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The attitude of the Moscow Patriarchate towards other Orthodox churches

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09637490701621679

1465-3974

Alicja Curanović,

Religion and Society Interactions

Abstract The Moscow Patriarchate is a transnational subject of political relations which acts both inside and outside the Russian Federation. It has specific goals: to maintain the integrity of its canonical territory and to gain dominance within the Universal Orthodox Church. It is in competition with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, it makes alliances with Slavic Orthodox churches and it pursues diplomacy. The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate is of interest to the Russian government. This article examines relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox churches and their significance for Russian foreign policy. Notes 1 In this article the name Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is used a synonym for the Moscow Patriarchate. 2 Autocephalous churches: the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia; the churches in Greece, Poland, Albania and the Czech Republic/Slovakia. Note that the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in the USA, acknowledged by the ROC, has not been recognised by most Orthodox churches, including Constantinople. 3 The principle of symphonia legitimised the model of close relations between the patriarch and the emperor, which took shape in the Byzantine Empire in the time of Justinian (527 – 65). According to this principle the two branches of power – the spiritual power of the church and the secular power of the state – are two gifts given by the same Grace of God and are thus called upon to act in harmony. 4 It is a common belief among the Orthodox nations that the deciding factor as to whether one is a member of a certain community is one's faith rather than one's ethnic origin. In the eyes of many in Orthodox societies the abandoning of Orthodoxy for some other faith means the loss of national identity: a real Russian, Serb or Greek has to be Orthodox. 5 An example of direct influence is provided by the tense relations between the governments of Serbia and Macedonia regarding the conflict between their churches. Indirect influence can be demonstrated by the example of protests organised by the churches in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus' against the NATO bombardment of Serbia, which in consequence forced Russia to radicalise its diplomatic stance. 6 Examples of political events having negative consequences on relations between churches were the crisis between Russia and Georgia in the late autumn of 2006 and the conflict between Russia and Belarus' over gas prices. 7 Autonomy (from the Greek autos, self, and nomos, law) is a form of privileged dependency of a certain organised unit on a mother church. An autonomous church is not permitted to act beyond boundaries set by the mother church in legal, administrative and judicial matters. See Znosko (Citation1973, part 1, p. 173). 8 He was replaced by Vladimir (Sabodan) from Rostov. 9 Founded in 1921, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church has been recognised by none of the canonical churches. In 1930 the church merged with the Moscow Patriarchate. It reactivated itself in June 1990 by choosing the banished Metropolitan Mstyslav as its head. After Mstyslav's death Dmytrii (Vladimir Yarema) was chosen as his successor (on 7 March 1993) (Roberson, Citation2005, p. 146). 10 Citing the constitutional principle of neutrality, the Ukrainian authorities did not give permission to the UOC-KP to bury Patriarch Vladimir (Romanyuk) in the cellars of the Cathedral of Saint Sofia. On 18 February there were violent clashes between members of this church and the police blocking the entrance to the cathedral. Not being able to reach the sanctuary, the believers buried the patriarch under the pavement outside the church wall (Tataryn, Citation2001, p. 163). 11 The Ecumenical Patriarchate recognised the EAOC as the lawful successor of the Estonian Orthodox Church which existed from 1923 to 1945 under the jurisdiction of Constantinople (see Roberson, Citation2005, p. 71). Before that period the territory of present-day Estonia was a part of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, which in 1920 gave the Estonian church a certain degree of autonomy. The incorporation of the Estonian church into the structure of the Moscow Patriarchate was confirmed in 1978 by the patriarch of Constantinople, Dimitrios: see http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/print/1666674.html (accessed 30 January 2007). 12 On the basis of a contract signed in 2003 with the EAOC the Estonian government became the owner of two churches (St George and St John the Baptist, both located in the town of Tartu), which it later leased to the ROC. 13 The archdiocese of Bessarabia was originally founded by the Romanian Patriarchate in 1918 but was incorporated by the ROC after Moldova became part of the USSR in 1940. 14 This article is too short to present a detailed account of the matter, but a few points are worth stressing. After the conquest of Constantinople by Turks in 1453 the Russian church was, for almost 400 years, the only Orthodox church in a state ruled by an monarch of the Orthodox faith. The new role of the Russian church was further legitimised by the theory put forward by Filofei of Pskov according to which after the fall of Byzantium (the New Rome) Russia became the Third Rome – the guide, guardian and representative of the whole Orthodox community. The special status of the Russian church was confirmed by the foundation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1580. However, Constantinople was not completely marginalised in the Universal Orthodox Church. Paradoxically, the role of the patriarch of Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire was strengthened as a result of the millet system, which organised the subjects of the empire according to their religion. Inside the Orthodox Christian millet the patriarch of Constantinople was considered the leader of the community of Christians over which also he exercised a quasi-independent secular rule in the fields of justice, taxation and finance. The patriarch was the head of a multiethnic Orthodox community, and this fact enabled him to maintain a limited power over the ancient patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. 15 The problem of 'eastern papism' divided the two patriarchates at a meeting of Orthodox and Catholics in Belgrade in October 2006. The Russian church protested against treating Constantinople as the 'Orthodox Vatican'. Recently Bishop Ilarion (Hilarion) of Vienna and Austria, the head of the Representation of the ROC to the European Institutions, stressed that the precedence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Universal Church is only of an honorary nature. 16 Drawing on the experience of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate has been trying to persuade the ecumenical patriarch to annul the transition of jurisdiction over the Ukrainian church from Constantinople to Moscow which took place in 1686. 17 The appeal was a reaction to a rumour that on the previous day Constantinople had claimed that Ukraine was part of its own canonical territory (Litvinenko, n.d.). 18 Bartholomaios was asked for counsel by the bishops of Cyprus regarding the lengthy illness of Archbishop Chrysostom, the head of the church. In May 2005, on the initiative of the ecumenical patriarch, a council was convened in Switzerland where the problem was discussed (Sobor, Citation2005). Since September 2006 the church of Cyprus has had a new leader. 19 In 2005 the Patriarchate of Jerusalem was hit by a scandal after it was revealed that the plenipotentiary of Patriarch Irenaios had leased land in the historical part of Jerusalem for a period of 199 years to Jewish organisations. This evoked fierce protests from the faithful, mostly Arabs. Outrage grew after revelations in the Greek media suggesting that Irenaios had become patriarch with the help of intrigues including the deliberate slandering of opponents. On 6 May 2005 Irenaios was stripped of the title of patriarch by decision of the other bishops. Some of the bishops turned to Bartholomaios asking for help in their efforts to normalise the situation. The ecumenical patriarch summoned a council, which met in Phanar on 24 May 2005 and confirmed the bishops' decree. On 22 August a new patriarch, Theophilos, was installed. 20 Bartholomaios was at Davos as a member of the Turkish delegation. The patriarch is a Turkish citizen, but enjoys the unofficial patronage of Greece, which supports him in the international arena. The Greek government regularly reminds Ankara that it must respect the rights of the Greek minority living in Turkey and that it should treat the ecumenical patriarch not only as the head of the local Orthodox church but as the leader of world Orthodoxy. Relations between the two states were strained when in September 2004 a group of Turkish nationalists, protesting against the opening of an Orthodox seminary in Turkey, demanded that the seat of the patriarch be moved from Istanbul to Greece; such calls have been repeated since then. 21 Russia was the first state to receive the newly elected Hamas government; the leaders of Hamas were invited to Moscow by President Putin. Patriarch Aleksi tried to convince the members of the delegation to continue peace talks with the Israeli government. 22 Some of churches in northern Greece traditionally come under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. However, between 1928 and 2003 administrative powers over this area, including the selection of bishops, were held by the Greek church. This changed in 2003 when Bartholomaios reserved to himself the right to ordain bishops. 23 The analogy with the 'Estonian experience' is obvious. It should be noted that the Greek church supported the Moscow Patriarchate in the latter's dispute with Constantinople over Estonia in 1996. 24 Romania might also be considered as a part of the Slavic alliance in the light of the experience of repression and persecution which the Romanian Orthodox Church shared with its Slavic neighbours in the communist period. However, the dispute over the archdiocese of Bessarabia could present an obstacle to future cooperation. 25 Spokesmen for the Moscow Patriarchate today say that the patriarchate never ruled out the possibility of the union of the two churches. The ROC acted against the expectations of the émigrés and symbolically rejected 'Sergianism' when in 2000 it canonised Tsar Nicholas II and his family. A year later the two churches officially exchanged letters; in November 2003 their representatives met in Moscow and in June 2004 a joint commission for dialogue was formed. After two years the commission produced an act of canonical union that was approved by the Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate on 26 December 2006. 26 From 1811 to 1943 the Georgian Orthodox Church was in fact under the jurisdiction of the ROC. 27 It should be noted, however, that in its official documents the ROC blamed the Georgian government for the crisis in bilateral relations between the two states. 28 On 13 May 2006 13 leading Georgian personalities sent a letter to the leaders of all the autocephalous Orthodox churches in which they protested against restrictions on the use of the Georgian language in the Church of St George in Moscow (Slukhi, Citation2006). 29 The 'Near Abroad' comprises the states that used to be part of the Soviet Union. The ROC considers them to be part of its 'canonical territory'. The exception is the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania): while the ROC continues to regard them as its 'canonical territory' the Russian state no longer regards them as part of the 'Near Abroad'. 30 The canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate is an important category in the politics of President Putin. In summer 2003 he stated that an official visit of the pope to Russia could take place only with the consent of the ROC. 31 The case of the violation of the rights of the Russian minority in Estonia was also raised at the OSCE and the Council of Europe. 32 The Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Association (Imperatorskoye pravoslavnoye palestinskoye obshchestvo) is the oldest Russian nongovernmental organisation for education. It was established by Tsar Alexander III on 21 May 1882. Since 2003 it has had the status of an international nongovernmental organisation. 33 In his writings on the 'clash of civilisations' Samuel Huntington distinguishes eight major civilisations, including the Orthodox civilisation, which dominates in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.