So many divisions…

“The more I learn about the Orthodox Church, the more I seem to find it seems divided, yet is it? The Greece Orthodox Church, The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, The Moscow Patriarchate, The Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, and the Western Rite, I expect there are more divisions. Are they just names for the Orthodox Church in different parts of the world?” - Rev’d M.C, Devon [UK].

Oh yes, many more divisions! I am reminded of an occasion way back when I lived in London. I used to go to a shop run by a Muslim couple, and one day the wife told me that Muslims were divided into two groups, Sunni and Shiite, and she added with evident pride: “Our part is divided into 72 different sects!” The thought went through my mind then that perhaps we Orthodox ought to adopt the same technique rather than always being so apologetic about our divisions.

But more seriously, the apparent divisions within Orthodoxy have various causes and consequently some are more serious than others. First of all, after the schism of Rome from Orthodoxy, there were four Patriarchates left, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and some smaller autocephalous Churches, Cyprus, Georgia, etc. Then, with the spread of Orthodoxy into regions hitherto not evangelized, new territories were added.

For centuries now, in these new territories, the Orthodox Church has been administered very largely with separate, autocephalous, hierarchies for each nation state. Thus there was a Russian Church, a Greek Church, a Bulgarian Church, a Serbian Church, a Romanian Church, and so on. This is in fact very similar to the situation within the Anglican Communion. Naturally, over the centuries, with various political changes, the borders of these National (or, as they are properly called, Local) Churches varied and indeed for periods some of them disappear. All these Churches shared the same Faith and, with the exception of some local and temporary difficulties, were in full communion with each other. Their divisions were purely administrative.

With the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the consequent enslavement of the administration of the Church in what is by far the largest of the Orthodox Local Churches, a second and much more serious type of division occurred. Metropolitan (later Patriarch) Sergius subjected the Church administration to the Soviet and atheistic rulers of the state, and thus compromised her integrity. Within Russia, many clergy and lay people did not accept this compromise and went underground, forming a Catacomb Church. Outside Russia, the clergy and laity divided. The Russian Church Abroad was formed which stood in resistance to the Sergianist compromise until it largely capitulated in 2007. Sadly two other jurisdictions were also formed. One in Western Europe placed itself under the Patriarchate of Constantinople; and in the United States the American Metropolia followed an independent course, for a time rejoining the Church Abroad, and then separating again, and in the 1970s receiving an irregular recognition from Moscow as the Orthodox Church in America. The original divisions in this sad history, the separation of the Church Abroad administratively from Moscow and the separation of the Catacomb Church were soundly based acts of resistance to the enslavement of the Church to a theomachist state.

A third set of divisions has occurred over the past decades as a reaction to the espousal by the official Local Churches of the heresy of ecumenism, the adoption of the new calendar, and the concurrent abandonment of traditional Orthodox piety and the encroachment of modernism. (In many of the Local Churches, in the first instance this move was in fact imposed upon them by their Soviet rulers, as it suited their purposes.) So in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria in particular, old calendarist Synods have been established. Sadly, particularly in Greece, this movement has fragmented into a number of Synods of varying authenticity, some holding extremist views and some striving to follow the consensus of the Fathers. I suppose, from your point of view, that to an extent one may liken this last set of divisions to the break-away traditionalist manifestation in the Roman Catholic confession.

The Western Rite as such is not a “division,” because it is practiced only in the Antiochian Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad-Moscow Patriarchate (ROCA-MP), and is fully and wholly within their jurisdictions. However, it seems to me that though the idea of it might have stemmed from good intentions it is a flawed concept, but that is a much wider question, although I think I do not stray far from a fair assessment of the facts if I say that the history of this experiment within Orthodoxy bears out my opinion.

I think that it is fair to say that there has hardly been a time in history when the Orthodox Church has been is a worse state than it is now. Perhaps at other times it has been weaker, but always there seem to have been spiritual giants who remained faithful. Quite obviously there are such today, or the promise of our Saviour would have proved false, which is unthinkable, but it is perhaps for history to judge, and not for us to boast who they are in any other way than by adhering to them and to their confession. However, I believe that we can unnecessarily depress ourselves by regarding the Church only in administrative terms and thus concentrating on all these divisions and contentions. This can lead to distraction, both internally and externally. Our part is rather to remain faithful, and to have a regard for the inner integrity and faithfulness of the Church.

I remember one of our parishioners asking St Philaret the New Confessor, when he visited England in, I believe, the late seventies, how in this day and age one can remain faithful to Orthodoxy. He replied that we should be like a little child fearful of losing its mother in a crowd and holding tightly to her skirt. That is why we placed ourselves under the omophorion of Metropolitan Cyprian.

 

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, St. Edward Brotherhood, June 2013, pp. 14-17.