the schism of once-united Russian Orthodoxy, we can see the causes of all other schisms within the bosom of the Eastern, Greek-Catholic Church.

The question is posed as follows: if two Churches, equally firmly calling themselves “Russian” and “Orthodox,” have for 70 years been in a state of sharp ideological and spiritual war, and fundamentally have no liturgical communion — what does this mean? How is this to be understood? To which Church should the contemporary Russian Orthodox person join himself?

For him, these are not abstract, “theoretical” questions, but matters of life and death. For the Orthodox believer knows that the Church, according to the word of the Apostle, is the “Body of Christ,” whose Head is Christ Himself, and the faithful are members of this mystical Body. Therefore, the entire matter of personal salvation consists in whether or not a person enters into this living, grace-filled organism.

It is also known that the living mystical Body of Christ, united, moved, and taught by Him Himself and the Holy Spirit, cannot be fragmented, cannot be divided! There cannot be several “bodies” of Christ — as the ever-memorable Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) rightly noted — and from this he drew the completely accurate conclusion that the division of the Church is an ontologically impossible phenomenon, and that it (a division) has never occurred; rather, there have only been and can only be falls away from the Church by various communities, even if they call themselves “Christian” and “churches,” but are not such in reality.

All that glitters is not gold… Not everything that calls itself “Christianity” is truly such. This, the Russian person has known from of old. The Church is one! This was stated already by A. S. Khomyakov.

Therefore now, when before the eyes of a Russian there are two “Russian Orthodox Churches” unable to attain unity, the very first thought that suggests itself is that one of these Churches has fallen away from Christ, no longer belongs to His “Body” (either due to heresy, or due to schism, or due to both reasons together), and a person need only determine — which one exactly: the one that calls itself the Moscow “patriarchate” or the Russian Church Abroad?..

However, in the way of such a radical and seemingly clear and straightforward question, stands a great obstacle — the evident presence in both Churches of God’s signs, miracles, and other grace-filled manifestations, and the living Orthodox faith of multitudes of Russian people who do not share in any heretical delusions!

What, then, is happening?!

This is what must be clarified — from historical, canonical, dogmatic, and spiritual-mystical points of view. From various sides. Let us state from the outset that the Church can be understood not from without, not from the standpoint of an external observer, but only from within, from itself, for only the Church of God knows of itself what it is and what it is not. Therefore, our modest labor is not for outsiders, not for those without, but for our own — for the Orthodox.

Let us begin with the most important: what is the Church?

II

The catechetical definition states: “The Church is a society of people established by God, united by the Orthodox faith, the Law of God, the sacred hierarchy, and the Sacraments.” The key phrase here is “a society of people established by God.” This immediately leads us to the concept of the God-manhood of the Founder of the Church — Christ. He Himself, in the Gospel, describes the “society of people” He is building in various images, from various angles. Let us focus on two of them which are of utmost importance to our theme. “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser... Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:1–6).

Here it speaks of the natural, organic unity of the Church in Christ. Such unity has as its source and prototype the Triune unity of the Godhead. For further on in the same Gospel we read: “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. …Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are” (John 17:9–11); “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us… that they may be one just as We are one” (John 17:20–21). In turn, such unity has as its foundation and source Divine love. “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” And from this comes the repeated: “This is My commandment, that you love one another” (John 15:9–12). Everything becomes entirely clear from the insistent testimony of the Apostle John the Theologian: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Consequently, selfless, spiritual, Godly love is a fundamental principle and one of the chief marks of the true Church of Christ.

Love is a purely spiritual state. But the people who make up the Church are not only spirits; they are spiritual-bodily beings, just as Christ is not only God, but also man of flesh and blood. Hence, the organic unity of the Church, described by Christ in the image of “the vine and the branches,” receives, by divine inspiration, in the Apostle Paul, a supplement or clarification through the image of the human body. The Church is “the Body of Christ,” whose “head” is Christ Himself, and the faithful are members (parts, particles) of this mystical “Body” (1 Cor. 12:12–27; Eph. 1:22–23; 4:4; 12–16,25; 5:30; Col. 1:18).

As we have already noted in the work “Orthodoxia” (“The Orthodox Way,” 1994), in the texts cited from the Apostle Paul, under the image of “the Body of Christ” two meanings are alternately implied: the individual body of a single person, and the body common to two in marital union, where “the two shall be one flesh.” In the latter case is meant the union (marriage) of Christ and His beloved “Bride” — the Church. Here, according to V. N. Lossky, the body common to both receives the hypostasis of the bridegroom; the Church is the Church of Christ. But as the “Bride,” she is a person distinct from the bridegroom, loving Him and loved by Him.

The union of “the two becoming one flesh” in marriage, and even more so the union of the members of the individual body of a person, is accomplished through flesh and blood. According to the unanimous opinion of all the Fathers, teachers, and authorities of the Church, the unity of the Church in love with Christ and of people with one another is achieved through the partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. The Holy Eucharist is the most essential foundation of the unity of the Church as the Body of Christ, of the unity of the members of the Church with one another and with Christ in the spirit of love! This is a blood-bonded (through the Blood of Christ) brotherhood, truly a new humanity in Christ.

Emphasizing precisely this meaning of the Eucharist for the Church, Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky), in his excellent work “Christianity Does Not Exist Without the Church,” writes: “All of Christ’s earthly work must therefore be viewed not merely as a teaching. Christ came to earth not at all in order to communicate to people a few new truths; no, He came to create an entirely new life of humanity — that is, the Church” (p. 17).

Now we can clearly behold with the mind’s eye this new life. It is in the mystical Body of Christ—the Body of the “New Adam,” risen from the dead into the eternal glory of the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, everyone who by faith, Baptism, Communion, and life according to the faith enters as a certain cell, a particle, into this other, grace-filled Body of Christ, together with this Body rises also into eternal life, into the “New Jerusalem,” the Kingdom of Heaven. However, this “Kingdom,” as the Kingdom of God, the light of Divine Trinitarian love, begins spiritually already here for the members of the Church, under the earthly conditions of existence, in the joy of living personal communion with God, with Christ, the Holy Spirit, angels, and holy people (long having departed from this world, yet living in another)!

It is perfectly evident that the Church—this “new life” of the new humanity in Christ, whose Head is He Himself—being organically, through the Flesh and Blood of Christ, in the spirit of love and harmony of all members united into one and single Body, lives in the harmonious unity of mind (“the mind of Christ”), which communicates to the Church certain truths (dogmas of doctrine) of the spirit, first and foremost of the Holy Spirit, canonical order as the system of laws of the organism’s life, liturgical order as the single form of Divine worship. And like every organism, it has a definite visible structure (organization) or system of governance, headed by the Church hierarchy.

Significant deviations in any of these foundations of the Church—namely, in the truths of the faith, in the canons, in the divine services (the manner of performing the Mysteries), in obedience to the hierarchy—can lead to falling away from the Church, as it were, to being cast out of the Body of Christ. That such a phenomenon is possible is affirmed by Christ Himself: “…My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away.” This means that someone might at first belong to the living Body of Christ, be nourished by its grace-filled sap and strength, but then be cast out or cut off, “as a branch and wither”…

How terrifying it is for any believer to be subjected to such a fate! For this means not only being deprived of the true connection with Christ in this earthly life, but also of the inheritance of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, to be cut off from the very love of God! And it would seem that in that new humanity, that new life, which is the Church, such a thing could not and should not occur! But… it does happen!

Why?

Because not everyone, not all, are able to see in the real, earthly Church, as a “society of people,” the Kingdom of God, the Body of Christ… V. N. Lossky speaks well on this: “How many people pass by the Church, not noticing the radiance of eternal glory in the form of humility and abasement. But did many recognize the Son of God in the ‘Man of Sorrows’? One must have eyes to see, and senses opened toward the Holy Spirit, in order to recognize fullness where the outward eye sees only limitation and insufficiency” (Essays on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Mystical Theology, Kyiv, 1991, p. 257).

Thus, the kenosis of Divinity at the First Coming of Christ, when the incarnate Son of God appeared before the world in the form of a wandering Teacher, an ordinary man—that same kenosis is also proper to the earthly, “wandering” Church of Christ as a “society of people.” This has entirely natural reasons. The point is that even sincerely believing, baptized, and devoted members of the Church live a dual life—partly already in Christ and with Christ, and partly still according to the “old Adam,” that is, they sin. The Church, therefore, is not yet the Kingdom of Heaven, but already is the “Kingdom not of this world.” In this respect, the earthly Church is but an image of the future Heavenly world and makes its movement, its Pascha (passage), toward this Archetype of hers. For this reason, all manner of weaknesses of mind, will, and feeling, various falls into sin, through temptations from the flesh, the world, and the devil, are proper to the visible members of the Church, regardless of their hierarchical rank. Among them, some, constantly turning to the Mystery of Repentance (Confession), are continually renewed and cleansed in Christ, while others may also fall away from Him completely… Those, however, who do not fall away, are saved.

So then, human beings—though sinful, yet being saved—are precisely those who constitute the Church, as the Body of Christ, as the “new life” of the new humanity. And in them, despite all, there operates that love which Christ commanded in the “new commandment,” and by this love they confess the Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible. And in this “new life,” that is, in the Church—in human weakness the power of God is made perfect, and the grace of the Holy Spirit always heals what is infirm and completes what is lacking.

This is what the Church is.

From this understanding of the Church as the organic unity of the Body, whose Head is Christ, and we are the members (particles), made alive and governed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, bound together by common love and unanimity—from such an understanding alone can one proceed in the examination of concrete historical questions of contemporary ecclesiastical existence.

It is precisely this understanding that lies at the foundation of the 9th Article of the Creed: “I believe in one (from Church Slavonic — ‘a single’) Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”

III

Where, then, is this Church of Christ on earth? Not so long ago—some mere 80 years ago—there was no difficulty in this question for the Orthodox, including the Russians. The true, united, and single Church of Christ is the Orthodox Church, consisting of the fraternal union of the Eastern Orthodox Local Churches: Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Russian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Serbian, Romanian, Greek, and several others of lesser size. All of them were united in all the fundamental principles mentioned above—that is, they preserved a single order of dogmatic, canonical, and liturgical life, and therefore were in Eucharistic, prayerful, and all other forms of communion. Thus, a Russian could calmly receive Communion among the Greeks, Georgians, Bulgarians, Serbs, etc., and a Greek or Bulgarian could approach the Chalice in Russia without any doubt. One Eucharist! This meant—one Church, one faith.

The principle of conciliarity, or catholicity, of the Church was in effect, according to which each Local Church is at the same time the entire Universal Orthodox Church, abiding in full grace-filled completeness within a given people, in a given place.

In all the Local Churches, the canons common to all were active, were “at work.” Among them were the canons that safeguard the Church from communion with those who have fallen away from her—that is, with heretics. Such were recognized to be the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant communities, the countless sects constantly spawned by them, the Monophysite Churches (Ethiopian, Coptic, Syrian Jacobite, Armenian-Gregorian), and some others.

Apostolic Canon 45 states: “A bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who has merely prayed with heretics is to be excommunicated…” Apostolic Canon 65 commands: “If any clergyman or layman enters a Jewish or heretical synagogue to pray, let him be deposed and excommunicated from Church communion” (the same is found in Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea). Heretics were not even to be allowed to be present at sacred rites and prayers with the faithful, nor to enter the Temples of God; it was forbidden to accept donations from heretics, festive gifts, to celebrate anything together with them, etc. (Canon 9 of Timothy of Alexandria, Canons 6 and 37 of the Council of Laodicea). Canon 3 of the Third Ecumenical Council in particular decreed: “We command generally that clergy who are of one mind with the Orthodox and Ecumenical Council are by no means, in any way, to be subject to bishops who have fallen away, or are falling away, from Orthodoxy.” Canon 15 of the First-Second Council of Constantinople approves of those Orthodox who separate themselves from a bishop or patriarch—even before he is synodally condemned—if that bishop or patriarch publicly, openly preaches heresy condemned by Councils or the Fathers. Such bishops, the canon calls “false bishops.” Every heresy is to be anathematized according to Canon 1 of the Second Ecumenical Council.

St. Basil the Great, referring to the Fathers of the Church, distinguishes the following types of falling away from the Church: “They (the Fathers — Prot. L.) called heretics those who had completely separated and become alienated in the very faith; schismatics — those who had split over certain ecclesiastical matters and issues that admit of healing; and unlawful assemblies — gatherings formed by disobedient presbyters or bishops and uneducated people; for example, if someone, having been convicted of a sin, was removed from priestly service, did not submit to the Canons, but retained for himself the standing and the priestly ministry, and with him some others separated, leaving the Catholic Church” (Canon 1).

Our younger son, Alexei Lebedev, in his article “On the Orthodoxy of the Russian Church Abroad (in connection with accusations of heresy against its episcopate)” (Kursk, 1996), paying special attention to St. Basil the Great’s definition of heresy, observed that all heretical communities were characterized by the fact that not only the hierarchy, but all the laypeople without exception consciously professed false teachings — that is, they became “alienated” in the very substance of the faith from the Church. We will have to return again to this extremely important observation. For now, we shall only confirm it. Indeed, everything we know from history about the Arians, Monophysites, Iconoclasts, and other ancient heretics testifies that the errors of these heretics were consciously shared by the masses of laity who followed the heresiarchs. This is one of the most important signs by which one can identify a fallen “church” body as a heretical community — a branch completely cut off from the “vine,” from the Body of Christ, from the Church, and therefore from Christ.

The second characteristic of the known heresies was that they were completely open — that is, their false teachings were openly preached as supposedly true and were imposed upon the Church. And although in ancient times some heretical bishops, being in danger of excommunication, tried to act cunningly, lie, and invent such formulations of their views that could be interpreted both in an Orthodox and in a heretical sense, nevertheless, on the whole, the ancient heresies were, of course, open. If someone did not confess Christ as God, he plainly professed Him to be a “creature” of God; if someone did not confess two natures in Christ in one Person, he stated it as such; if someone did not acknowledge icons, he did not venerate them.

All the same can be testified regarding contemporary heretical communities — the Catholics, Protestants, sectarians, Monophysites. All their errors they openly preach and profess, and these errors are shared by all the members of these communities — that is, not only by the hierarchy (or leadership) but also by the “common people.” Thus, any Catholic fully accepts the procession of the Holy Spirit “and from the Son,” the unlimited authority of the pope of Rome and his “right” to introduce new “dogmas,” etc.; any Baptist quite consciously blasphemes icons as “idolatry” and does not acknowledge the holiness of the Cross; any Protestant does not recognize the actual transubstantiation of bread and wine into the true Flesh and Blood of Christ at the Liturgy, does not accept any sacraments of the Church other than Baptism, does not duly honor the Theotokos, and does not acknowledge the saints at all, etc.

In all these and similar heretical communities, we have, therefore, nothing other than an alienation from the Church in the very faith—that is, in the essential truths (dogmas) of the faith as they were held in the Church from the beginning, and later precisely formulated in words at the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Such alienation is nothing other than a falling away from the “mind of Christ,” a disagreement with how Christ, through the Holy Spirit, taught and continues to teach His Church. And this entails, to a greater or lesser degree, the violation of the laws of the Church’s life—that is, the holy canons—as well as substantial disorders in liturgical life.

This is why, even to this day, with regard to both the surviving ancient heresies (the Monophysites, the Catholics) and the new ones (Protestants, sectarians), the ancient Canons of the Apostles, the Councils, and the Fathers, contained in the “Book of Canons,” remain in force—concerning the absolute inadmissibility of any communion with them, whether in prayer or in any other ecclesiastical relation.

Let us look a bit more closely at where and why such strictness toward heretics arises. Does it mean hatred toward those who have fallen away from the Church? By no means! The same ancient holy canons of the Church declare: “…By the prompting and inspiration of the Spirit of God, we have chosen rather to act toward them (the Donatist heretics — Prot. L.) with gentleness and peace, though by their restless dissent they have greatly withdrawn from the Body of the Lord… Perhaps then, as we gather the dissenters with meekness, according to the word of the Apostle, God may grant them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will” (Canon 77 of the Council of Carthage).

One of the most zealous defenders of Orthodoxy, St. Maximus the Confessor (6th century), said that he had not yet lost his reason to the point of preferring misanthropy to love for mankind, and therefore he wished no evil upon heretics and did not rejoice in their destruction, but advised all to treat them kindly, in a Christian manner. “But,” he writes, “I do not call it love for mankind, but murder of man, if anyone would seek to confirm heretics in their destructive errors to the inevitable ruin of these people. In matters of faith one must be sharp and uncompromising.”

Thus, the complete, full, and decisive intransigence of the Church applies only to the heretical errors themselves and other falsehoods—not to the people who have been “caught” in these devilish nets!

Only now does it become entirely clear why there can be no communion with heretics in prayer or in other matters of the faith. The communities that have fallen away from the Church—the Body of Christ—although calling themselves “Christians,” are in fact assemblies ensnared by the devil, moved by his spirit. According to the word of the Fathers, even the communion of heretics is undoubtedly a “table of demons.” Common (joint) prayer is always a union in spirit, a merging of many into one. Therefore, if an Orthodox Christian begins to pray with heretics or participate in any other way in their “church” life, he becomes one with them in spirit and thereby severs his own unity with the Church as the Body of Christ, whose Head is Christ Himself.

Therefore, in the strictest prohibitions of the Church regarding communion with heretics is found at the same time both the Church’s love for her children and the love of God. And love is always inseparable from zeal. The Lord God is, as it is written, a “jealous God” (Exod. 34:14), and according to the Apostle James, “the Spirit that dwelleth in us yearns with jealousy” (James 4:5). In Holy Scripture, God’s love for mankind, for the Church, is repeatedly described as Divine jealousy! The Church, as the undefiled “Bride” of the Lamb, Christ, cannot spiritually commit adultery against her Heavenly Bridegroom. And joint prayer with those who are outside of Christ is precisely spiritual adultery…

All of this was well known to all Orthodox Christians, as we have said, even comparatively recently—some 80 years ago. The Church knew her boundaries.

And for us, the theory held by some Protestants of an “invisible” Church—consisting of the righteous, known to God alone, who may be found within various (or all) “Christian” heretical churches—was absolutely unacceptable. Protestants and sectarians can be understood: having split and divided into a multitude of “denominations” or “confessions,” they agonizingly sought a conceptual reconciliation between this fact of division and the clear teaching of the Apostle Paul about the Church as the one Body of Christ. But neither the theory of the invisible Church nor the notions of a purely “spiritual” Christianity entirely without the Church resolved the question, since they were in no way consistent with the definite and firm teaching about the Church not merely as “spirit,” but precisely as a “Body,” with all the resulting conclusions and understandings concerning a visible structure, a visible body (composition), with visible (“bodily”) boundaries. Christ was not only God, not only Spirit, but a perfect man of flesh and blood—the God-Man. Therefore, His “Body,” the Church, cannot be something merely purely “spiritual”; it must have visible forms. Otherwise, the Apostle’s persistent use of the concept of the “Body” would make no sense. In other words, the Church is a God-human organism, like the God-humanity of its Founder. And here it may again be said that such an organism, such a body, can neither be divided nor fragmented into parts (“not a bone of Him shall be broken”), just as there cannot be several independent “bodies” of the one Christ.

Then, within Protestantism, such an idea arose: yes, the Church, once united in antiquity, became divided—through the temptations of the devil and human pride—into many “confessions” (professions, communions), but this division is not essential. All “Christian” Churches are still united in something most important. Despite all differences and disagreements, each “church” bears within itself and develops some “part” of the Truth. This is likened to many branches of one tree. Therefore, all these “branches” must recognize their unity in what is fundamental and proceed along the path of a “dialogue of love,” “brotherly” communion in prayer, and seek ways to even closer Eucharistic communion—but not in such a way that all would accept one faith, but rather so that each “confession” would retain all of its errors, and together they would still form a certain new union (something like a “super-church”), thereby “restoring” the unity of the Body of Christ, supposedly broken by history. At the same time, from the outset it was forbidden for any one of the Churches to attempt to convert others to its faith (i.e., proselytism was forbidden). These ideas became the foundation of the so-called “ecumenical movement,” “ecumenism.” “Oikoumene,” from the Greek, means “the inhabited world,” in a specific sense—the inhabited universe, that is, humanity. Allegedly in order to protect humanity from the spread of godlessness (atheism), the now-functioning World Council of Churches (WCC) arose, at first consisting solely of Protestant and sectarian unions. The main point in which these heretics saw their unity, according to their definition, consists of two points: belief in God as Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and belief in Christ as the Son of God who came in the flesh. This ideological “platform” of the WCC allows all those Churches that accept both points as truths of their “teaching” to peacefully unite in “brotherly communion,” in a “dialogue of love,” and even in common prayer.

It is not difficult to see that, from an ideological point of view, the “platform” of ecumenism reveals a complete misunderstanding of the Church and an ignorance of its nature. Christianity, as has already been noted, is not merely a “teaching,” not merely a collection of moral commandments (although both are indeed part of Christianity); Christianity is, above all, a “new life” within the grace-filled organism of the Body of Christ—the Church. Under this condition, everything benefits and brings salvation to a person: right faith and the keeping of God’s commandments. Otherwise—that is, outside the Church—neither the acknowledgment of certain truths about God or about Christ, nor a moral life, is of any benefit whatsoever. There is no Christianity without the Church. The desire of Protestants to restore the united “Body” of Christ presupposes the notion that this “Body” was previously divided, or that it did not exist at all—and that is an utter falsehood.

It was also alarming that the WCC was initiated and supported by Freemasonry, and that it persistently sought to draw in, to “lure” the Orthodox Local Churches into its fold. For a time, they firmly held back, clearly understanding that even from the standpoint of mere “doctrine,” the “platform” of the heretical Protestant associations was entirely heretical, since in the Church of Christ all the dogmas and canons of the Ecumenical and Local Councils are confessed as foundational—that is, not only belief in the Trinity and in Christ, but also the veneration of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the veneration of the saints, the veneration of icons, the recognition of all seven Mysteries of the Church—without distortions and “additions” introduced by Catholicism and Protestantism. For any Local Orthodox Church to accept the ideological “platform” of the WCC and on that basis to enter it as a member would mean to renounce both the faith in “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” and the Seventh Ecumenical Council (at the very least!); to declare as “non-essential,” “secondary” the truths of icon veneration, the veneration of the Mother of God, of the Saints, and also of all the Mysteries of the Church except Baptism. This would constitute the falling away of the Local Church from unity with the other Orthodox Churches—that is, a falling away from the Church as the Body of Christ, whose Head is the Lord Himself. This is why, already in the last century, A. S. Khomyakov wrote: “The union of Churches, devised against godlessness, turns against the Church.”

By the present time, this has fully manifested itself. Non-Christian religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) have entered into the ecumenical movement, as well as clearly demonic cults, and even—to the mockery of the world—so-called “Christian” communities of homosexuals and lesbians… The goal of ecumenism has become sufficiently clear: to lead the matter toward the unification of all religions, in order to create one (as if synthetic, composed of elements of many), which, in the hands of the Antichrist—awaited by Freemasonry—will become the religion of Lucifer, the devil.

The anti-Church, anti-Christian, and sinister essence of ecumenism has been thoroughly and profoundly exposed in many Orthodox writings, including such significant works as the books of Dr. Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, Fr. Seraphim (Rose) Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, and L. Perepelkina’s Ecumenism: The Path Leading to Perdition. In 1983, the Russian Church Abroad anathematized the ecumenical doctrine and its adherents.

IV

The 20th century brought into the life of humanity, and also into the life of the Church, something entirely unprecedented and unparalleled. By God’s allowance, there occurred a powerful breakthrough of the forces of the abyss onto the surface of public existence. Every form of evil was given a “green light.” Nearly everything that had previously hidden in secrecy, in darkness, brazenly came out into the open and declared its “right” to exist! The “restrainer” was taken away from the world, and the world lost its conscience (which had formerly been inherent even to pagans by nature). Many, not without reason, believe that this real “restrainer” and the conscience of the world was the Russian Tsar. And indeed, all the forces of global evil were directed at his overthrow and destruction. Friedrich Engels had already written: “As long as the Russian state exists, no revolution in Europe or the world can succeed.” However, the matter did not stop at the destruction of the Tsar and the state; it continued with the destruction of the Russian People, precisely because this people was not merely one among the nations of the earth. It was a Church-People, which, approximately from the 15th century, became the leading and principal people within the structure of God’s Church on earth, composed of several fraternal Local Orthodox Churches. This task—namely, the annihilation of the Russian People—was not fully accomplished. But what was done to Russia and to the Russian Church was quite enough to clear the way for the coming Antichrist, and it led to new falls away from the Church among the formerly united alliance (system) of Local Orthodox Churches. These new schisms weakened global Orthodoxy to such an extent that it ceased to be any significant obstacle for the powers of global evil. Nevertheless, they know their task and fulfill it within the bounds of God’s allowance. But we must know our own task—that is, the task of the Church and the work of salvation in any providential conditions, including those of our time. But for that, it is necessary to carefully examine what exactly was done, what happened to the Russian Orthodox Church.

In October 1917, a satanic sect came to power in Russia, carefully concealed within the Communist Party (the Bolsheviks). The threads leading to the control center of this sect extended far across the ocean (and do so to this day). At the foundation of the entire organization lay the Masonic principle of multi-level initiation. Thus, ordinary communists had no knowledge whatsoever of the true aims of their leaders, and those leaders, in turn, did not know the aims of those even “higher” than themselves… The RCP(b)-CPSU thus from the beginning became a shapeshifting party: in words, slogans, declarations, and in the official teaching of Marxism-Leninism—it was one thing, but in reality—something entirely opposite. After its own image and likeness, this party also created a shapeshifting state: by the constitution, by law, by official decrees—it was one thing, but in essence, in spirit, in deeds—completely different!

Such a thing had never before occurred in human history! There had been cruel, unjust, or deceitful rulers, whose deeds contradicted their words. But never before had there been rulers or governments who made it their aim to destroy the people and the national economy entrusted to their governance! And it was precisely this that began to take place in Russia.

There are various estimates today of the victims of the Bolshevik regime—some exaggerated, others understated. Precise numbers, of course, cannot be established. We have tried to use average figures. And according to such average estimates, from 1917 to 1945, up to 80 million Great Russians alone were destroyed in one way or another (through executions, labor camps and prisons, the two famines of the early 1920s and 1930s, and the deliberately “Pyrrhic” victories in the Second World War)—not counting Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians of other nationalities. In total—up to 100 million. From 1917 to 1926 alone, 20 million people were simply executed. One must assume that from 1927 to 1937—no fewer than 10 million. During the “collectivization,” 4 million were executed at once. So out of the 80 million Great Russians who perished by 1945, about 30–40 million were simply put to death. Such numbers could not have been made up solely of political enemies, representatives of the “former classes” (landowners and capitalists), or even “their own”—i.e., communists who, for one reason or another, had become undesirable. All of them together constituted only a small percentage of those who perished. The main mass—tens of millions—was precisely the “ordinary” Russian People, that is, all the firmly believing Orthodox people who, though not resisting the new government, could not be re-educated or persuaded… These were the simple peasants and urban townspeople who, despite everything, preserved only one thing—Orthodox faith. And that was the overwhelming majority of the Russian People. Among them, of course, the overwhelming majority of clergy and monastics perished as well (by 1941, 100,000 clergy and 205 bishops had been destroyed).

At the very same time, from 1917 to 1945, out of the dregs of society, as well as out of the unfortunate conformists for whom self-preservation had become more important than all truths and principles, and from their offspring, a new people was being cultivated—the “Soviet” people, or “sovki,” as we now call ourselves. From 1918 onward, children in schools no longer studied the Law of God but were taught atheistic delusions (and so it remains even to this day). After 1945, it was primarily this new, “Soviet” people who remained living in Russia. The few isolated survivors of the former Russian—that is, Orthodox—People constituted such a negligible minority that they could be disregarded, as they could no longer serve as the foundation for the rebirth of the true, authentic Rus’.

The Party and government of the USSR, constantly speaking in words about the importance of the economy and its development for the purpose of the “steady growth of the well-being of the working people,” in reality did everything to bring about its catastrophic collapse. Agriculture was practically ruined, especially in the central, historically Russian regions. In the field of industry, a system was created that would work against itself, toward self-destruction. The main destructive factor became the monstrous disproportion between unproductive military expenditures and those for peaceful production. According to the latest data, the “defense” industry made up to 80%, and peaceful industry only 20%. With such a ratio, no economic system can function independently. No profits from the sale of oil, gas, timber, etc., to the West at bargain prices could cover such “defense” expenses. Constant infusions from outside were needed. But from whom? From that very West, against which there supposedly had to be “defense,” and which publicly and ostentatiously was always at odds with “terrible Russian communism.” Here, the “box was simply opened”: the West needed the monster of the “Soviet communist threat” to integrate Europe with the USA, and all together—under a single leadership. Therefore, while loudly decrying the “terrible communism,” Western Freemasonry constantly supported and fed it with overt and covert loans and handouts—for a time. As soon as the integration of the European countries among themselves and with the USA was achieved by the mid-1980s, communism in Russia was ordered: “Out!” and external infusions were sharply reduced, and it promptly and obediently stepped down from the place of the “guiding and directing force” of Soviet society… Thus facilitating the collapse of Russia and everything that is now happening there.

Lies became global; they became the primary instrument of global politics, the goal of which is to unite the world for the ease of governance by the “Great Jewish King,” the false messiah—that is, the Antichrist—whose coming has long been prepared and is now largely already arranged.

The “liar and father of lies” (John 8:44) is, as is known, the devil. He and his demons are by nature shapeshifters. Hence the shapeshifting character of the CPSU and the Soviet state.

From this also comes the desire of the latter not only to destroy the Orthodox Church and faith in Russia, but to create out of its remaining fragments an equally shapeshifting organization, just like the party and the “state” of the Soviet Union.

In this lies the essence of the “church” policy of Bolshevism in relation to the Moscow “patriarchate” of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), legalized in 1927.

The devil gives nothing for free; everything he gives comes only on the condition of a certain pact — in exchange for the soul! And such a monstrous pact was concluded. It found its first and very explicit expression in the famous Epistle (Declaration) of Metropolitan Sergius of 1927. It has long been known that this document expressed not merely civil loyalty of the Church to the state (such expressions of basic loyalty were also made by Holy Patriarch Tikhon). In Sergius's Declaration, for the first time in the history of the Church, a declaration was made of complete spiritual fraternization of the Church of Christ with an openly brazen, antichristic regime. “The joys and successes [of this regime] are our joys and successes, and its failures — our failures,” the Declaration stated. And to make sure that no one would think this was merely political loyalty, a recognition of Soviet power insofar as it was permitted by God as a chastisement, it was indeed a full spiritual alliance — this was immediately clarified by an interesting list of misfortunes suffered by the regime, which the Church, according to Sergius, regarded as its own misfortunes or “blows to us,” that is, to the Church, as the Declaration expressed it. Among such “blows” was listed “an assassination from around the corner, such as the Warsaw one.” To this day, it seems, no one has given due attention to this peculiar “password,” these secret words from Sergius to the frenzied servants of the Antichrist. By the “Warsaw assassination” is meant the killing by the Russian patriot B. Koverda of the Bolshevik diplomat Voikov (also known as Pinkhus Lazarevich Weiner) in 1927. Not everyone today knows who Weiner (Voikov) was, but at that time, in 1927, everyone — including Metropolitan Sergius — knew perfectly well that he was one of the principal organizers of the murder of the Royal Family… Thus, covertly, indirectly, yet clearly enough for those who understood, Sergius made it known that the Church was united with the Bolsheviks in all their crimes — beginning with the greatest of all, the regicide. The entire governance of the Church, all of its internal affairs — in other words, all of its life — was handed over by the Sergianist church leadership into the hands of the known and merciless enemies of the Church. But in such a way that the will of these enemies was carried out as if it were the will and decision of the Church hierarchy… All this — in exchange for the “legal existence” of the ecclesiastical authority at the center (“patriarchate”) and the promise to permit church administration in the localities (diocesan administrations).

Having once adopted this “line” of compatibility between Christ and Belial, light and darkness, the faithful and the unbelieving (2 Cor. 6:14–16), the Sergianist false patriarchate continued along it throughout all the years of the Soviet regime and continues even now—faithfully serving not Christ, but any rulers of this world, and in particular, the global Masonic policy of integrating nations, churches, and religions for the coming Antichrist. But more on that later.

For now, let us pause at that truly unprecedented phenomenon, when under the guise of a canonically lawful authority of the Local Russian Orthodox Church, there arose a hierarchal structure of the Moscow “patriarchate” devoted to the Antichrist.

In reality, it was canonically unlawful from the very beginning. Metropolitan Sergius, through a series of canonical crimes, usurped the administration of the Patriarchate—about which so much has already been written in great detail that we shall not dwell on it here. Let us recall only one instance. With the help of his new “brothers in spirit”—the Bolsheviks—Sergius, in usurping ecclesiastical authority, went as far as Judas-like betrayal. In 1935, the term of exile of the lawful Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy (Polyansky), came to an end. Sergius was obliged to hand over the affairs of Church administration to him. But Metropolitan Peter was well known as a firm opponent of any collusion between the hierarchy and Bolshevism, and an opponent of the “Declaration” of 1927. And so his “brother” Metropolitan Sergius wrote a letter to the GPU, stating that if the affairs were handed over to Metropolitan Peter, then “the edifice (of the union between Church and state), which has been so laboriously constructed, will collapse.” The Bolsheviks immediately understood the hint and again arrested Metropolitan Peter, sending him into a new exile, where he was executed in 1937.

Such martyrdom befell not only him, but also many bishops, a great multitude of priests and laity who did not recognize Sergius and his Declaration. And it must be especially noted that neither the unauthorized “Synod” created by Sergius from a few renegade bishops, such as Alexy (Simansky), nor, even more so, the Declaration of 1927, was recognized by the overwhelming majority of Russian bishops—both those already abroad and those who remained in Russia, though mostly in exile and prisons. The majority of the laity likewise did not recognize this whole Sergianist disgrace and betrayal. That is why the Bolsheviks, up until 1943, did not create a system of diocesan administrations in the regions, limiting themselves only to the “legal” existence in Moscow of Sergius and his “Synod,” before whose eyes—and often with their assistance (through denunciations)—bishops, priests, monks, and millions of believers continued to be physically destroyed!

Thus, upon canonical crimes, upon apostasy, upon betrayal, upon the blood of Christians, was the Moscow “patriarchate” established—existing to this day. A shapeshifting patriarchate, befitting the Bolshevik party and state.

Thus arose the Sergianist schism in the previously united Russian Orthodox Church. Faithful to Christ and to the Church remained only the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, founded in 1921, the catacomb (underground) Church in Russia—scattered communities of which have survived to this day—and also many believers in Russia who, having no connection with either the Church Abroad or the catacomb Church, preferred to live and die without receiving Communion, rather than attend the churches of the “patriarchate,” praying at home and placing all their hope in God’s providence. Some among such firmly believing Orthodox Christians have been preserved to this day.

By 1941, at the beginning of the war, in vast Russia there remained about 100 functioning churches, whose clergy, “for fear of the Jews,” and at times even voluntarily, had submitted themselves to the “Synod” of Metropolitan Sergius. By this time, a still considerable portion of the true, that is, Orthodox Russian People remained (though continually “melting away” under repressions). The spiritual needs of this portion, of course, could not be met by those 100 churches…

Thus, we must acknowledge that a significant part of the Church People—that is, of the true Church—had by that point been left practically without any hierarchical governance or pastoral care.

What could this mean in light of the doctrine of the Church about itself, as we have considered it?

This meant that the Church, as the Body of Christ, within the Local Russian Orthodox Church, remained in the form of the Russian Church Abroad, together with that multitude of Orthodox Russians who, for the most part, were outside communion with the Sergianist false Moscow patriarchate.

Since the majority of Orthodox believers in Russia were spiritually fully united with the Orthodox outside of Russia—that is, with the Russian Church Abroad—it was possible to speak of a single Russian Orthodox Church, merely divided spatially into a part located within Russia and a part located abroad. In a spiritual and mystical sense, such a division is, in fact, not a division, but on the contrary—unity. From this it follows that, in those years, the Russian Church Abroad had reason to speak of itself as a part of the Russian Church, temporarily self-governing under the conditions of the Diaspora.

But troubles also befell her. First came the well-known schism of Metropolitan Evlogy, who, with a part of his parishes in Western Europe, at first rushed toward the Sergianist “patriarchate,” and later—to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, under whom these parishes remain to this day. Then came the schism of Metropolitan Platon, who wished the North American Metropolia under his leadership to be independent of the ROCOR.

Meanwhile, the Second World War began. Its most significant outcome for our topic was that on the battlefields, under bombings, from hunger and disease, that portion of the true Orthodox Russian People which had still remained before the war—and had not yet fallen under the axe of repression—was finally crushed.

Yet, in the midst of the war, under the fear of death, many Soviet people—who before had neither wished to know, nor truly known anything about the Church—turned to God, to the Church!

The instinct of self-preservation, as well as the continuation of the shapeshifting game, prompted Stalin in 1943 to seemingly “revive” church life in the Soviet Union. In haste, more than 20,000 churches were opened, a system of diocesan administrations was established throughout the country under the leadership of the Moscow “patriarchate,” which, it seems, had been deliberately preserved for just such an occasion. A “Local Council” and “patriarchal elections” were permitted—at which, naturally, by direction of the MGB and the VKP(b), Sergius was “elected.” The USSR now became even more of a shapeshifter than before. It began, in some outward features, to resemble the Russian Empire—the historical Russia long dreamed of by all patriots. Red officers were dressed in gold epaulettes, bells rang out in cities and villages, prayers were heard again in churches—including for the “great leader” (Generalissimo!) Joseph Stalin (almost an Emperor!). The previously forbidden words “realm,” “Fatherland,” and “Russia” were now broadly permitted.

And into the newly opened churches, waves of believers poured.

But these were already new believers, not the same as those who had been before the war. They, let us repeat, knew little or nothing at all about the Church and its life, knew nothing of the Declaration of 1927 or did not attribute proper significance to it. Raised by the Soviet regime, these people mostly sincerely believed that the Soviet state and the Communist Party were very good and sought nothing but the welfare of the people; that the USSR was the successor of a thousand-year-old Russia; that the Party and the government were not opposed to the Orthodox Church, which, in turn, could not and should not (!) be opposed to them! These new believers were sincere in their own way. They sincerely believed the lie.

There was also another group of believers who, in their hearts, did not accept either communism or the “Soviet” regime (since the regime, in reality, was never the power of “soviets of workers’ deputies”). Such people rightly called the Bolsheviks “Antichrists,” but—quietly, and mostly—for their godlessness and militant opposition to the faith. In everyday life, these people had quite reconciled themselves to the regime, having adopted its main shapeshifting rule: in public, in front of others, say and do one thing, but think and quietly do another. In other words, such people convinced themselves that lying was normal, that “this is how it has to be.”

Finally, in a certain small number, there appeared in the parishes “old-regime” people, raised in the faith still before the revolution. They knew what was correct and what was incorrect in the services, in the customs and rites of the Church; new believers looked to them, listened to them. These people, despite being only a small handful among the parishioners, became a kind of leaven of church life, its unofficial core. But why did they end up in the “patriarchate”? It seemed to them (they very much wanted to believe it!) that since 1943 the Bolsheviks had changed, that now they were giving the Church freedom, that, therefore, one could cease to recall the unlawfulness and apostasy of Sergius and his “patriarchate.” They too believed the lie.

Here, to some extent, the psychology of Russian Orthodox believers also showed itself—those who could not conceive of faith and the Church without splendid, “real” churches with orderly, open divine services.

All three categories of believers, as we see, were united by one common trait: belief in a lie.

Yet it must be noted that a very large number of the “new believers” turned to Christ and the Orthodox Church with great sincerity. They wanted to be, and strove to be, truly Orthodox!

And thus, the following picture emerged: in turning toward Christ, millions of people fell into the net of the “patriarchate” organization, whose leadership faithfully served the Antichrist…

Such a thing had never before occurred in the history of the Orthodox Church. It is a phenomenon of the 20th century. In Western life, similar phenomena were encountered in the form of the Templars, Freemasons, various “secret brotherhoods” and societies that hid behind respectable façades—but even there, up until the 20th century, these were phenomena that never fully overtook even the heretical Churches, such as the Catholic or Protestant ones. In Russia, the heresy of the “Judaizers” in the late 15th century was known for its shapeshifting character. But even that did not encompass the entire church structure, although it did manage to win over the head of the Church, Metropolitan Zosima. The difficulty with which this heresy was exposed at the time shows how dangerous the phenomenon of shapeshifting truly is.

But when, in the 20th century, the entire state of the former Russia became a shapeshifter, along with the entire system of the Moscow “patriarchate,” supported in its shapeshifting by the full power of the state, the situation became truly unique—unprecedented.

A shapeshifter is extremely dangerous precisely because it is almost impossible to “catch him in the act.” Thus, in the realm of outward life, all and any actions of the Bolshevik regime that were murderous toward the people and clearly destructive to the national economy found, with astonishing ease, some sort of “explanation”—either as “sabotage,” or as “mistakes” and “miscalculations” of individual leaders. And one could always point out that the idea itself, the official principles, slogans, and intentions of the Party and government—were very proper and good!

In like manner was the shapeshifter of the Moscow “patriarchate.” For a time, it seemed almost invulnerable, since everything outwardly bore emphatically Orthodox features: the liturgical services were conducted in proper canonical order, there was a monastic episcopate, cassocks, panagias, crosses, “Gospel” words from the ambo, and constant affirmations that the “patriarchate” strictly preserved without distortion the entire dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church, venerated all the Ecumenical and Local Councils, the Holy Fathers, the canonical rules, etc., etc. Therefore, when believers encountered clear instances of betrayal among bishops or priests, or of corruption (simony), or of double lives, or of trampling the canons, all of this was easily explained away as personal sins of individual clergymen, as well as the atheistic pressure under which, supposedly, “all current bishops and priests are suffering.” Some of them indeed did suffer, but for the most part, the episcopate and the key clergy only pretended before the faithful to be the “suffering” side, while in reality faithfully, “not out of fear, but out of conviction,” and to their own benefit, served precisely these atheistic forces and their pressure on the Church. In the eyes of millions of trusting believers, the Sergianist “patriarchate” was undoubtedly the Orthodox Church, because it supposedly firmly preserved Orthodox teaching, the order of worship, and the “apostolic succession” of the hierarchy…

Thus, the turning point of 1943 marked the beginning of a new stage in church life within Russia, characterized by a widespread (total) belief in a lie on the part of a significant portion of the lower clergy and nearly all the laity. Everyone sensed the lie, but thought, “this is how it must be.” And here arose a situation in which, in a certain qualitative sense (through belief in falsehood and the habit of living by it), the church people became, as it were, on equal footing with the upper hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate—since the latter had cunningly justified its actual apostasy from Christ and betrayal of the Church by the supposed necessity to lie, a notion readily understood by all “Soviet people”…

However, one must also recognize an important distinction between the church people and their hierarchy. The people did not know the depth of their highest church authority’s principled apostasy from Christ. The church people were not only deceiving themselves, but they were also, nevertheless, being deceived.

The deception was made easier, paradoxically, precisely by the fact that the vast majority of believers and lower clergy wanted to be Orthodox. If they had acknowledged their hierarchy to be schismatic and apostate, then they would have had to acknowledge themselves as being outside the Church. And this was precisely what they did not want—under any circumstances!

If there is no Christianity without the Church, then there is no Church without a bishop (episcopate). This is a well-known principle. And there were no other bishops besides the Sergianist ones before the millions of new believers who poured into the churches during and after the war. All the true, that is, firmly Orthodox hierarchs had by that time been completely annihilated. And the false patriarchate had hastily produced new ones—either from among former renovationists or from new believers who had submitted themselves to the authorities.

The Russian Church Abroad was, indeed, abroad—cut off from Russia by the impenetrable “Iron Curtain,” and communication with it was impossible; the Catacomb Church was deep underground, and there was no contact with it. Meanwhile, the Moscow “patriarchate,” making broad use of the forged “Testament” of Patriarch Tikhon, falsely claimed to be the successor of that true Russian Church which had been headed by His Holiness Tikhon. From this, it became possible—almost without much effort—to convince people that the so-called “schismatics” were actually the Russian Church Abroad and the Catacomb Christians, and that the cause of the schism was purely political—opposition to Soviet power, which was claimed to be a “divine institution”… It is true that, regarding the regime, many laypeople and priests inwardly leaned more toward the ROCOR and the Catacomb Church, believing that Soviet power was not a divine institution but a divine allowance, as all evil in the world is permitted. But as for the matter of schism, the arguments of the “patriarchate” seemed convincing… All the more so because they reassured people in the thought that they were within the true Orthodox Church—and thus, were being saved.

Here, one cannot fail to see also a certain willingness to be deceived on the part of these new Orthodox believers. Yes, there is no Church without a bishop. But this is so in a deep essential sense and in the sense of the rule of Church life. And if an exception to the rule occurred, and during a certain period the Church people in one part of the Church were left without lawful bishops, then they could have lived without them, preserving spiritual unity at a distance with the bishops of the Church Abroad or the Catacomb Church—without resorting to the pastoral care of false bishops, apostates, and betrayers of the faith and the Church. As we have said, some individuals indeed lived in such a way throughout the more than sixty years following 1927. But millions of “new believers” and the small remnant of the former ones did not possess sufficient knowledge or spiritual sensitivity to undertake such a spiritual feat. And who among them, at that time, had the opportunity to verify whether the “Testament” of St. Tikhon was authentic or a forgery, or how exactly the schism had taken place, and who was truly the schismatic?.. They may be reproached for lacking developed ecclesiastical awareness and discernment, but they cannot be reproached for any conscious desire to separate themselves, even in the slightest, from the Orthodox faith and the Church!

Therefore, the church people in the USSR, along with a significant portion of the lower clergy who did not occupy responsible, key positions, cannot be reproached with heresy, nor with schism, nor with forming an unauthorized assembly—that is, they cannot be called a heretical or schismatic community. For, as we established above, in all the heresies and schisms of antiquity, the laity (the people) were fully of one mind with the heretical or schismatically departing hierarchy.

V

Maybe it is precisely for this reason (at any rate, not without this reason) that the Mysteries in the Moscow “patriarchate,” although not everywhere and not by everyone, were nevertheless performed and were valid. It should be especially noted that when people speak of the presence or absence of grace in the Church, they primarily mean—are the Mysteries performed in it valid or invalid. In the “patriarchate” there were also evident miracles and signs of God. There were also righteous people, even elders among the monastics. These circumstances we must testify to with full responsibility before God and the Church, both based on our personal experience of being in the MP since 1962 as a layman, and since 1968 as a priest, and on the experience of many people known to us—laypeople and priests (and even some bishops).

Yes, for the most part, the episcopate was apostate and treacherous. And all of us either felt this to one degree or another, or even knew it. But the church people strove to preserve the faith firmly. The Orthodox teaching of the Church says: “Among us neither patriarchs nor councils have ever been able to introduce anything new, because the guardian of piety among us is the very body of the Church, that is, the very people, who have always desired to preserve their faith unchanged, in accordance with the faith of their fathers…” (Encyclical Letter of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church to all Orthodox Christians, May 6, 1848, § 17. St. Petersburg, 1859, in the collection “Dogmatic Letters of Orthodox Hierarchs of the 17th–19th Centuries on the Orthodox Faith.” Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1995, p. 233).

Thus, the guardian of the faith, the guardian of the Church in Orthodoxy is not only the hierarchy, but in general “the body of the Church, that is, the very people.” And if part of the hierarchy in the person of the highest church authority falls away from Christ, hiding this from the people, this still does not make the people themselves, as the body of the Church, also apostate, that is, it does not cut them off from unity with Christ.

These judgments seem to contradict the views of the catacomb bishops of the 1940s, who unequivocally asserted that the Mysteries in the Sergian “patriarchate” are not performed, that the MP is entirely devoid of grace. Such judgments were based on the facts of the 1927 Declaration, the cooperation of high-ranking hierarchs and certain priests with the antichrist regime and its “agencies,” and the illegality of the “elections” of both Sergius and Alexy (Simansky) as “patriarchs.” We fully agree with these facts and always place “patriarchate” and “patriarch” of Moscow in quotation marks. But we affirm that, in their zeal for the faith and the Church—deserving of every approval—these bishops and those of like mind with them involuntarily fell into a certain extremism, failing to take the time to observe more calmly and attentively what was actually happening in the MP during those years.

We examined the state of affairs before 1941 and after 1943, clearly seeing that these were very different periods. Before 1941, the pitiable handful of bishops headed by Metropolitan Sergius had almost no “Body” of the Church left, that is, the people—except for a small number of parishioners of the 100 functioning churches that the Bolsheviks maintained as “showcase” examples. The church people, for the most part, were entirely without hierarchical governance and pastoral care, except perhaps from occasional wandering and secretly serving priests, who were by no means of the “Sergian” spirit or ordination. And to a large extent, this was still the real Russian people, that is, Orthodox, not yet destroyed in the repressions. The war finished them off almost entirely. And around or more than 2 million real Russian people who did not wish to remain under the antichrist regime managed, one way or another, to end up in the West and remain there, thus forming this “second wave” of Russian emigration and, in particular, of the Russian Church Abroad.

In the pre-war period, from 1927 to 1941, there is, in turn, one very important internal segment of time—10 years, from 1927 to 1937–1938—characterized by the fact that during this time many hierarchs of the true Patriarchate, of the true Russian Church, who did not agree with the 1927 Declaration, were still alive (although in prisons and in exile). And there was hope that, in the event of the Church’s liberation, they would once again lead it. Cut off by barbed wire or prison bars from their flock and from the Russian Church Abroad, they were in full accord and unity of mind with them. Through them was created the Catacomb Church, or the True Orthodox Church (TOC). These hierarchs were repeatedly approached with the question of how to understand the Sergian church—are the Mysteries there valid or not?

In 1934, the renowned Holy Hieromartyr Metropolitan Kirill of Kazan answered this question by stating that the Mysteries among the Sergianists are valid, are performed, but can be salvific only for those who come to them “in simplicity of heart, suspecting nothing amiss in the Sergian structure of the Church.” But for the celebrants themselves, as well as for those who, knowing of their apostasy, nonetheless resort to them, the Mysteries are performed “unto condemnation.” This opinion appears to be the most correct, although it is known that in those same years other authoritative bishops held different views, namely, that the Mysteries in the MP are not performed. What gave, or could have given, Metropolitan Kirill grounds for such a judgment concerning the Mysteries in the MP? In our view, four circumstances.

1. The Sergian bishops had canonically lawful ordination by succession from the Apostles.

2. Not all of them were equally guilty in the dreadful apostasy of Sergius and his Declaration. Some entered into union with Sergius simply out of fear, due to weakness of faith and will, and others out of sincere delusion—that is, believing Sergius when he claimed that his true, secret concern was the “salvation of the Church.” Most of these fearful and deluded bishops paid for their faint-heartedness and lack of discernment with their lives, being executed or tortured to death in 1937–1938 (a telling example is Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov)).

3. Sergius deceived the church people regarding the true meaning and goals of his Declaration, thereby not involving the people in his collusion with the antichrists, not forcing them into apostasy—on the contrary, preserving ignorance among the people. From this it was indeed possible for many to resort to the Mysteries of the Sergianists “in simplicity of heart, suspecting nothing amiss”...

4. In addition to all this, in those years in Russia there were many priests among the Sergianists who had pre-revolutionary, non-Sergian ordination. A significant portion of them likewise accepted the Declaration and Sergian leadership out of misunderstanding, and through their sincerely reverent service the Mysteries could be performed and be valid.

From 1943 onward, the state of affairs in this regard was characterized by the fact that, being forced to quickly appoint many bishops for the new system of dioceses in the regions, Sergius and his bishops consecrated such not only from among former renovationists who had formally expressed “repentance” and thus “joined” the Church, but also from among new Soviet people or new believers, as well as from among the few old ones who had accidentally survived and were not involved either in renovationism or in Sergianism.

Such individuals, directly uninvolved (both the “old” and the “new”), were in no small number sincerely believing, Orthodox people, who genuinely thought about the benefit of the Church and ordained, as presbyters and deacons, likewise people sincere in faith and piety, according to their own likeness. Yes, all these ordinations were performed with the consent of the MGB and the Commissioners of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, also hastily created (later—Council for Religious Affairs). But one should not think that in those years such “consent” from the mentioned organs meant that the candidate for bishop or priest was automatically already an “agent” or a secret collaborator of the well-known services. By no means! For these organs it was sufficient to have a “clean” biography of the candidate and information about his civic loyalty. Later, some (not all!) of them could be approached with the aim of inducing them to direct cooperation, and then some agreed, and others did not. But even among those who agreed, not all were the same. It must be taken into account that after the war and until the early 1980s, there was a prevailing sense in the Soviet Union that, by God's allowance, the Soviet regime would last another 300 years… From this, some clergy concluded that it was necessary to accept its “rules of the game,” but in such a way as to win whatever could be won, for the benefit of the Church and the people. This was a great delusion. It had to be bitterly repented of later. However, it was sincere, and by God’s providence, something could still be “won”! Although it is evident that much more was “lost” in the process…

All the more must those bishops and priests ordained after 1943 be recognized as innocent of conscious Sergianism who were in no way directly connected with the KGB, had not formerly been renovationists, and did not spiritually fraternize with the antichrist regime, but merely endured it as a divine allowance. Such individuals were not the majority, but they did exist! They too were merely tolerated, as it were, without being given the opportunity to influence the administration of church affairs (they were not made permanent members of the Synod or heads of departments of the “patriarchate”; priests were not appointed rectors of city churches or even prominent rural ones in district centers).

In our memory remains the spiritual character and manner of service of such hierarchs of the 1960s to early 1970s as Archbishop Pimen (Khmelevsky) of Saratov and Volgograd, Archbishop Mikhail of Kazan and Mari, Archbishop Viktor of Krasnodar and the Kuban (originally from China, where he was within the fold of ROCOR), and his successor on the see, Archbishop Alexy (later of Kalinin and Kashin).

Vladyka Pimen was a man of theatrical ability to feign loyalty to the Soviet authorities, to be cunning, to please them in small matters, but in such a way as to constantly benefit the Church. He actively bribed the local commissioner, receiving in return permissions to ordain whom he needed and assign them where he saw fit. But that is not the whole matter. Pimen was truly a man devoted to the Church, not to the godless regime. This is absolutely certain. And this was soon understood. For this reason, he was kept hopelessly confined to his diocese, not allowed into the Synod nor into other responsible positions.

Such abilities were not possessed by Archbishop Mikhail, who was already of very advanced age. He could neither outargue nor bribe the commissioner, would yield when the latter insisted, suffered, but still tried—at the slightest opportunity—to do at least something good for the Church, for the priests, for the people. He was weak, but undoubtedly a sincerely believing Orthodox man.

Vladyka Viktor was almost the same in character. He made the decision to come to Russia from China and here encountered all of our nightmare. He had a genuine, unfeigned love for people and for the clergy. He also tried to do whatever he could for the Church. But under the Kuban commissioner, he could do very little…

After his repose in 1966, Archbishop Alexy was appointed to that see. He turned out to be somewhat firmer. True, he also was unable to overcome the commissioner, but he made use of every opportunity to expel overt atheists from parish councils, to personally decide other church matters, so that the faithful of the Kuban still knew and saw that they had an Orthodox hierarch.

In the 1960s, very good reports circulated about Archbishop Joseph of Alma-Ata, whom many venerated as a saint, and about Bishop Zinovy, who lived in Tbilisi. But especially renowned at that time was the name of Bishop Hermogen of Kaluga. He opposed the closing of churches in his diocese under Khrushchev, and actively tried to organize the bishops to protest against the uncanonical decisions of the “Council” of 1961, for which he was removed from his see and placed until the end of his days in the Zhirovitsy Monastery “in retirement.” We have not met a believer or priest who did not sympathize with Vladyka Hermogen.

The list of such hierarchs—faithful to the Church and beloved by the faithful—could be continued. There were not so few of them, but not so many either. Approximately one fourth of the episcopate of the postwar period. Some of them are personally listed in the well-known secret report of the Council for Religious Affairs to the Central Committee of the CPSU (1975). They are included in the fourth, the “worst” category of bishops, who, unlike the first, the “best” category, failed to understand that the Party and the government “are not interested in the development of religion and the Church in the USSR,” and strive, contrary to the commissioners, to do everything in favor of the faith and the Church.

The report emphasizes that even such unreasonable hierarchs are all unconditionally loyal to the Soviet state, its authorities, and its laws. This too is true…

Therefore, all the aforementioned hierarchs of the Sergian false patriarchate, and others like them, can be reproached perhaps only for the absence of a confessor’s struggle, for a certain compliance with the powers of this world, for faint-heartedness, weakness of faith and will—but not for having been conscious and voluntary servants of the forces of evil, or for having spiritually fraternized with them, as did Metropolitan Sergius and others like him. In other words, in the best of the hierarchs of the MP in those years, there was nevertheless no spiritual apostasy from Christ nor direct service to the antichrist forces and interests.

From them were ordained priests, for the most part similar to themselves—that is, also sincerely believing. Such priests likewise made up approximately one fourth or even more of the total number of clergy.

Apostolic succession of the priesthood by itself says little. Orthodoxy knows that this truly “golden chain” of succession must also be inwardly and spiritually filled with the succession of right faith and life according to that faith. The Catholics also have succession, but they have deviated into heresies, severing and breaking the succession of the faith!

Within the fold of the Moscow “patriarchate” we see not only bishops and priests who likewise broke the succession of faith by conscious and voluntary Sergianism, but also bishops and priests who preserved both the apostolic canonical succession of ordination and the spiritual succession of the faith!

From a deep essential, or ontological point of view, this can be regarded as a thread that still connects such bishops and priests with Christ, and through Him with His mystical Body—the Church! And this means that the Mysteries of such clergymen were valid, and that grace, to a certain extent, was present within the fold of the “patriarchate.”

Yes, this thread became very weak and very thin, but it still existed!

Only this can explain why the mercy of God did not completely depart from Russia, why during the very height of Khrushchev’s renewed persecutions, in the early 1960s, a noticeable number of educated young people began turning to the Church and to the faith—people born and raised under the Soviet regime, who had received neither Orthodox upbringing in their families nor, for the most part, even Baptism, but were baptized already in adulthood, after university. They sought out and found truly believing bishops and priests. Some of these “sixtiers” themselves became priests, and through their sacred ministry there sometimes occurred such miracles (for example, healings) that, without any exaggeration, straining, or speculation, can only be called miracles of God’s power and grace. And the Mysteries from these priests were performed, concerning which all of them can testify with complete certainty.

Only by this presence of grace can one also explain other wondrous Signs of God in Russia during the period under consideration. And they did occur—and in no small number!

From this, it follows that even in this period, from 1943 to 1960, the Russian Church Abroad was right in declaring its unity with the true church people in Russia.

But in that case, it turns out that—seemingly contrary to all original, ancient understandings of the Church—since 1927, and especially since 1943, there existed in Russia a kind of Church within the Church? If one considers that one of them must rather be called a false church, or a Sergian treacherous organization that fell away from the Church, then—yes, that is how it turned out.

If we recall the definition of heresy by St. Basil the Great, then only those hierarchs and priests of the Moscow “patriarchate” who, in their own words, began to serve the manifest and shameless antichrists “not out of fear, but out of conviction” (!) became “alienated from the Church in the very faith itself” (in the very essence of the faith). Therefore, not without reason, many have called and continue to call Sergianism a heresy. But in such cases, the Sergianists objected that they had not deviated in any way in the letter of doctrine, had not changed or violated anything. Then one must recall the words of Bishop Viktor (Ostrovidov) of Izhevsk, written by him on October 8, 1927, regarding the epistle (Declaration) of Sergius. He wrote that this epistle “…from beginning to end is filled with grievous falsehood and is a blasphemous mockery of the Holy Orthodox Church, shocking to the soul of the faithful… And through the betrayal of the Church of Christ to the mockery of ‘outsiders,’ it is a sorrowful renunciation of the very Lord and Savior. This sin, as the Word of God testifies, is not less than any heresy or schism, but incomparably greater, for it casts a person directly into the abyss of perdition…”

This, in essence, is precisely the “alienation from the Church in the very faith” (for faith and the Church, as we have noted, are not only “doctrine,” not only a set of theoretical truths, but life in Christ and with Christ). From this, Sergianism can be qualified as both heresy and schism, and as something “incomparably greater,” casting one “directly into the abyss of perdition.”

We have already seen that Sergianism managed to retain a portion of the clergy and the masses of new believers after 1943 through duplicity, deceit, constant lies—that is, by hiding from the church people the depth of its apostasy. We have also noted one important trait of these new believers—the belief in a lie. Let us now note another trait—fear!

In the postwar period, and even after Stalin’s death (in 1953), all of Soviet society continued to exist in a state of total fear.

This was not only fear for one’s personal life or freedom, or for one’s relatives and loved ones. The new, Soviet people—including Orthodox believers—under the influence of education, upbringing, and constant propaganda, had already come to almost believe (believed—not believed, or not believing—still believed) that the revolution in Russia was carried out by the people themselves, led by the most progressive party with the most progressive teaching, which represented the future of all humanity. Therefore, to oppose the party and the government it had created in any form meant to become an “enemy of the people” and even a “monster of the human race,” to cover one’s name and the names of all one's kin with eternal national disgrace. Thus, in the eyes of the new believers, the “patriarchate” was doing the right thing in befriending and cooperating with such a party and such a government. Otherwise, the party and government could have dispersed the Church, and it would have had no justification before the judgment of the people, of history, of mankind! Moreover, people remembered the Bolshevik repressions from 1917 to 1953 and knew that this regime would stop at nothing if contradicted. Therefore, any form of confessing the faith was extremely dangerous—it could harm the Church—it was seen as “zeal not according to knowledge.” Fear for the Church, not only for oneself, gripped the souls of many decent priests, bishops, and almost the entire body of parishioners. The “patriarchate” did all it could to sustain this fear—it benefited from it more than from anything else! To stand for the faith unto death, as the forefathers stood—God forbid! The church would be closed, the Church dispersed! Believers could not stand for the faith—for the sake of the faith and the Church… Monstrous! But so it was. That was how people thought, and very sincerely at that, finding some consolation only in tearful prayers—for themselves and for the Church. Moreover, one could suffer for confessing the faith not only from the authorities, but from the Church itself—or rather, from the “patriarchate,” which not only would not defend the confessor, but would condemn him, and if a clergyman—suspend him from serving, as a violator of the “peace of the Church” and an opponent of the “authorities ordained by God” (which was precisely done, for example, in regard to Bishop Hermogen, and the priests Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb Yakunin for their well-known “Letter” to the authorities and to the “patriarch” in 1965). One had to submit to the authorities in their policy toward the Church, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life…” This well-known passage from the Apostle Paul was presented by the “patriarchate” in such a distorted and false interpretation. And it turned out that for Orthodox believers, the main goal of existence became a “quiet and peaceful life” in this earthly world—so that the authorities would not touch them, would not touch the Church… When Khrushchev’s new persecutions of the Church began in the early 1960s, spontaneous protests of believers arose in various places against the closing of churches, but they were extinguished with the help of the clergy, who urged the people not to protest (“for the good of the Church…”). As a result, by the mid-1970s, a flock had been raised that, with the rarest of exceptions, feared more than any sin to suffer in any way at all for the faith!

Thus, through deceit and fear (of the kind described), after 1943, millions of parishioners—new believers—were held fast in the nets, in the shell of Sergian apostasy and schism. In the same way and by the same means, even the best of bishops and clergy were held within it. One cannot deny the sincerity of their faith or their concern for the Church. But what kind of Christians are these without confessorship?!

It is not difficult, from our current vantage point, to see that at the root of this faith of lies and fear lay not only faintheartedness and simple timidity (although these were present to a great extent), not only a lack of theological and historical literacy, but also a deficiency—or some kind of deformity—of faith itself. A lack of faith and practical unbelief in the fact that Christ, as the Head of His Church, Himself protects it, tries it, and in the trials again protects it! And this is already a direct influence and consequence of Sergianism. This sickness or affliction (for it can be called nothing else!) came to infect the entire church people, or Body of the Church, within the Union. Such a thing could only have happened because the true Orthodox Russian People had been physically destroyed, crucified, as we have shown—and after the war, it was already a different people who lived in Russia, a Soviet people…

Let us draw some conclusions. If we have established that sincerely believing bishops, priests, and parishioners of the Moscow “patriarchate” can still be regarded as belonging to the Body of Christ—the Church, as being a “branch of the vine,” then it is such a branch that is half-broken and continues to be torn away by the fully fallen-from-Christ false patriarchate—or, to be more precise, by certain figures of the highest church authority and clergy in key positions, who hold decisive influence in church affairs. Those who belong to the half-broken branch, still retaining a minimal connection with Christ, did not and cannot decide anything in the church life of Russia.

The Moscow “patriarchate” cannot be regarded as a single Local Church that has deviated or is deviating into schism and apostasy from the truth. Here, Church and anti-Church (or a “branch” of the worldwide church of the devil) are closely interwoven. Christ, in describing the “Kingdom of God,” and thus also the Church, uses, among other images, that of a “tree” (Luke 13:19). Anyone who has seen a tree thickly and tightly overgrown and strangled by ivy parasitizing upon it—so that it is already difficult to distinguish where the ivy’s branches and leaves are and where the still-living leaves of the dying tree remain—can envision what is happening in church life in Russia.

We stated above that such a phenomenon is unprecedented, that it arose only in the 20th century. If we have in mind the history of the Orthodox Church, this is indeed so. But “there is nothing new under the sun.” A precedent nevertheless exists. It is the Old Testament Church of God—Israel in the time before the Coming of Christ and during His earthly life. The people were convinced that they preserved the true faith in the One God, the true God-given Law of Moses, while their teachers were serving and worshiping the devil, as the Lord directly said to them (John 8:44). Some among the people (a part of the Church) understood and accepted Christ and entered into the Church of the New Covenant. But Israel as a whole remained “in hardness” (Romans 11:25). However, the Apostle says—“for a time.”

A few words must also be said about the anti-Church that has ensnared the Church in Russia. We have noted the main point: that it consists of those bishops, priests, and other church servants who, “not out of fear, but out of conviction,” are devoted to the antichrists and their power, while only outwardly appearing to be believers. But this means that, having thereby broken and severed the Apostolic succession of the faith, they ceased in fact to be bishops and priests, and therefore their Mysteries became invalid, were not performed. For this reason, those who persistently spoke of the gracelessness of the “patriarchate” were partly right. In regard to the true “Sergianists,” this is indeed the case. But alongside them, as if mixed among them, there also served those bishops and priests who were Sergianists only in outward appearance, remaining inwardly and in deed faithful—which is why their Mysteries were valid and grace was present in their sacred service. Distinguishing one from the other was not always easy, at times impossible. True Sergianists are always impostors. Hence the confusion in the assessment of the “patriarchate” by various people. Such confusion, or disagreement, is also connected to the consistent logic or assumptions of the normal Orthodox consciousness. It is not accustomed to viewing the ecclesial organism—whether it be truly the Body of Christ or a heretical community—otherwise than as a unified, integral body, where all is connected not only by external administrative structure but also mystically—through the liturgical commemorative mention of the head of the Church. Under “normal” circumstances, this is indeed the case. It was so in the Church of Christ from the beginning, and even in the heretical “churches” that fell away, for the mindset of the First Hierarch-heretic was fully shared by all the clergy and people who followed him. But it was not so in the “patriarchate.” Here, faithful bishops and priests (not to mention the people) pray for the “patriarch” of Moscow not because he is an apostate and heretic, but because they do not know this, or know it only uncertainly, are unsure, are in doubt… Such is the impostor nature of the “patriarchs,” beginning with Sergius! To the faithful, they are “their own”; to the unfaithful, likewise. To the faithful, they constantly lie about themselves—and only the unfaithful, the Bolsheviks, the antichrists—have always known exactly who this or that “patriarch” of Moscow truly was.

Impostors readily recognize one another, support each other, and appoint one another to all key positions and places, so that only they determine how this ivy-like structure of theirs—entwining and suffocating true church life—will continue to develop. Because of these impostors and the ivy, much in the “patriarchate” is ceremoniously portrayed, yet not truly carried out. And from the outside, everything may appear unified and whole… Only by coming up close to a tree densely overgrown with parasitic ivy can one see where the ivy's leaves are, and where are the leaves of the still-living tree.

VI

Another significant turning point in the life of the Church was the beginning of the 1960s. At that time, under the initiative of the then head of the Party and government, N. Khrushchev, new persecutions of the faith and the Church unfolded in the USSR. Up to 10,000 churches were again closed, along with several theological seminaries and monasteries. Khrushchev promised that by 1980 he would show the Soviet people “the last Russian priest,” that is, to have done away with religion by that time, as well as to overtake and surpass America and build “communism.”

At the same time, however, this new persecutor of the Church also appeared to be the first “democrat,” abolishing the “cult of Stalin’s personality,” and initiating a policy of easing international tensions based on a new theory for the communists—“peaceful coexistence of countries with different political systems.” Of course, this was yet another lie: the international activity of the USSR aimed at promoting communism, drawing nations and peoples of the “Third World” toward it, and so forth. But within the framework of this deceitful policy, it proved very advantageous, from many points of view and for various purposes, to use the Moscow “patriarchate” as one of the tools of communist propaganda and espionage on the international stage. Therefore, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB ordered the “patriarchate” to take part in the “ecumenical movement,” in the “dialogue of love” (even with the Vatican), which had previously been strictly forbidden.

Earlier, in 1948, at the “Local Council” in Moscow on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Russian Church, with the participation of representatives from several Local Orthodox Churches, the Moscow “patriarchate” solemnly declared that “ecumenism” is a teaching “incompatible with Orthodoxy,” a “new Tower of Babel.” The absolute truth! This shows that an impostor can, in certain matters, speak real truth if it is somehow beneficial to him or coincides with the interests of his master. At that time, it was beneficial to the “master,” Stalin. The new “master,” Khrushchev, decided otherwise in 1960. And the “patriarchate” immediately renounced its previous correct judgments and entered the ecumenical movement, accepting its doctrine and the practice of common prayer with heretics.

The essence of ecumenism as an open heresy, anathematized in 1983 by the Russian Church Abroad, we have already shown in Part III. Now let us examine what began to happen in connection with the “patriarchate’s” deviation into this heresy.

Conscious ecumenists at first were only a few senior hierarchs, headed by “Patriarch” Alexy I (Simansky). Among them, Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) proved especially active, having gained great power in church administration with the help of the Kremlin and Lubyanka. The heresy of ecumenism was openly preached “from the pulpits.” In the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the Information Bulletin of the Department of External Church Relations of the MP, and in patriarchal messages, there were articles, reports, and sermons of ecumenical content published. The theory of the “branches,” into which the one Church supposedly had been divided—and which ecumenism was now called to reunite—was openly affirmed. Thus, it could be stated with full certainty that the heretical teaching was not a “private opinion” of individual members of the “patriarchate,” but the shared position of its leadership—of the “patriarch” and the Synod. Therefore, according to the 15th Canon of the First-Second Council of Constantinople, these bishops now became completely and clearly “false bishops,” from whom Mysteries were no longer performed.

But they continued to perform sacred rites and to ordain new bishops and priests quite actively—who in fact did not become true bishops or priests, but likewise merely imitated sacred rites… The number of valid Mysteries, already not very great, began to decline alarmingly.

The growing army of ecumenists in the “patriarchate” not only preached heresy from the pulpits (in both the literal and figurative sense), but also demonstratively performed “ecumenical prayers” with heretics—Catholics, Protestants, Baptists—within the walls of the Moscow and Leningrad theological academies, in churches of the capital (and later—in some diocesan centers in regional cities).

Catholic, Protestant, and sectarian “guests” and “brothers in Christ,” as the ecumenists began to call them, were allowed not only into Orthodox churches but even into the Altars, and were permitted to preach from the pulpits to the people. Let us recall that according to the Canons of the Church, such joint prayers with heretics also deprive of clerical rank those who participate in them.

The people mostly remained silent. Part of the clergy was indignant at all this disgrace, sighed deeply, but went no further than sorrowful sighs; another part accepted ecumenism with complete indifference, being ready—for the sake of preserving their position and income—to agree to anything, including joint prayers with their new “brothers.”

In those rare cases when active bewilderment did break through—from parishioners, ordinary priests, or students of seminaries and academies—regarding ecumenical activities, the “patriarchate,” as before, resorted to lies and deceit, claiming that while strictly preserving (internally) purely Orthodox convictions, it was participating in the ecumenical movement for the sake of preaching (witnessing) Orthodoxy to the heterodox world.

From the “overly Orthodox,” it was concealed that proselytism is forbidden in the ecumenical movement. One of the most prominent ecumenists and loyal disciples of Metropolitan Nikodim (now also a “Metropolitan”) boasted that he had succeeded in dissuading an Anglican bishop from converting to the Orthodox Church!… This “Orthodox hierarch” convinced the Englishman that he would bring greater benefit to the Universal Church if he remained faithful to his heretical confession, since, according to this “Orthodox” view, each one’s fidelity to his own “church” is the pledge of future unity for all!…

The ecumenists understood that all their activity fell under the prohibitions of the canons and the anathemas of the Ecumenical Councils. They then began developing a new “theology” concerning the nature of the Church and its canons, consisting in the claim that the canons are not divinely inspired ordinances, but purely human “disciplinary rules,” dictated by the needs of the time, of the “epoch,” and that for those times and “epochs” in which they were created, they were temporarily necessary. But now—they are outdated. At the same time, “theological” treatises were published asserting that in the Orthodox faith and Church there is an essential aspect, which cannot change, and a secondary, non-essential one… The “essential” aspect was said to be the truths of faith expressed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, in which nothing is specifically stated about the veneration of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the veneration of the saints, of icons, or the entire canonical and liturgical order and heritage of the Church… Thus, it turned out that the main and essential element in “Christianity,” as was to be expected, is only the faith in the Trinity and in Christ as the Son of God who came in the flesh—that is, the notorious “platform” of the WCC. As for everything else, the secondary elements, they may be steadfastly preserved in the Eastern Orthodox Churches (as if out of condescension to the people’s notions) as part of their “confessional” teachings. “We believe,” MP ecumenists would sometimes say, “that Divine Truth is contained in its greatest fullness in our Orthodox Church, but we do not deny that it is (to some degree) preserved in all other ‘Christian Churches’,” i.e., heretical ones. And “the most essential” in the Christian faith is present in all of them… By doing so, the “Orthodox” ecumenists placed themselves under the anathema of at least the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which defined icon veneration (along with it, the veneration of the saints, their relics, the Gospel, and the Cross) as a dogma—that is, an unshakable, foundational (essential!) Truth of the faith and of the Church—and also confirmed all the dogmas and canons previously adopted by the Councils.

The theories of the ecumenists were openly published in the “patriarchate’s” publications under the signatures of their authors, so that it was always possible (if necessary!) to claim that these were merely “private opinions.” However, since such “private opinions” were quite frequently, insistently, and openly preached without encountering any objection from the church authorities, it was absolutely clear that they reflected the views of the highest ecclesiastical authority of the MP.

“By their fruits you shall know them.” In over 35 years of the Moscow “patriarchate’s” participation in bearing witness to its supposedly Orthodox faith before the heterodox world, not one person from among the heterodox converted to Orthodoxy. But the “patriarchate” itself became spiritually united with every and all heresy—just as earlier it had become spiritually united with Bolshevism.

This was the second stage of the “patriarchate’s” fall into the abyss of falsehood and perdition.

A catastrophic shift occurred in the mid-to-late 1970s. By this time, almost all hierarchs who were not ecumenists and who had received ordination before had either fully retired “into repose” or departed entirely from this earthly life, and the ruling bishops in the “patriarchate” became either conscious adherents of heresy or those ordained by false bishops—that is, in reality, those who did not possess true episcopal rank.

This coincided with the fact that during the same period, nearly all the people who had managed to live even a little before 1917 also passed away—and who, despite their extreme small numbers, nevertheless formed a certain spiritual and moral core in the parishes, a kind of “reference point” of church-mindedness. The parishioners throughout Russia, in the overwhelming majority, were now only “Sovki” (or “Komsomol girls of the thirties,” as they themselves sometimes jokingly called themselves). In any case, they were no longer Russians, but new Soviet people, although they had come to believe and disagreed with the policy of state atheism, yet in all other respects fully accepted all things Soviet, even communism, including a certain belief in the possibility of a “bright future” in the coming “communist society.” Looking ahead, let us note that today, in 1995–1996, the majority of the “Orthodox” in the regions—especially in rural areas—during completely free elections, voted for the communists!…

In that latter half of the 1970s, another catastrophic process occurred in Russia—a collapse into total loss of conscience within Soviet society. The phenomena of moral depletion and the weakening of all ethical foundations, which had been accumulating over a long period under the influence of godlessness, finally broke through and manifested in universal theft and lawlessness! This process could not but affect church society as well. We will not dwell even on the embezzlement (sacrilege) that had long flourished in the parishes of the “patriarchate,” both on the part of the “church councils” managing parish finances and the majority of rectors and bishops. Let us note something else. It is written: “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold” (Matt. 24:12). And so it happened!

The regular parishioners of almost all the churches of the “patriarchate” turned into gatherings of people afflicted by such mutual dislike, envy, jealousy, hostility, and even hatred as is rarely encountered even in secular Soviet institutions (“collectives”). Dislike and alienation (reaching the point of widespread suspicion of one another in “sorcery,” fear of accepting a candle or prosphora from each other) forcefully and firmly took the place of Christian love, with rare exceptions, in almost all the parishes of the MP.

Since, as we noted at the beginning, love in Christ is from the very beginning the foundation and mark of the true Church of Christ, in regard to the Moscow “patriarchate” it must be said that this mark has almost entirely disappeared from it. We repeat: with few exceptions.

Thus, the mid-to-late 1970s mark yet another significant and important milestone in church life in Russia, characterized by the fact that—with the rarest of exceptions—the entire episcopate was without grace and produced a great multitude of similarly false priests.

However, since there still remained 2–3 bishops—and to this day a certain number of priests remain—who received ordination not from ecumenists and not from their appointees, and who do not share either Sergianist or heretical ecumenist convictions and attitudes, some extremely small number of valid Mysteries, some extremely faint stream of God’s grace, continues to flow even within the MP.

For a time, this horrifying picture was not entirely visible or clear. Until 1990–1991, there still remained the impression that the ecumenical heresy was the result of the same old coercion and pressure upon the Church by the antichrist communist regime. And so it was thought that as soon as the Church was granted freedom, then everything within it would be transformed and renewed!...

Freedom—and not a superficial one, but a real one—was, by God’s providence, granted in 1990–1991.

VII

The wind of change began to blow noticeably already in 1988. Seventy years had passed since the martyric death of the Tsar Nicholas II and His Family, and one thousand years since the Baptism of Rus’. About ten years prior, some were already saying that, like Ancient Israel, which spent seventy years in Babylonian captivity, the Russian Church would remain in Bolshevik captivity for about the same period, and that in 1987–1988 something ought to change…

A great many things changed significantly! A process of self-liquidation of the communist regime began, under the direction of the West. First, the “Iron Curtain” was slightly lifted, and soon removed altogether, and many people—including clergy—gained the opportunity to travel abroad freely and to establish contact with the Russian Church Abroad. The state’s policy toward the Church began to change rapidly. At first gradually, by the time of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus’, and then more and more, previously closed churches and monasteries began to be returned to the “patriarchate,” and many forms of church activity besides liturgical worship were permitted. The previous pressure of state atheism was lifted from the “patriarchate.” In connection with the general democratization of society, freedom of speech was also granted to the Church.

Behold, it would seem, was the moment when the “patriarchate” had full opportunity to cast off all its chains, to repent of its former service to the antichrist regime, to cease its ecumenical activity, to restore the original canonical order of church life in all areas!..

It must be noted that although many of the changes in Russia turned out to be illusory (for example, power largely remained in the hands of those who had held it before), some—particularly the democratic freedoms, including freedom of conscience—proved to be real. From the turn of 1990, no one was persecuted or oppressed at work for their faith or beliefs; one could, without fear for oneself or loved ones, openly attend churches, profess any religion, and so on.

And then it became evident that no changes—no “perestroika”—were occurring in the Moscow “patriarchate”! Some priests and believers turned their gaze toward the Russian Church Abroad. In 1990, the historic Resolution of the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR was issued, allowing for the reception under its omophorion of those in Russia who so desired, at their request.

At that time, we had almost no doubt that a mass exodus of priests and parishioners from the detested and rotten system of the “patriarchate” into the Russian Church Abroad would soon begin—a Church that had preserved unchanged throughout all those decades both the doctrine and the canonical order of ecclesiastical life, exactly as they had always been in the Russian Church up until 1917, and even until 1927!

What disappointment was ours—and the bewilderment of our compatriots abroad—when it gradually became clear that no mass exodus was happening or would happen, that only a few priests were joining the Church Abroad, and that the majority of them were not the best, but the worst among the priests of the MP!..

Indeed, only a few clergy in Russia joined ROCOR out of principled, ideological, and spiritual motives. The rest came either driven by careerist dreams (hoping to receive episcopacy more quickly, which for some reason was not being granted in the MP), or out of mercenary calculations (for the sake of the “dollar flow”), or in an attempt to avoid accountability for such vices that even in the “patriarchate” (!) would have merited punishment—or they were simply mentally ill. In other words, the priests were joining the Church Abroad out of love for themselves, and the old women—out of love for the priests, and very few—out of love for the truth…

In Russia, up to 200 communities of the Russian Church Abroad emerged, most of which were very small in number. But even among these, half (up to 100 parishes) were led into schism in 1995 by the former Bishop of Suzdal, Valentin—either by his own willfulness or as the result of a pre-planned operation by secret services, which were by no means interested in the rise of a strong ecclesiastical structure in Russia that would be completely beyond their control and that of the authorities in general.

Yet at the beginning, in 1990–1991, the “patriarchate” was seriously alarmed by the appearance of parishes of the Russian Church Abroad on its “canonical territory,” as it called it. A strong ideological campaign was launched against ROCOR. The arguments were mostly old: the Church Abroad were “schismatics,” “politicians,” “enemies of the Soviet state.” But for the “masses,” for the people, new points were introduced: the Church Abroad consists of those who cowardly fled abroad in difficult times for the Motherland, while “we” (?) remained here and suffered; that this Church was founded by “White bandits” and traitorous “Vlasovites,” collaborators with the fascists…

Other “arguments” were employed as well: that the Church Abroad was an “American faith” (since its Metropolitan was in America), that it was “Protestantism,” a “heresy,” that its Mysteries were not performed. There arose many cases in which those baptized within the Church Abroad were re-baptized, and its priests re-ordained. Bishops of the “patriarchate” in some instances began to threaten parishioners with “excommunication” if they associated with the members of the Church Abroad.

The “patriarchate,” with the help of the authorities, clung especially tightly to historic churches when they were being transferred to ROCOR due to the entire congregation joining it along with the priest. In such cases, either through the courts (or even without them), these churches were forcibly taken away from the faithful and returned to the “patriarchate” as the supposed “lawful successor” of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The calculation was simple and precise: the psychology of the faithful is such that they associate Orthodoxy only with Orthodox church buildings. Services held in houses or in other premises adapted as churches are perceived as something sectarian, strange, in any case—not Orthodox… And the majority of ROCOR communities in Russia were forced to pray precisely in homes and non-church premises. Only in rare cases has it been possible here and there to build new small churches, since these communities possess extremely limited financial resources.

And only now, in 1996, has a kind of “second wave” of those joining ROCOR begun to appear quietly. These are spiritually sober, thoughtful, serious people, coming to our Church out of deep ideological conviction. There are not many of them, but they are appearing—they do exist.

Thus, the Moscow “patriarchate” continues to hold back its priests and parishioners from the Church Abroad primarily by the same means—deception and duplicity.

But the main question for us is this: why do these priests of the “patriarchate,” among whom there are many sincere, educated, and kind people, as well as millions of churchgoers, continue to believe a lie in an environment of complete and actual religious freedom?

The central thesis of all the MP’s propaganda against ROCOR, as is not difficult to observe, is the assertion that the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is “not our” (!) Church, but a foreign one—literally, an abroad-church. Granted, they may be Russians too, and also Orthodox, but they are “not our people,” not like us. Let them stay there as they wish, and we will remain faithful to our “Mother Church,” however she may be. Whatever our bishops and priests are like, at least they are ours, just like all of us! And those abroad—we have not known them, have not seen them, and do not wish to know them! Such has turned out to be the main reasoning and prevailing sentiment of the churchgoing people in Russia since 1990–1991.

It is evident that at the root of such a mindset lies not a sense of unity in faith (and in the Church!), but a sense of shared identity through birth and life under the conditions of the USSR. Not of Russia, but specifically—the USSR!

“Soviet” patriotism! Such a thing could only arise under the condition described above—that is, when the true, Orthodox Russian people had been physically destroyed, and in their place a new, Soviet people were raised.

The ideological idol of “our fatherland,” or “our Soviet Motherland,” as the supposed successor of all thousand years of Russia, damages the minds of those who worship it. It was precisely this mental distortion that the communist impostors counted on—especially since the time of the war—and the impostor hierarchs of the MP who had fraternized with them, perpetuating Bolshevik lies with “church” lies—namely, that the Moscow “patriarchate” is the lawful successor of the thousand-year-old Russian Church.

From this same source stems the monstrous absence of true repentance—both among the hierarchs and among the laity of the “patriarchate.” Although many words are spoken about “repentance” and its necessity, true repentance is absent both “above” and “below.” And how could it arise, if the general, seemingly average collective consciousness of the people is such that “we are a great people,” “we are Great Russia,” a “great Power,” and if we have now been temporarily humiliated, we will show ourselves yet (!), we will certainly revive “Great Russia” (preferably by the upcoming Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos). To support this mindset, monuments to Zhukov are erected, certain churches in major cities are gilded, the grandiose set-piece of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow is constructed, and splendid and lavish services, processions, receptions, and “patriarchal” residences are arranged—such as even Ancient, truly great Rus’ never saw!

But the real life of today's “great” Russians is becoming ever more repulsive, ever worse. In 1991, the USSR collapsed. Having long since ceased to be truly Russia, it was bound to fall apart. Even that “Soviet” patriotic average mood, which we described, is not universal, for the new Soviet people, upon closer examination, turned out not even to be a people, but a “Russian-speaking” rabble, lacking even the instinct or sense of national unity! Within it remained only isolated “islands” or “belts” (like the “red belt”) of a certain semblance of cohesion. In reality, as shown by the “parade of sovereignties” of 1992–1993, entire regions were ready to separate from Moscow—sometimes even purely Russian ones, like Primorye, the Urals, or even the land of Vladimir the Great… Crime and the fraudulent character of behavior among the “great” Russians reached unprecedented proportions!

The disarray of opinions and “convictions” among the Russian-speaking population is immense. One can see it at least in the recent elections to the Duma in December 1995 and the presidential elections in June–July 1996. The elections were, for the most part, genuinely democratic and free for the first time. Up to half of eligible voters did not show up at all, and of those who did, about half voted for the communists. What is especially striking is the voting in the countryside. By 1991, the village had become, by 90 percent or more, godless and atheistic. And yet it was once the Russian village that was the stronghold of faith and the Church—the root of the nation! Now it is evident that this root has completely rotted. In the countryside, the majority voted for the communists. The reason, according to the candid explanations of the villagers, is that under the communists, from the state and collective farms, everything needed for private use could be freely “obtained”—that is, stolen. And now such an opportunity hardly exists. But on the other hand, there is also no opportunity to honestly have anything for running a household on one’s own land.

In today’s Russia, for several years in a row, the death rate has exceeded the birth rate. According to medical data, since the 1960s, not a single mentally healthy child has been born in the USSR; all children are born with brain disorders of varying degrees, due to environmental factors and parental alcoholism. There has been a sharp increase in the number of deranged youth, mentally and nervously ill individuals, children with developmental delays, and the mentally ill. There are not enough special “children’s homes,” schools, and “infant houses” to accommodate them. The “great ones” are degenerating in the most direct biological sense.

And against this backdrop of widespread degeneration and criminality, the highest hierarchy of the “patriarchate” is literally drowning in luxury, in the abundance of every conceivable and inconceivable earthly good, pleasure, and opportunity… Many bishops and prominent priests of the MP have become involved with, and fraternized with, criminal capital and organized crime.

The only salvation for the perishing Russian-speaking population of the Russian Federation could be genuine repentance. And the only one who could call them to it is the church authority under which the believing “Soviet folk” remain—that is, the “patriarchate.” Yet from it, as we have said, come only words about repentance. But it must be demonstrated in deed, by example, beginning with oneself… And such a deed, such repentance, from the present hierarchy of the MP is impossible to expect.

Nevertheless, the turning point of 1990–1991 proved significant in that many new people began turning toward the Orthodox faith, including youth—and even very young children. Contrary to expectations, this did not become a nationwide phenomenon. But it did become a noticeable one. In many cases, these were entirely new believers. An increasing number of young people from among them are becoming clergymen. And among them, in turn, there are quite a few who do not accept Sergianism or Ecumenism! However, they continue to remain within the schism and heresy of the Moscow “patriarchate,” primarily due to the same “Soviet-style” and “church” false patriotism.

For despite the sincerity of these new priests and believers, they are products of today’s decayed reality, and they lack a proper sense of justice, canonical awareness, understanding of the Church (or, as it is called in theology—ecclesiological consciousness).

A very telling incident occurred in 1991. In November of that year, “Patriarch” Alexy II delivered his well-known speech before Jewish rabbis in New York, in which—calling them “brothers”—he went so far as to acknowledge a certain “spiritual” unity between Judaism and Christianity… For ecumenists, such an admission was nothing new. But this speech provoked indignation among many priests and educated believers in Russia. Some priests, numbering about 7 or 10, refused to commemorate the “patriarch” during the liturgy. They were called the “non-commemorators.” For the most part, they were from among the completely “new” generation. However, while not commemorating the “patriarch,” they continued to commemorate their ruling bishops—who, for their part, commemorated the “patriarch” as their “great lord and father”… The “rebellion of the non-commemorators” ended with two or three of them joining the Russian Church Abroad, while the rest “submitted” and resumed commemorating the “patriarch.”

Such, perhaps, is the full extent of what the new believing “Soviet folk” turned out to be capable of…

With the same sense of responsibility with which we initially stated that in certain cases the Mysteries in the MP were performed and were valid, we must now, with that same responsibility before God and men, bear witness that before our very eyes, over the past 28 years, the number of valid Mysteries has steadily and rapidly diminished, while the domain of gracelessness has grown just as swiftly. Bishops and priests ordained in the late 1970s to early 1990s, in 99% of cases, did not become true bishops or priests, such that the absence of sacred ordination was, as they say, visible “to the naked eye.” Ordination communicated nothing to the ordinand. If he was a decent man by nature, he remained so; if he was base, he remained base. Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), of blessed memory, in his renowned work on the pastoral office, quoting St. John Chrysostom, wrote that in the Mystery of the Priesthood, a special grace from above is bestowed upon a man—a love for the Church, for the flock, a kind of “womb-pain” for them. And this is indeed so! But in the “patriarchate” today, in ordinations to the priesthood or episcopacy, not only is such love for the Church not imparted, but quite clearly something else is given—self-love (pride), love for one’s pocket, belly, and so on. The more honest among the young bishops felt that they bore no grace of ordination and at times would even say plainly: “I am not a shepherd—I am an administrator…” The number of outright frauds and charlatans in the priesthood of the MP has risen to staggering proportions. The absence of the grace of God is increasingly being replaced by artificiality and theatricality in services. And the “simple believers” are more and more inclined to take for “the grace of God” ordinary emotional sensations of calm and delight from “touching” chanting and services in the churches. They mistake appearances for reality. Today, more than ever, in the MP—with rare exception—everything is merely being portrayed, while nothing is truly being accomplished.

And yet, we wish once again to note and emphasize that at present in Russia there still remain two or three (perhaps three or four) bishops and a very small number of priests who have ordination not from ecumenists and who personally do not agree with the heresy of ecumenism.

In addition, it must be taken into account that the “patriarchate” possesses many ancient and historic churches, monasteries, wonderworking icons, and relics of saints, which in themselves can be sources of God’s grace—but, of course, only for those who approach them sincerely, “in simplicity of heart” (not for the hierarchy).

Lawful and upright clergymen do not decide anything in church administration, but Mysteries performed by them may still be accomplished, may still be valid.

At best, this may be that very last, thinnest thread which ontologically still connects such clergymen and their parishioners to Christ. But even they remain in a state of belief in a lie—a condition in which the many millions of people in the modern Russian Federation continue to exist.

It is necessary to dwell a little more on this phenomenon.

The Apostle Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, writes about the Antichrist and the people of the times of the Antichrist as follows: “And then shall that Wicked be revealed,… whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:8–12).

The “perishing” here are those “who received not the love of the truth.” This speaks directly about us—Soviet people. For decades, we believed in the miracles of science and technology, in the genius of party leaders, in the imminent coming of “communism,” in the USSR as the successor of Russia—in anything, except the truth of God! For such a lack of love for the truth, according to the Apostle, God Himself sends “strong delusion,” so that people begin to “believe a lie.” This is a characteristic of the people of the final, antichrist age.

“Belief in a lie” is a punishment from God.

And if that is so, then arguments of reason, any human preaching, explanations, persuasion, and the like are useless. The overwhelming majority of present-day believing parishioners of the Moscow “patriarchate” are in such a state of “belief in a lie.” It is no longer the fear of repression and death that keeps them in the “patriarchate” system, but the “belief in a lie.” To this may be added only the fear of being cut off from this “patriarchate” as if from the true Russian Church… However, “that which is impossible with men is possible with God.”

And if one imagines that, for some reason, the Lord—who has imposed such a punishment—were to lift it in a single wondrous moment, and the eyes of millions were suddenly opened—what then?

Then it would become clear that many millions of believers in Russia have no true barrier separating them from the Russian Church Abroad! They are united with it in everything—dogmatically, canonically, and liturgically! Then, at once, one Eucharist, one Church would be restored…

Is such a thing possible? If one is to believe certain prophecies that, before the end of time, Russia will be reborn as an Orthodox Kingdom, then perhaps—it is possible. However, prophecy is beyond our jurisdiction. From a historical and purely human point of view, we must for now acknowledge that the masses of Orthodox believers in Russia have been torn away from unity with the Church by an alien or “ivy-like” structure—the false patriarchate—which holds these masses tightly through its duplicity and their belief in a lie.

In the 20th century, something similar occurred not only in Russia. Church authorities in the former countries of the Eastern Bloc—Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, and to a certain extent Serbia—were also afflicted by Sergianism and ecumenism. The Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and the Church of Greece did not experience communist bondage, but they were under strong pressure both from the USSR and from the West. Constantinople, already in the 1920s, began actively engaging in ecumenism, modernism, and Freemasonry. Yet even among these Orthodox nations, free from communism, not all followed the apostasy and heresy of the high hierarchy. As we already noted at the beginning, certain “Old Calendarist” groups arose there, opposing ecumenism. And among the broader masses who still maintain subordination to the ruling hierarchy, something similar to the condition of parishioners in the Moscow “patriarchate” can also be observed.

The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has by now established Eucharistic and prayerful communion with the Synod in Resistance of the Greek Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos, with the Old Calendar Church of Bulgaria headed by Bishop Photios of Triaditza, and with a similar Old Calendar Church of Romania. In addition, naturally, it is in full communion with ROCOR communities in Russia and with some (though not all) catacomb communities that have survived in Russia. All these Churches are in full communion: they have one Eucharist, one faith, one set of canons.

At present, this constitutes the clearly defined boundary of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The “little flock”! Truly. Yet it is the Body of Christ, whose Head is He Himself, and all the faithful and the individual Churches are members of this mystical Body.

At the same time, however, the Russian Church Abroad does not cease to bear witness to its spiritual unity even with those Orthodox who do not yet fall within the bounds of this boundary! Even before 1990, in certain cases, ROCOR admitted priests of the “patriarchate” to Communion, at their request. The Russian Church Abroad also treats with great caution the members of other Orthodox Churches whose senior hierarchies are heretical in ecumenism. For all this, the hierarchy of ROCOR receives many reproaches—from its own “anti-ecumenists,” as well as from the recently emerged “zealots for Orthodoxy” in Russia.

The main argument of all such “zealots” consists in claiming that the ancient Church knew nothing of the sort, that from the beginning it maintained strict canons regarding communion with those who had fallen into heresy.

To this it is necessary to respond firmly by repeating what has already been said: in the ancient Christian Church there was nothing like what became a phenomenon of the 20th century, when vast masses of Orthodox believers—who sincerely wished to preserve Orthodoxy unchanged—were seized by high-ranking church rulers alien to them in spirit and faith, and held by means of deception and fear, or by deception alone (through duplicity).

We have already pointed to one precedent of such a phenomenon—the Old Testament Church of God, the ancient Israel. Let us briefly recall how the separation of the New Testament Church from it took place. The Savior Himself, until the end of His earthly life, preached primarily to the Jews, visiting also the Temple in Jerusalem. After His Ascension into Heaven, the Apostles of Christ continued to preach first of all to the Jews (although it had already been said: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate”). Christ’s disciples continued to visit the Temple, though the most important Mystery of the New Testament—the Eucharist—they were already performing “in houses, breaking bread” (Acts 2:46). Even after the Jews cast them out of the Temple, began to persecute them and stone them, and the Apostles went to preach in various countries, they would first of all go to the synagogues and speak first to the Jews—and only afterward to the Gentiles. The formation of the New Testament Church was precisely a process, that is, an event extended over time, accompanied by wavering in many—some Jews would convert to Christianity and then return again under the power of the rabbinate. And if of Israel, over which those hold power whose “father is the devil” (John 8:44), the Apostle says that “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in,” then what can be said of the millions of present-day Orthodox believers, over whom power is likewise held by alien men!..

Even early Christian antiquity does not present a completely uniform picture. There were heretical communities that separated themselves, and which were immediately and fully cut off by anathema. Such were, for example, the Arians, Monophysites, Iconoclasts, Donatists, Eunomians, and so on. But as noted by Alexei Lebedev in the cited article, the separation of the Roman Catholic Church was a much more prolonged process over time. As early as the 6th century, the heretical teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit “and from the Son” (Filioque) had already begun to spread within it. The foreign to the Church doctrine of the Pope’s supremacy over all was also spreading there from the same early period. And yet, in the 9th century, the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius still considered themselves to be under the obedience of the Roman Pope, although they did not agree with him in everything. The final departure of the Roman Church from unity with the Universal Church occurred only in 1054. But even after this, Russian princes for some time still willingly gave their daughters in marriage to Western kings, still considering them to be Christians.

One may recall the especially close and especially painful schism of Russian Old Believers. Then, in the 17th century, all the Old Believers—from priests to the simplest laypeople—knew that they were separating from the dominant “Nikonian” Church, and they knew why!

In the present reality of the 20th century, however, in the Moscow “patriarchate,” millions of believers and many ordinary priests do not know that they have been torn away from the Church, do not know what their highest hierarchy actually represents, and are convinced that they are truly Orthodox and desire to remain so until the end of their lives. Much the same is true (with certain distinctions) in other Local Churches that were once entirely Orthodox.

Therefore, the Russian Church Abroad is right when, on the one hand, it acknowledges the validity of the Mysteries among a few individual priests of the MP, and on the other hand, requires from everyone, in the case of a transition from the MP, a renunciation of Sergianism and Ecumenism. For any clergyman of the “patriarchate,” regardless of personal convictions, by his belief in a lie was held in obedience to apostates and heretics, and thus became, in a spiritual sense, to some degree a partaker in their heresy.

From all that has been said, one may draw the conclusion: beyond the clearly defined boundaries of the Church today, there exists a vast reserve of sincerely Orthodox people within the MP and other ancient Churches—though they are cut off from the unity of the Body of Christ, yet cut off through deception, falsehood, and betrayal, and thus capable—by special divine assistance—of immediately entering into full unity with the Church as a single grace-filled organism in every respect. Therefore, it is toward such people that the brotherly love of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad is directed, never ceasing to act through the word of truth upon those cut off, with the aim of their enlightenment and return.

VIII

The only thing that now requires careful consideration and, perhaps, revision on the part of the Russian Church Abroad is the significant change in its position regarding the Church in Russia.

In many of its documents, the ROCOR has continually emphasized that it is a “part of the Russian Church,” merely temporarily self-governing under the conditions of the Diaspora.

If this was entirely true up until 1937–1938, when the lawful Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne and his Deputies, as well as other fully Orthodox bishops and a significant portion of the true Russian People, were still alive in prisons and exiles—if it was in some sense still true even up to the mid-1970s—then from the second half of the 1970s, and especially from 1990 onward, as we have shown, it became no longer true.

Now, especially since 1990, it is necessary, in our view, for the Russian Church Abroad to recognize that it is no longer a “part”; it is now the only legitimate Local Russian Orthodox Church in the world, of which that mass of believers—and a few among the lower clergy in Russia—can be regarded as a potential part, those who are still being held under the authority of the foreign-to-the-Church and foreign-to-Orthodoxy, unlawful, apostate, and heretical higher leadership of the Moscow “patriarchate.”

For the Local Church is, above all, the Church of the people, not of a geographical territory. It is true that, as a rule, until the 20th century, Orthodox peoples lived on their ancestral lands (territories). But the 20th century brought many exceptions to ancient rules. In particular, the Russian People on their own land in Russia were simply physically destroyed, as we have shown, and a portion of them found themselves abroad.

Therefore, according to all divine and human laws, the Church of the Russian People must be recognized as only that Church which has unfailingly preserved intact the entire dogmatic, canonical, and liturgical order of church life, as it existed on Russian soil until 1927—without distortions, apostasies, innovations, or heretical teachings, that is, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

 

Russian source:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110728090036/http://rpczmoskva.org.ru/otecheskie-trudy/protoierej-lev-lebedev-granicy-cerkvi.html