To answer the question, what is happening now in the relations between the Russian and Constantinople Churches is to look back, to remember the history of a hundred years ago.
Photo: patriarchate.org
- Poroshenko urged Constantinople to “unite” the Church in Ukraine
- Ukrainian Church – what’s happening
- Ukrainian autocephaly what happens
- Someone in the Ukraine need autocephaly and what’s going on
The Priest Alexandr Mazyrin
The defeat of Turkey in world war I with hopes of a speedy push it out of Constantinople and part of Asia Minor contributed to the sharp rise in chauvinism of the Greeks.
In the official publications of Constantinople and Alexandria Churches published a pathetic article that “the Greek nation is happy and proud to see how Constantinople would finally become the centre of Orthodoxy, a Bishop of him, towering over Nations and tribes, will become a visible head of all Orthodox Churches.”
Subsequent events severely disappointed Greeks. Their adventurous military campaign in Asia Minor ended in 1922, a terrible defeat and the actual genocide of the Greek population in resurgent Turkey. Itself the Patriarchate of Constantinople was almost expelled from Istanbul.
In such a critical situation, she as could, tried to survive in its traditional seat, and at the same time embarked on an unprecedented expansion on a global scale with the aim to fill a special “Universal” titles of real substance – to become a kind of Eastern Vatican, subjugating all other Orthodox Local Church. To implement this ambitious program was only possible under the condition of loss of the Russian Church to its former positions mainly at its expense. Thus the persecutors of the Russian Church – the Bolsheviks – Fanar (Ecumenical Patriarchate) saw the instrument of his survival and strengthening.
The price of Orthodoxy Fanara
Patriarch Meletios
In 1922, the newly elected Patriarch of Constantinople Meletius (Metaxakis) passed from words to business and began to pursue an active policy of conquest. They had issued a Tomos on the right of Constantinople to the management of all Orthodox parishes located outside of the local Orthodox Churches in Europe, America and other places. Was carried out the intervention in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church dioceses in Poland, Finland and Estonia (of course, without any coordination with the Moscow Patriarchate and even against her protests).
Another distinctive feature of the activities of Meletios (Metaxakis) is the extreme modernism and ecumenism. Adapt the Orthodox Church to new realities the Greeks wanted largely for the conclusion of the Union with the Anglican Church. Cover it with beautiful words about Christian unity, but in reality the purpose was more pragmatic: to rely on political and military power of great Britain (at that time former world power No. 1) to the solution of the same problem of the elevation of Constantinople.
Patriarch of Alexandria Meletios II at the meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon lang
One of the Anglican bishops, participants in the negotiations with the phanariotes, later recalled how the Greek representatives unofficially said to him: “If England can get to us the Holy Sophia, we recognize any ordinations and will agree with almost any doctrine.” Such was the price of Orthodoxy Fanara.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that as soon as the Bolsheviks in may of 1922 in the Russian Church was provoked by the Renovationist schism, the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the person of its official representative in Moscow Archimandrite James (Dimopoulos) immediately showed him a keen interest and have offered their services. In June 1922, the chief curator of the Church split along the line of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) L. D. Trotsky informed that Archimandrite Jacob appeared several times to the Renovationists reports that “his master, his Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch” could arrive in Moscow on the planned renovation of the Cathedral, to recognize the schismatic “Supreme ecclesiastical administration”, to participate in the trial of Patriarch Tikhon and to do everything you need to Renovationists, “until the deposition of Tikhon all the canonical rules.”
For this service the representative vanara asked to return was municipalized the building of the Moscow metochion of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, previously used by the Greeks as an apartment house, and pay him in excess of 10,000 Turkish liras. The Renovationists would be happy to see Meletios on your bunch, but the one in Moscow has not gone and even hypocritically defended the persecuted Patriarch Tikhon. It was connected with the Pro-British orientation of Metaxakis, and the UK at the moment has taken a tough anti-Soviet stance, including on the question of the Bolsheviks planned the massacre of the Holy Patriarch of Moscow.
The idea of the phanariotes – new “Ecumenical Council”
However, further support of the schismatics of Constantinople, the Patriarchate refused. In 1924, from Istanbul to Moscow was supposed to go “special Patriarchal Commission,” and specifically provides that it is “in their works needs to rely on the local Church movement, who loyal to the existing Russian government,” that is, on renovators.
Patriarch Tikhon
At the same time voshedshij on the throne of Constantinople after Meletius IV Gregory VII wished to Patriarch Tikhon “sacrificed himself immediately retiring from the management of the Church,” and to do Moscow Patriarchate was abolished.
The level of interaction of the Renovationists with the phanariotes is characterized by the fact that took the place of the deceased in 1924, Archimandrite Jacob his nephew Basil (also Dimopoulo) was in lgesinde Raskolnikov, participated in all their major events, and – quite scandalously – regularly they have rendered, that is included not just in Protocol but in Eucharistic communion with graceless pseudoterminal community. And it was not on his side any initiative, and was carried out with the knowledge and approval of his Patriarchate, which gave rise to a question: if she then Orthodox?
In this case, if the accomplishment of Dimopoulo was the former Constantinople metochion in Moscow, his superiors were thinking more globally.
The main instrument of asserting the hegemony of Constantinople in the Orthodox world as conceived by the phanariotes was to be a new “Ecumenical Council”.
Fanar was interested, instead of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church took part friendly the Renovationists. Special zeal was shown here became at the end of 1929, the new Patriarch of Constantinople Photius II, who tried to extract the maximum benefits from the plight of the Russian Church. However, a sharp deterioration of the international situation in connection with the approach and outbreak of the Second world war made at the time of “Ecumenical” initiatives of Constantinople are out of date.
“Infallibility” Of The Ecumenical Patriarch
After the war, Fanar fully shifted to the United States. They advanced on Constantinople the chair of the us-Greek Archbishop Athenagoras said in 1953 the US Consul General in Istanbul that “the cornerstone of his activities as a Patriarch, he sees the promotion of American ideals”. Since then, hardly anything has changed significantly in terms of dependence Fanara from US policy. What has changed is that, if in the 1950s, America could still be called a Christian country, it is now definitely not.
Meanwhile, the onslaught of the phanariotes, tends to assert its primacy not just of honor, but of authority in the Orthodox world is growing every year. The most important tool for this is the so-called pan-Orthodox Council. Regulations of this event the Patriarch of Constantinople (referred to in the document only universe) are assimilated by the emergency law. He calls the Cathedral, appoints him time and place, presides over it, directs the discussions, providing (or not providing) the word to the members of the Cathedral (emphasized that “no one may speak without first asking and getting permission of the Chairman of the Council”).
Signed the decision of the Council, as stated in the regulations, “the Patriarch sent letters to the Ecumenical Patriarch of the primates of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, who brought them to the attention of their Churches.” That is, without the authorization of the Patriarch of Constantinople and other primates do not even have the right to inform their Churches about what the documents they signed.
Photo: rublev.com
Of course, in the rules there is no word on the possibility of the Cathedral court on the Chapter Fanara, all established procedure that categorically eliminates.
To the Roman Catholic approach is not enough only to teach the thesis of the infallibility of the Ecumenical Patriarch.
The Russian Orthodox Church with him on the way
Of course, with genuine Orthodox ecclesiology imposed on the Church of Constantinople, the papacy is totally incompatible. It is clear that the meaning of the “Holy and Great Council” in Crete in the summer of 2016 was not in the signing of several declarations, not taken seriously even by the phanariotes and the approval of the new management model by the world Orthodoxy, in which Fanar gains dominance over the other local churches and, through it, those forces (only a very mutated), which at one time swore allegiance to the Patriarch Athenagoras. By the grace of God at the last moment, the Russian Orthodox Church (after Antioch, the Georgian and Bulgarian) refused to participate in the Cretan action, which automatically deprived of his status as a pan-Orthodox Council.
Obvious revenge of the Constantinople Patriarchate of the Russian Church was a flagrant intervention of the phanariotes in the Affairs of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Just as in the 1920-ies Fanar supported dissenters, renovators, now he sided with the dissenters-autocephalists. Same as then and even more obvious political implications of his actions.
Of course, we cannot deny the possibility in principle of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But due to this autocephaly should be what the Church needs, not the interests of politicians from the Orthodox Church far away, and sometimes overtly hostile to her. In addition, it is doubtful that any constructive role in this can play the Patriarchate of Constantinople. When it was a stronghold of Orthodoxy, but in the last hundred years, and maybe more to the extreme position is totally compromised and can no longer claim a leading role in the solution of Church problems.
Eyes Fanar loses signs of Orthodoxy. Almost simultaneously with anticanonically the direction of “exarchs” of the Constantinople Patriarchate in Kiev, the decision on the admissibility of verebrate clergy.
Thus, the phanariotes flagrantly flouted not only the secular canons of the Orthodox Church, but also the very Sacred Scripture (see 1 Tim. 3, 2, 12, Titus. 1, 6). Not to say that this is a fundamentally new: a similar project at the time, promoted the sad memory of Meletius (Metaxakis) and some other figures. But then this project was implemented only by the Renovationists, and was despised by the Orthodox faithful. Now it announces, so to speak, ex cathedra the Patriarch himself, called the universe.
Moreover, there are strong fears that this is only the first step Fanara, followed by other, more disastrous: “wedding” same-sex marriage, the ordination of “married” thus, in the hierarchical degree etc. in a Word – everything that can be seen now in Western Protestant denominations, because it happens under the influence of the same forces, in the Wake of policy which moves Fanar. Of course, the Russian Orthodox Church with him in this apostasies movement along the way. Not on the road with him and Orthodox believers of Ukraine and other countries.
Therefore, even if the Patriarchate of Constantinople was formal right of intervention in the Affairs of other local Churches (there is not), in this situation, nothing but harm, this intervention will bring, especially in the Ukraine, the canonical Orthodox Church which is already afflicted. Fanar these suffering tends to aggravate, as well as he did against the entire Russian Church in 1920-30-ies, supporting the dissenters renovators and flirting with the godless Bolsheviks.
But just as then the feat of new martyrs and Confessors of our Church has survived poromiv atheists and Jude Church, will stand, God willing, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church during this ordeal!