Ecumenism and the Post-Soviet State of Denial

[Pravoslavnik]

As we approach May 17th, I wonder how many parishioners in the ROCOR-Laurus know the real story behind the Moscow Patriarchate's longstanding involvement in "ecumenism" and the World Council of Churches. This history is described in considerable detail in the Mitrokhin KGB archives, published at Cambridge as The Sword and the Shield in 1999. Delegates of the Moscow Patriarchate have been actively involved in the WCC since the Stalinist era, not because of any quest for brotherly, Chrisitian fellowship with international heterodox groups, but chiefly to promote the political interests of the Kremlin and the Comintern. An important part of this mission was to deny and repress any publicity or information about the systematic persecution and destruction of the Orthodox Church in Russia by the Soviet state.
The previous ROCOR hierarchs always considered the cessation of the Moscow Patriarch's ecumenical activity--including membership in the WCC--as a major prerequisite for unification with Moscow. What has not been openly discussed in the carefully orchestrated march toward the signing of the "Act of Canonical Communion" this year is the fact that Moscow's longstanding and continued "ecumenist" activity has not resulted from a mere charitable misunderstanding of ecumenism as an Orthodox heresy. The reality is, unfortunately, far more sinister. The Moscow Patriarchate's "ecumenism" was part and parcel of the anti-Orthodox political agenda of a Leninist government that appointed and managed the hierarchs who govern the Moscow Patriarchate to this very day. How this important issue got swept under the rug in the drafting and "approval" of the Act of Canonical Communion by the ROCOR-Laurus remains a mystery to me, particularly since the delegates to the All Diaspora Conference, themselves, raised concerns about the "temptation" posed by Moscow's ecumenism, wording the whole thing as euphemistically as possible last May.
This is, in part, a reflection of the more general state of denial about the sins of the Moscow Patriarchate, both within and outside of Russia today. (And who among us would not embrace them if they were truly sorry for what they had done, coming before us in sack cloth and ashes rather than peacock feathers and legal injunctions?) If Moscow and the ROCOR-Laurus hierarchs are truly in a state of denial, (and if the ROCOR is "enabling" Moscow's perfidiousness, to continue the metaphor) is there any evidence of true repentance and sober "recovery" of the KGB-appointed hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate for their longstanding denial of Christ's martyrs before the world? In short, did they ever really get sober and "get back on the Orthodox "wagon"? For years they influenced the WCC to publicly deny that the Russian Orthodox Church and the New Martyrs were being persecuted by the Soviet state. In a few days they will make a big show, along with Metropolitan Laurus, of glorifying the New Martyrs of Russia at Bhutovo, all the while remaining politically active in the World Council of Churches, in violation of Orthodox Church canons and of the explicit teachings of Metropolitan St. Philaret the New Confessor on this subject of ecumenism.
Is the ROCOR-Laurus like a hapless bride, in denial, marrying an alcoholic, abusive spouse who beats her behind closed doors, then apologizes and puts on a good show in public?