ROCOR and Moscow Reunification [sic]

[Kybihetz21]

I understand that so much … like the bishop St. Raphael, I consider myself Russian in my soul, while being a member of the “Greek” Faith, although I am of Latin (Spanish/Mediterranean ancestry) culture and blood. I was “born” and “brought up” in the faith by the ROCOR, and even though I have attended parishes of other jurisdictions while traveling or because there is a personal friendship/rapport with their clergy, I have always thought of the Russian Church as my home. Sadly for me, not only there is not a traditionalist Russian Orthodox Church anywhere close to where I live (probably for a couple of thousand miles), but even the closest old calendar/traditionalist mission/parish is about 200 miles (if not more) of where I am located, so the spiritual isolation is great, which gives way to lots of temptations and makes the struggle almost impossible to bear. Vladika Nikodim of Richmond, of Blessed Memory, used to say: “better no church than the Soviet church!”, but it is quite difficult to do so when one is not a clergyman and the lack of mysteries and fellowship is felt on a constant basis. I don’t hold any grudges, nor do I hate anyone for what they have done, but nobody can tell me that they have not destroyed the Russian Church, and inflicted a hard blow to True Orthodoxy by the annihilation of ROCOR.

[mtcarmel]

Dear Pravo:

A wonderful experience to be sure. But you still are not Russian. You are an American raised and reared in an environment of radical secular humanism. You will never escape your background to the degree you might wish. God does not make us what we are not but more fully what we are. You cannot divide your spirit from your soul from your body. This breaks the integrity that Orthodoxy brought to you in Holy Baptism.

You can attend a Russian Church, belong to a Russian jurisdiction of sorts, and so on. But your "ROCOR"ness will never be what the Synod had when they first touched the shores of America in the ...? When DID the Synod arrive in America? Were evn they full Russian by the time they got here? Their sojourn included Serbia, Germany, and other points West. To be loyal to Russian history it was Peter the Great who turned to the West in order to solve his philosophical dilemma. The Russian soul, since then, has been somewhat divided.

In this light were even the ROCOR fully Russian? The Church is undivided and yet they began to divide themselves from the Church and found apparently legitimate justifications for it.

Some things to think about... or not.

elias

[Catherine5]

Both Prav's and Kyb's testimonies are evocative and inspiring.

Better No church than the Soviet Church - I like that slogan - why did it evaporate into thin air?!
I hadn't realized Bishop Nikodim was so "with it" - in fact I don't know much about him, except that he was in England and when he reposed, Metr Philaret took over the care of that diocese. To think where it went later ! Handed lock stock and barrel to ....the Soviet church!
Do you have more testimony about Bp Nikodim, other facts about his resistance to the Soviets, so unlike that snaky-personality Bishop Mitrophan!
Kyb, it has stuck in my mind what you wrote about Abp Anthony of Geneva a Sov. agent ALSO all the way along - I've been pondering that. Do you have any reason to say that, or is this common knowledge that I missed out on?
We all appreciate your dedication, and will pray for you in that sad state of isolation which everyone around here understands so well.

Prav, thanks for opening up about your obviously very personal visit to St John.
That was nice of Abp Anthony of San Francisco - I don't care for him, but he could do a few really special things of mercy like that. Hard to believe next Septemeber will be 20 years after he reposed.
Do you know what's so funny? He set eyes on me and asked me to speak to him after the liturgy. He led me outside to the street on the corner by that bookstore if you remember there was one there, and asked if I would go and be a novice in one of the Holy Land Convents. I told him that in fact, I HAD always wanted to be a nun but my mother had discouraged me at a very early age, dismissing my plan with inexplicably adamant insistence that I get married when I grew up.
--Maybe you noticed this too, that Abp Anthony could suddenly both speak and understand English to us Americans when he felt like it ?!
Anyway I replied that I would think over the offer.
I decided it wasn't the Will of God for me. Sure enough, time has told that it would have been a disaster: imagine what a nightmare that would have been had I done so. This happened, maybe about the same time you made your life-changing pilgrimage to that shrine, a few years after St John's canonization. But that was when the ROCOR winds were starting to switch direction. Eventually as we all know, the result was shown by the barbaric seizure of the St Elizabeth relics, which evidently those same nuns at the Gethsemane Convent were powerless to resist. I feel they were in deep sorrow about it, at least those who were real nuns. Others may have been bought off, as Mother Juliana claims that the nuns at her former Convent now have ATM cards and are authorized to withdraw every day up to something like $500 from a large bank account ! Even if exaggerated amounts of money, apparently they have every delicacy to eat - and no deprivation for them any longer due to acceptance of that same Soviet Church. I would never have survived with that oppressive atmosphere with representatives of the Russian embassy in tel aviv no doubt breathing down their necks and taking reports on their every move...
I don't want to divert the discussion onto this necessarily, but, what's so strange is that until that famous letter by the brave Priest there, no one in the outside Orthodox world had a clue about this. In short, it happened in June 2009, but no announcement from any official MP-Rocor source whatsoever! They were obviously embarrassed about it and hiding it. Even Interfax only gave a glowing report on the patriarchal celebration of the centenary of the Moscow Martha-Mary Convent's founding, with no mention of the brutally seized relics of the Foundress brought for the occasion.

Finally, no offense anybody, but I feel compelled to mention that it's Sept 15 which is the Feast of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows in the Western calendar. There's no accident these topics of the sorrows caused by the MP's encroachment onto ROCOR have come up today.
Also I see there's an MP icon similar to this theme visiting the East Coast right now. It's one I found VERY appealing at that same time period mentioned above, the time when the storm about this takeover of ROCOR was about to break. Maybe that's is the theme for this entire decade, the Icon's title: Softener of Evil Hearts [i.e., those taking over ROCOR and trying to get control of her only spiritual prize, the Kursk Icon]
Note, however, that the ROCOR-MP accounts fail to grasp the irony in their narrative that this icon wept- WEPT !!! = when present patriarch Kirill was installed.
Funny thing how with so many words written with justifications using human logic or vague wording by the pre-MP, the established Soviet Church, the MP, and their later proxy jurisdictions, almost none of them has ever questioned what the Queen of Heaven feels about their underhanded deeds through all the decades since the Bolsheviks took over; not to mention the heavy persecution of those emigres who stood up against them. Or, to ask Her what She feels today about the MP's deeds since the merger of ROCOR and MP? Maybe Her heart has been pierced with many swords from all this??>

Perhaps prayer to an Icon of The Softener of Evil Hearts may be one of the only ways to budge those hard hearts in Moscow into change, for those who feel unable to fight back except by words on fora like these!

[mtcarmel]

11 September 2009, 15:04

Russian Church Outside of Russia defrocked the bishop who spoke against
its reunion with Moscow Patriarchate

New York, September 11, Interfax – Bishops Synod of the Russian Orthodox
Church Outside of Russia decided to defrock Bishop Agafangel (Pashkovsky)
who joined schismatics.

He is given four weeks “to repent and appeal against the decision,” the
ROCOR official website has reported.

The Synod also declared invalid all divine services, consecrations and
ordeals conducted by Bishop Agafangel since his suspension.

Bishop Agafangel was suspended in 2007. After the Russian Church Outside
of Russia re-united with the Moscow Patriarchate on May 17, 2007, he
together with some of his associates stopped canonical communication with the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and stated that they and some clerics
of ROCOR dioceses who joined them represent the true Russian Church
Outside of Russia.

Since then Bishop Agafangel has illegally consecrated new “bishops” and “
priests” and continued celebrating the Liturgy in Ukraine.

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6431

[joasia]

A wonderful experience to be sure. But you still are not Russian. You are an American raised and reared in an environment of radical secular humanism. You will never escape your background to the degree you might wish. God does not make us what we are not but more fully what we are. You cannot divide your spirit from your soul from your body. This breaks the integrity that Orthodoxy brought to you in Holy Baptism.

Ilia,
What are you talking about? Are you saying that converts have no place in the heart of Russian Orthodoxy?? Let me remind you who brought Orthodoxy to the Russians...the GREEKS. The Russians are Orthodox because of the GREEKS. Anybody who loves Christ, “escape” their “background” for the sake of Truth. We converts CAN escape our background because it is for the truth in Christ. We feel it more than the cradles because we CHOSE it and the cradles were born in it. There is no segregation with Christ. But, I worry for the cradles that think they have it all just because they are born in the faith. Who are you to talk about the soul? You have alot of repentence to deal with. Look within your soul and remember that all are judged by God, not by you. When you die, will you feel that you have lived by His Commandments?

Let me tell you something, Ilia. Turning to God has no limits. Anyone who is not born Russian or Greek can become Orthodox and live it with all intensity of the faith. There ar so many examples of saints. There is no “background” that we cannot escape except the sin of pride. That is what drives us against each other. And if you want to keep talking like an ignoramace, then that is your life. And God does not make us what we are but we expose ourselves as what we fully are...in ignorance.

And who are you to talk about what the Russians did 200 years ago, as if you were there and talk about it with such zeal. YOU WEREN’T THERE!!!! You hypocrite. Live the life in Christ as He taught us and stop spouting national propaganda...because you sound like a nationalist not Orthodox.

[Catherine5]

This is not a reply to Joasia's outburst - !
But it does have to do with Canada. I happened upon this bio of a former Jordanville monk and hieromonk in ROCOR's Western European Diocese - speaking of Arch Anthony of Geneva! - and wondered if anybody knows anything about this curious story.

Why would that group go en masse to the OCA from ROCOR?
That sounds really surprising that someone 'brought up' by Metropolitan Vitaly could decide in favor of the compromised OCA's stance toward Moscow and many other unpleasant aspects.

Though I feel especially warm toward a French Catholic or any Latin/Mediterranean ancestry myself, I can't imagine why this Bishop-elect Irenee followed the ecclesiastical path he did. If anyone has any idea I would be quite interested. Apparently after the repose of Metropolitan Philaret and the election of Met Vitaly, he jumped to the OCA. But why? What sort of person was he? His picture doesn't look Bishop-like at all but a bit strange...maybe Kyb might know a little from his ROCiE connections?
By the way, is this ROCOR's Pochaev Icon from Jordanville which the end of the article explains is touring Eastern Canada?

Here's the OCA press release:
"QUEBEC CITY, QC (OCA Communications) - On Thursday, October 1, 2009, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah and the members of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America will consecrate Archimandrite Irénée (Rochon) Bishop of Quebec City and Auxiliary to His Eminence, Archbishop Seraphim of Ottawa and Canada.

The Rite of Consecration will take place at a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at Annunciation Cathedral, Ottawa, ON, beginning at 8:30 AM.

On Wednesday evening, September 30, the Rite of Nomination, Proclamation, and Acceptance by Archimandrite Irénée will take place at the cathedral at 5:00 PM, immediately before Vigil.

Archimandrite Irénée was born into a large French Canadian Roman Catholic family on December 25, 1948, in Montréal, QC.

In 1961 he had his first contact with the Orthodox Church in Rawdon, QC, at the summer church of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, under the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, Montréal.

On January 20, 1967, he was received into the Orthdoox Church by His Eminence, Archbishop Vitaly of the Russian orthdoox Church Outside of Russia [ROCOR], and until 1971, he participated in the parish life at Saint Nicholas Cathedral [ROCOR] in Montréal. During this time, he also took part in the activities of the McGill University Orthodox Christian Fellowship.

In 1971, he completed his B.A. in Slavic Studies at the University of Ottawa, and then joined Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

In March 1974, after three years of study at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Seminary, he was tonsured a rassophore monk. A year later, in March 1975, he was tonsured a stavrophore monk, and received the name of the Hieromartyr Irénée of Lyons.

In February 1978, he was blessed by Bishop Laurus, then Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery, to serve in France, in the French-speaking parishes there. He was ordained Hierodeacon on May 19, 1978, in Brussels, Belgium and Hieromonk on August 20 of the same year in Geneva, Switzerland by His Eminence, Archbishop Antony of Geneva.

After serving for four years in Lyons, Father Irénée returned to Montréal to serve the French Mission there.

After the election in 1986, of Bishop Seraphim as Auxiliary Bishop for the Archdiocese of Canada, Hieromonk Irénée, Hierodeacon Marc (Pierre), and members of the French Mission in Montreal petitioned to be received into the OCA's Archdiocese of Canada.

Father Irénée was elevated to the rank of Igumen in 1992, to care for the French speaking monastics in Québec. In 1993, he was assigned priest-in-charge of the Saint Benoît French-speaking parish in Montréal. He served also as supply priest in many parishes in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Québec City.

In 1996, Father Irénée was assigned as Administrator of the Russian Cemetery and Saint Seraphim parish, Rawdon, QC, an obedience which he fulfilled until 2007.

In addition to his pastoral duties in parishes of the Orthodox Church in America, he worked full-time in a local Montréal hospital until December 2008.

On April 2, 2009, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America, elevated Igumen Irénée to the rank of Archimandrite, and elected him Auxiliary Bishop for His Eminence, Archbishop Seraphim of Ottawa and Canada, with the title of Bishop of Québec City.

The Archdiocese of Canada has announced that, in conjunction with the consecration of Archmandritre Irénée, the wonder-working Pochaiv Mother of God icon will be visiting Ottawa as part of a Canada-wide tour.

The Pochaiv Mother of God icon will be available for veneration at Annunciation Cathedral from 12:00 noon September 30, until midnight. On the evening of October 1, the Akathist to the Pochaiv Mother of God will be served at 6:30 PM at Annunciation Cathedral, followed at 7:30 PM by a public talk by Metropolitan Jonah"
Think I could pass that up...!

[joasia]

Catherine,

This is not a reply to Joasia's outburst - !

Then why mention it?? Do you want to make a point or something??