Year: 2016

Russian Orthodoxy, the brilliant religious tradition of Russia which is now a prominent feature of diaspora Eastern Christianity, neither rises nor falls with the politics of the contemporary Russian state or its Patriarchal church. I am compelled to mention this because certain murmurers have implied — or outright stated — that I am anti-Russian, anti-Orthodox, anti-Russian Orthodox, etc. due to my support of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) and my low view of the recent meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Nothing could be further from the truth. My appreciation for Russian Orthodoxy runs deep, and I continue to venerate her great saints and martyrs just as I find myself nourished intellectually by many of her theologians, old and new. However, truth compels me to be honest about the present state of the Moscow Patriarchate and its illicit “Russian World” ideology. In time these problems will pass just as new ones arise, not just within the realm of the Russian Orthodox Church, but throughout all of Christendom. This is true of the UGCC as well, for it, too, is comprised of fallible, sinful men who have, at times, placed nationalist impulses and ethnic pride above Christian charity when it comes to their estranged Orthodox brethren.

I agree wholeheartedly with Fr. Robert Taft that it is pointless to bicker about which side in the Orthodox/Catholic divide has the cleanest (or dirtiest) hands. Historical injustices should be brought to light and repented of, just as ongoing wrongdoings must be confronted openly and honestly. Does that mean “choosing sides”? Sometimes, though I am hesitant to think of the sorrowful conflict between Catholics and Orthodox as a zero-sum game which must inevitably have a single clear winner. Victory will be achieved through unity, not one side vanquishing the other once and for all.

Traditional Catholics can’t always be blamed for tripping up on “things Eastern,” what with being panicked over the third Confiteor at Mass or decrying the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. It’s distracting stuff. So imagine my surprise when several traditional Catholics, including the historian Roberto de Mattei, started combating the media-spread exaggeration that the Patriarch of Moscow and the Pope of Rome have been estranged for 1,000 years. While some Orthodox contest the dating, there is a strong case to be made that the Patriarchate of Moscow came officially into being in 1589, with its Metropolitan status originating a century early in 1448 when it, arguably, inherited the lineage of the See of Kyiv, albeit without canonical approval from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Although Mattei identifies the beginning of the East/West Schism as 1054, he takes note of the reunion Council of Florence in 1439 and the sad reality that that the fall of Constantinople in 1453 effectively dashed all hope of a permanent end to the rending of Christendom. However, Mattei’s suggestion that the Rome/Moscow split should be dated at the founding of its patriarchate is rather questionable. There should be no doubt that by the time the Russians had imprisoned and illegally deposed Metropolitan Isidore in 1441 for accepting the Council of Florence and illicitly replaced him in 1448 with Jonah of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church became officially estranged from the See of Rome.

With respect to the Kyivan Metropolia, while it is well known that a number of its bishops reestablished full communion with Rome in 1596, there was a period of separation between Rome and Kyiv that some date to the end of Metropolitan St. Macarius the Hieromartyr’s brief reign in 1497 or Joseph II in 1501. There can be no doubt that by the time Jonah of Kyiv ascended the throne in 1503, the Metropolia was no longer in full communion with Rome, choosing instead to realign with the Eastern Orthodox who had rejected Florence. This period of estrangement between Rome and Kyiv thankfully came to an end less than a century later, though Russian aggression in the region during the 17th Century, which included Moscow’s imperial claim over the See of Kyiv and its Orthodox adherents, severely undermined Brest and the Greek Catholic Church, along with the rights of Ukrainian Orthodox to this day.

Fr. Andriy Chirovsky, Director of the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, has a new piece up at First Things reflecting on the recent meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. The article provides some much needed historical context to the meeting and corrects a number of errors floating around in the mainstream and Catholic press, including the idea that the Moscow Patriarchate is 1,000 years old (it was established in 1589). Here are some excerpts.

The spin will be important to watch because much of the world press is hopelessly confused in its reporting about the historic meeting between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Moscow. Endless references to the thousand-year estrangement between Rome and Moscow display ignorance of the fact that 1,000 years ago the Patriarchate of Moscow did not exist. It was created in 1589. Even the position of Metropolitan of Moscow goes back only to 1448. The creation of the Moscow Metropolitanate was a direct reaction to the fact that the Church of Kyiv (Kiev) had re-established full communion with Rome at the Council of Florence through Metropolitan Isidore. The Metropolitan of Kyiv, Petro Akerovych, had attended the First Council of Lyons in 1245. Moscow cannot claim the history of the Kyivan Church as its own and simultaneously ignore such momentous moments in that history. Furthermore, the Kyivan Church re-established full communion with Rome in 1596 through the Union of Brest, an explicit revival of Florentine models of unity, only to be beaten back by rivals who did not accept this Union. Even so, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev, Petro Mohyla in the 1640’s, made contacts with Rome and was the author of yet another proposal for renewing communion with Rome, on what he considered slightly better terms. Now, either the history of the Church of Kiev is a separate reality from that of Moscow, or it is part and parcel of Russian Orthodox identity. Moscow cannot have it both ways. Alas, Moscow does do its best to obfuscate matters. The Moscow Patriarchate (founded 1589) claims to be the Mother Church for the Church of Kiev (founded 988). George Orwell would smile at this sort of Double-speak. That is why Moscow does not correct commentators who talk about the thousand-year estrangement. It all makes Moscow look more exotic, more like a great prize to be wooed at all costs.

. . . .

In paragraph 25, the Moscow Patriarchate finally acknowledges that Eastern Catholics actually have a right to exist and to minister to their flocks, something the Joint Orthodox-Catholic Balamand Declaration in 1993 clearly stated. Twenty three years later, all of the Eastern Catholic Churches can breathe a sigh of relief that the Church that co-operated in the destruction of Eastern Catholic Churches under the Czars and under Stalin, has finally come into line with world Orthodoxy and no longer denies their very right to live. Interestingly, this paragraph does not mention Eastern Catholic Churches, but only “ecclesial communities.” Anyone versed in Catholic ecclesiological and ecumenical vocabulary will be alarmed at this, since this signals something less than full stature as a Church. There is no doubt at all that Rome views the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches precisely as a Church. In fact Rome refers to 22 Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris, a term that means “of their own law” or self-governing. How, then, did this anomalous terminology creep into the document? There is only one answer, I believe. It was inserted by Moscow and Vatican ecumenists either missed it or knowingly made a concession in order to please Moscow.

. . . .

The definition of uniatism given by paragraph 25 is rather ambiguous and thus (and I’ll say this with a smile) it appears not to apply to the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church. The text says: “It is today clear that the past method of “uniatism”, understood as the union of one community to the other, separating it from its Church, is not the way to re–establish unity.” Apparently, Ukrainian Greco-Catholics can sigh a great sigh of relief, since this Church came into being through the decision of the bishops of the Orthodox Metropolia of Kiev, and not through “the union of one community to the other, separating it from its Church. This was an action of the whole Kievan Church. Ironically, the two last bishoprics to join the Union (a hundred years later) were those in Westernmost Ukraine, today the region in which Ukrainian Greco-Catholics still constitute a majority of believers. The 1596 Union of Brest was precisely a corporate union of one Church with another, not some peeling off of communities from another Church. Of course, the faithful of this Church have paid a very high price for their choice of unity with Rome, openly persecuted by Russian imperial governments, whether czarist or Bolshevik, whenever they acquired another slice of Belarusian or Ukrainian territory. The narrative presented by most Orthodox authors is that all of this was a plot by Polish Jesuits against the Orthodox Church. Such a narrative denies subjectivity to the Orthodox bishops of the Metropolia of Kyiv. In fact, they were shrewdly acting against plans that many Poles had for turning the Orthodox into Roman Catholics and Poles. None of this is to say that the Union of Brest is a model for Orthodox-Catholic unity in the future. It had numerous flaws, on the side of the Orthodox architects of the union as well as on the side of Rome. A good number—but not all—of them have been corrected. The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church does subscribe to the Balamand Statement of 1993. It has from the beginning.

There has been so much excellent commentary on the recently concluded meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow that it seems unnecessary to add too much more to the pile. Clearly an event like this—and the Joint Declaration which emerged from it—wasn’t going to sit the same with all people. Although Eastern Orthodox commentary has been fairly sparse thus far (at least in English), there appears to be a fair amount of discontent floating around traditionalist Orthodox circles (the “pan-heresy of ecumenism” and all that jazz), prompting some to either declare that the sky is falling or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, that neither the meeting nor the Joint Declaration mean a whole heck of a lot. To some extent the latter view is correct. The meeting, in and of itself, won’t amount to a hill of beans unless the Moscow Patriarchate is committed to ongoing theological dialogue and rapprochement. However, as numerous commentators have already highlighted, the Russian state under Vladimir Putin has a definite geopolitical interest in keeping close ties with the Vatican, which may have had more to do with the meeting taking place than any desire to mend the Great Schism.