Fr. Steven Allen: ROCOR, Met. Agathangel & SiR

[Priest Siluan]

It is gratifying to have provoked such spirited and well-argued discussion!

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I am willing to grant to Subdeacon Joseph that the position of the Agathangelites on the other Russian TOC groups is more complicated than I portrayed it. It seems best described as a work in progress. I appreciate his doing homework on this question. 

The substantial issue before us, in the area of the ROCOR-A's relationship to the other TOC groups, can be summarized thus:  1. The Cyprianites teach as a matter of positive knowledge that notorious heretics remain in the Church an indefinitely long time, possibly until the end of the world, if a certain juridical procedure of ecumenical proportions and very strict construction has not taken place. 2.  Maintaining that this teaching is a dogma of the Church, they refuse to return to the Church from which they separated, the GOC of Greece, on the basis of Apostolic Canon 34 and Canon 15 of the First and Second Council, as Cyprian II recently confirmed in his correspondence with Ekklisiastikos.   3. The ROCOR-A now depend for the validity of their orders on the Cyprianites' not being a schism.  4.  If this peculiar Cyprianite teaching is not a dogma of the Church, they have - according to their own admission- no justification for remaining apart from the GOC of Greece,  they are therefore a schism, and the ROCOR-A has therefore received its orders from schismatics. For those of us, like myself, who in fact love the Cyprianites and the ROCOR-A, and desire union with them in the Faith and the Holy Mysteries, this is a real problem, and it is a grievous one. 

I do not believe that I am being gratuitously belligerent or mischievous for proposing that this is a serious problem which should be addressed in the inter-jurisdictional dialogue.  I humbly submit that it actually is helpful to dialogue to point these things out. 

Another contention in the essay, that the 1994 decision - to move the ROCOR position from "we don't know whether WO 'has grace' or not'" to "we know positively that they do" - greatly facilitated the acceptance of the MP by the ROCOR rank and file, would be hard for anyone who lived through those years in the ROCOR to deny with a straight face. 

My conclusion, that the ROCOR's ecclesiological haziness over previous decades led to their being vulnerable to the 1994 decision and finally the 2007 catastrophe, seems so obvious as not to require detailed criticism.  If the 1974 IIIrd All-Diaspora Sobor had promulgated the "strict" position or if the 1983 Anathema had been upheld, the 1994 and 2007 changes could not have taken place without an obvious, unmistakable reversal of previous policy.  As it actually occurred, the frog was boiled slowly and finally was boiled to death.[/quote]

Dear Father Steven:

I am very glad for reading you here. Also, I am agree completely with you about this last post of yours.

Keep me in your holy prayers, and congratulate you and everybody here on the Feast of Holy Royal Martyrs.

in Christ.

Priest Siluan

[Pravoslavnik]

As one who lived through the bewildering events of 2000-2007 in a ROCOR parish, I would say that the frog to which Father Steven Allen refers was, in fact, pithed. If it was boiled, it certainly happened quickly, perhaps after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned up the heat on the ROCOR-Laurus "frog" with a cordial invitation to croak.

[Fr. Steven Allen]

It had the appearance of suddenness to laity who were being kept in the dark by their clergy. To those who had a front row seat at the various clergy conferences held throughout the 1990's, who were aware of the constant contacts of certain hierarchs and upper clergy with the MP, and who were personally subject to ongoing pressure from the pro-MP camp to sign on to the "program," it was obvious in the late 1990's that the "union" was a foregone conclusion.

I tried to warn my parishioners in Denver, in a series of talks on Sundays after the Divine Liturgy in 1999-2000. One of the deacons assigned to our parish "squealed" on me to Vladika Kyrill, who wrote me a very strict letter ordering me to be silent. To my shame, I obeyed, which always disturbed my conscience later on.

[Priest Siluan]

As one who lived through the bewildering events of 2000-2007 in a ROCOR parish, I would say that the frog to which Father Steven Allen refers was, in fact, pithed. If it was boiled, it certainly happened quickly, perhaps after Russian President Vladimir Putin turned up the heat on the ROCOR-Laurus "frog" with a cordial invitation to croak.

Of course, but it was a long process, which surely began since the last eighties (and in Russia since nineties, please read "The Free Russian Orthodox Church: A Short History" by V. Moss http://www.roacusa.org/1.html). It is very interesting that Lavr, "Mrak" (it is an old manner to say "darkness" in Russian), Ilarion and company were who pushed to be in communion with the Kyprianiates and also the sames ones who drove to ROCOR to its very sad destination under the MP.

[Fr. Steven Allen]

Yes, of course, a very long process. Strictly speaking, the process began long before the 1980's, because the KGB always had agents working in the Church Abroad. But a new phase began in 1988, in the patriotic atmosphere surrounding the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus, which coincided with the era of Gorbachev and perestroika.

Yes, those who pushed for the 1994 decision were the exact same ones who later threw over the SiR and pushed for the Moscow union. One has to be very naive to think that the two "operations" were unrelated. The SiR ecclesiology was a powerful idea which Mark and Co. could conveniently "buy off the shelf ready made" to use as a propaganda tool in their brainwashing campaign, and "throw away the package" (the Cyprianite jurisdiction) when the product was "used up."

[Suaidan]

It is gratifying to have provoked such spirited and well-argued discussion!

Dear Father Steven: Evlogite! Well, I would say the scope and reach of your essay has been rather broad: it has provoked interest among clergy cross-jurisdictionally, including my own jurisdiction.

The substantial issue before us, in the area of the ROCOR-A's relationship to the other TOC groups, can be summarized thus: 1. The Cyprianites teach as a matter of positive knowledge that notorious heretics remain in the Church an indefinitely long time, possibly until the end of the world, if a certain juridical procedure of ecumenical proportions and very strict construction has not taken place. 2. Maintaining that this teaching is a dogma of the Church, they refuse to return to the Church from which they separated, the GOC of Greece, on the basis of Apostolic Canon 34 and Canon 15 of the First and Second Council, as Cyprian II recently confirmed in his correspondence with Ekklisiastikos. 3. The ROCOR-A now depend for the validity of their orders on the Cyprianites' not being a schism. 4. If this peculiar Cyprianite teaching is not a dogma of the Church, they have - according to their own admission- no justification for remaining apart from the GOC of Greece, they are therefore a schism, and the ROCOR-A has therefore received its orders from schismatics. For those of us, like myself, who in fact love the Cyprianites and the ROCOR-A, and desire union with them in the Faith and the Holy Mysteries, this is a real problem, and it is a grievous one.

Since I am not an adherent to the SiR (they don't like being called "Cyprianites" any more than any of us like our jurisdiction named after our first hierarch as though we're a sect, though I fall into that particular one occasionally), I can't speak for them, but can only offer my own criticisms of all sides in the discussion.

1. The first is that I am not quite certain how the ecclesiological position of the SiR applies in theory among its sister Churches. In their official documentation they use Greece as an example. As I understood it, they were (and are) aware of parts of ROCOR (even ROCOR-A) that deny the MP have grace; I remember seeing a document (though I cannot find this document) clarifying that this is not in contradiction with their position since they were two different Orthodox jurisdictions involved.

I think a good way to clarify this is to turn one of the claims against the SiR into a question and see how they answer. Many have argued that the "Cyprianite" position would effectively mean the Roman Catholics are still in the Church. Obviously, the SiR does not believe this in their writings; so the easiest way to determine what their "dividing line" is would be to ask them when did Rome cease to be part of the Church. To my knowledge, this has never been done, and I have no intention of bothering poor Abp Chrysostomos about it, who gets enough stress in his own life because of this constant internal squabbling to answer such an odd question. However, he may be inclined to give answer to someone genuinely interested, and then at least we will have a basis for understanding their position further. (If this has been done, it would be best to determine how this applies to the current situation.)

1. The second is that although the SiR officially teaches that there is grace in official Orthodoxy until a Synodal condemnation (per their main resistance documentation) I am not certain how clearly this gets imparted to the faithful. Nor am I certain how clear they are on whether they are referring to certain grace or are simply to what the Latins refer to today as "ecclesia suplex". While that may sound out of left field, we find in their reprinting of some of Metropolitan Chrysostomos' writings (the relevant text is found in "Resistance or Exclusion") that in fact potential schismatics in fact cannot of themselves impart grace.

I haven't seen the dialogue with Ekklesiastikos, so I can't say anything about it. Regardless, I would say that the situation between 1978 and 1985 was so complicated for the TOC of Greece that to assume that by 1985 everything had "returned to normal" is a tragic glossing over of what actually occurred. Even Vladimir Moss, very much in favor of the Synod that eventually elected Archbishop Chrysostomos, notes just how even Bishops who agreed with the previous Florinite union that led to the deposition of Abp Auxentios themselves found canonical and moral anomalies in how the union was carried out procedurally. In such a context, Metropolitan Cyprian's refusal to join the reunited Synod is somewhat understandable. Thus, the 1985 deposition couldn't carry weight against him if he was not part of the Synod. (As a side note, I had heard-- and I have no verification-- that Metropolitan Cyprian, at one point, styled himself "Archbishop of Athens". While I do not attach any credence to this claim, I will say that it would confirm that he did not believe himself to be under Archbishop Chrysostomos).

1. While that premise would not apply to ROCOR-A now (since five of their twelve or thirteen Bishops actually do not derive their orders from the SiR at all) the question is of course whether at the outset they entered into communion with a schismatic assembly. In 1994, they determined they didn't (Bp Gregory of blessed memory famously dissenting.) So we are forced to ask ourselves again: if they entered into communion with a schismatic assembly, they were already liable to judgment. If not, then having SiR Bishops as co-consecrators for the ROCOR-A Bishops is simply an afterthought, and a consequence of their being a single remaining Bishop of the ROCOR that was not in union with the MP.

2. I wish I had the actual deposition document from the GOC-Chrysostomos for Metropolitan Cyprian. It would clear a lot of confusion on the matter, since all that I have seen online is this list of depositions: http://users.otenet.gr/~i/970906e4.htm

In it, it lists Metropolitan Cyprian as former Bishop of Fili and Oropos, something that was not granted by the whole TOC of Greece to begin with, but as we know, the faction under Metr Kallistos of Corinth. And this was one of the problems of the reunited TOC of Greece to begin with: the agreement that basically all parties would let bygones be bygones required the assent of the Bishops, and not all of them agreed, notably Metr Cyprian himself. But in the end, the question of whether the ROCOR received ordinations from schismatics is a secondary question to whether ROCOR entered into union with schismatics in 1994. We MUST deal with the deposition statement concerning Metropolitan Cyprian and its canonicity (or lack thereof) before anything else. Otherwise, any discussion of heresy is a smokescreen, potentially justifying an uncanonical decision after the fact.

I do not believe that I am being gratuitously belligerent or mischievous for proposing that this is a serious problem which should be addressed in the inter-jurisdictional dialogue. I humbly submit that it actually is helpful to dialogue to point these things out.

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Another contention in the essay, that the 1994 decision - to move the ROCOR position from "we don't know whether WO 'has grace' or not'" to "we know positively that they do" - greatly facilitated the acceptance of the MP by the ROCOR rank and file, would be hard for anyone who lived through those years in the ROCOR to deny with a straight face. [/quote]

As someone who was first catechized into ROCOR in 1997-1998 who went to HOCNA in 2000 because I first encountered a unionist clergy who refused to baptize me, I would have to deny that with a straight face. What I mean is that I still knew of many clergy in ROCOR who denied that there was grace in World Orthodoxy, and the MP. In fact, I would say that the real change in ROCOR as I saw it occurring did not speed up until 2001, which is in fact when the ROCOR turned against the SiR in large part as well. To blame this simply on the union with the SiR doesn't take into account the large number of "new Russian" emigres who were loyal sons of the MP slowly taking over ROCOR parishes; it was not as simple as joining with the SiR.

From my perspective (detached from all sides) the union of 1994, like so many other moves on the part of the ROCOR during that period, worked for both sides. Conservatives were largely happy because of the SiR's anti-ecumenical stance and that they were in union with "the Greeks" again; liberals were happy because they did not have to deny grace in the MP anymore, something they had to "sort-of" do until then. One could argue that it was a net gain for the ROCOR-ecumenists because of the latter, but I also see a net gain for the former due to the SiR's involvement in galvanizing the conservatives when ROCOR accelerated the union talks.

My conclusion, that the ROCOR's ecclesiological haziness over previous decades led to their being vulnerable to the 1994 decision and finally the 2007 catastrophe, seems so obvious as not to require detailed criticism. If the 1974 IIIrd All-Diaspora Sobor had promulgated the "strict" position or if the 1983 Anathema had been upheld, the 1994 and 2007 changes could not have taken place without an obvious, unmistakable reversal of previous policy. As it actually occurred, the frog was boiled slowly and finally was boiled to death.

In this I can't disagree with a word you said. But the "if", in the end is not what happened and it didn't happen not simply because of liberalism in ROCOR, but because of long-standing and unresolved disputes about how to treat those under the innovating jurisdictions-- both in Russia and in Greece (remember that Metropolitan Pavlos' predecessor left the Auxentios Synod in 1974 because of the claim that New Calendarists had no grace). I used to believe that this lack of clarity was bad for the Church, and now looking back I realize maybe it was helpful because it helped weed out those who would use the grace issue as a way of furthering personal ambitions. Maybe the result is a warning for us that we need to do better to get our collective house in order. It's my belief that as long as we keep on selectively covering our own wrongs, all these union attempts will fail. If there is one thing I will give the ROCOR-A credit for, they have been forthright about their positions. And I believe that is why their attempts at union with other TOC jurisdictions will be largely successful-- it is transparent and that is how the truth comes out and is made manifest.

[Ekklisiastikos]

4. I wish I had the actual deposition document from the GOC-Chrysostomos for Metropolitan Cyprian. It would clear a lot of confusion on the matter, since all that I have seen online is this list of depositions: http://users.otenet.gr/~i/970906e4.htm

In it, it lists Metropolitan Cyprian as former Bishop of Fili and Oropos, something that was not granted by the whole TOC of Greece to begin with, but as we know, the faction under Metr Kallistos of Corinth. And this was one of the problems of the reunited TOC of Greece to begin with: the agreement that basically all parties would let bygones be bygones required the assent of the Bishops, and not all of them agreed, notably Metr Cyprian himself. But in the end, the question of whether the ROCOR received ordinations from schismatics is a secondary question to whether ROCOR entered into union with schismatics in 1994. We MUST deal with the deposition statement concerning Metropolitan Cyprian and its canonicity (or lack thereof) before anything else. Otherwise, any discussion of heresy is a smokescreen, potentially justifying an uncanonical decision after the fact.

We have the the document of Cyprianos' deposition (full text) but it's in Greek. The only interesting thing you can find in it, is that at the feast of his monastery (sometime after the 1974 encyclical) Cyprianos concelebrated with Georontios A' and he stated publicly his commitment and fidelity to that encyclical.
Cyprianos jr. argues that:
a. Cyprianos A' made clear to Auxentios his ecclesiological ideas from the very beginning and Auxentios (who btw according to cyprianites, accepted him into our runks without cherothesia) didn't bring any reaction to this. (something we have to investigate)
b. Cyprianos A' complaint personally to Auxentios for the 1974 encyclical (and publicly after 10 years and after his ordiantion to bishopric...)

As for the two depositions, when the bishops united, they lifted all depositions from both sides and the united synod called Cyprianos and Ioannis to account (apologia). Cyprianos A' argued that he was never a bishop of such a synod, but a member of Met. Kallistos' synod, so they didn't have any authority-power over him. In order to "free" himself he handled the whole case with legalistic manners.