Thoughts on ROAC

[Justin Kissel]

I (reread) the article on the bishops of ROAC last night. The article on Met. Valentine brought some questions to mind that would be helpful to hear the answers to. These are not meant to be divisive questions, but rather are things that I was confused about as I read the article.

1. Met. Valentine was, at one time, a young member of the catacomb Church, but left this movement and eventually joined the MP. When exactly did he realise how corrupted the MP was? Why did it take decades of being involved in ministry in the MP to see this? Why did they have to retire him before it finally "clicked" and he realised what was going on?

2. Why did Met. Valentine reject the forced retirement of both Churches that he saw fit to be a part of, and instead went to a new Church? First the MP retired him and he went to ROCA. Then ROCA retired him and he decided to basically start his own group (while simultaneously sort of trying to reconcile with ROCA).

3. Why was Met. Valentine so against ROCA hearing accusations against him? Why not do all that you can to get the truth out, rather than trying to obstruct an investigation?

4. If the Cyprianite union and acceptance of Cyprianite ecclesiology was such a horrible thing, then why did Valentine seek out reconciliation with ROCA even after ROCA had united with Cyprian? Why would Valentine and others allow themselves to be in "administrative and canonical submission" to ROCA (the language of ROAC's own site) if ROCA was so wrong to have communion with the Cyprianites? If Cyprianite ecclesiology is really heretical, and ROCA said in 1994 that they had the same ecclesiology, then why was Valentine seeking reconciliation with them, and as a matter of fact (according to ROAC's own website) placed himself under ROCA's jurisdiction again?

[尼古拉前执事]

Since Juliana is not around as much lately, I sent your list of questions to a ROAC priest himself so that you could get the answer from the source. I have speculations on some, but will wait and see what they say.

[Justin Kissel]

I've seen (and have) similar questions about Bp. Gregory of Denver. But since I won't be here to discuss them I'll put off asking them until I get back. I look forward to hearing the priest's response, Nicholas.

[尼古拉前执事]

Here are the answers I got from Dormition Skete ...

I (reread) the article on the bishops of ROAC last night. The article on Met. Valentine brought some questions to mind that would be helpful to hear the answers to. These are not meant to be divisive questions, but rather are things that I was confused about as I read the article.

1. Met. Valentine was, at one time, a young member of the catacomb Church, but left this movement and eventually joined the MP. When exactly did he realise how corrupted the MP was? Why did it take decades of being involved in ministry in the MP to see this? Why did they have to retire him before it finally "clicked" and he realised what was going on?

Since a good number of the details from his life in the MP are already on our website and since it would be tedious to speak more than necessary about the rest, I will try to briefly sum up here the relevant points not already on the website. I do not think he was made aware of the systematic betrayal of Christ by the MP before the latter 1980's. His being a member of the Catacomb Church in his early childhood did not mean as much as one might think in terms of knowing the right path from the wrong and why. The catacombniks whom he knew as a young child had only told him they were separated from the MP because MP members were forced to sign documents denying Christ. Of course no such actions occurred, at least, among the flock and lower clergy, but perhaps this was an unclear reference to Met. Sergius' signing the 1927 "Declaration" or later slavish agreements with Stalin. Regardless, it was an allegation that certain pious-seeming MP monastics and bishops proved false to him easily when he fell into contact with them on a pilgrimage in his youth. The only reason for remaining separate had proved to be untrue. So, with a cautious, but ultimately naive, oath that he would never deny Christ and would leave if he ever saw anyone presenting or signing the aforementioned documents, he became a disciple of a certain former-ROCOR bishop, restricted to a relatively remote monastery in the USSR and nominally under the MP, but who seemed uncompromisingly Orthodox. Thus, Anatoli (Met. Valentine's baptismal name) remained isolated in his area of movement from an occasion to witness the completely apostate inner workings the communist church structure until a good amount of time after he became a clergyman. Prior to the 1980's, he was only aware of the general oppression of religion by the state and some individual bad examples in the MP. Beginning in 1987, various unrighteous services to the State were proposed to him and he refused to cooperate in any of them. A blatantly obvious joint-persecution on the part of the local security forces and the ecclesiastical authorities was initiated against him. It was when he was systematically persecuted for not wanting to be a KGB stooge and do ecumenical activities that he realized the far-reaching nature of communist control of the MP and how the bishops there were all rigidly obedient to the antichristian government officials and persecutors.

The attempt at retiring and removing then-Archimandrite Valentin was connected with his repeated refusal to cooperate in a series of KGB-propaganda ("no persecution of religion in Russia", etc.) and information-gathering jobs involving, furthermore, the demand that he pray with Non-Orthodox. When he refused and disobeyed, he was subjected to blatant joint-pressure on the part of bishops and KGB-officers. He would be called into the KGB-chief's office and threatened and pressured to submit; having refused, he would then be brought before a bishop who would reprimand him for disobedience to the KGB-chief and would demand that he fulfill the tasks assigned by him, or else he would be punished. (At this point, he retorted to the bishop that it seemed to him now that he was not in the office of a pastor of the Church, but that of a despicable agent of the KGB.)

It was at this time that the decision came to remove and retire the then-Archimandrite Valentin. The only thing that stopped him from being gotten rid of (his removal and retirement) was that all of his Suzdal parishoners piled into a bus and made a large, embarrassing protest before the appropriate civil authority in Moscow. While his future was under consideration by government and MP authorities, he (and his people) left the MP for the newly-opened FROC diocese of the ROCOR Synod, repenting of involvement with the MP and repudiating in writing Sergianism, Ecumenism, etc.

The point of this brief outline of his pre-ROCOR history is that although he may have been blameworthty for being too trusting or naive and poorly-informed about the goings on in the MP hierarchy, yet nevertheless he was never insincere or laxidaisical in his Orthodoxy, as the question seems to imply. His motives for immediately leaving the MP when the first ROCOR/FROC church opened up in the Soviet Union in 1990 were pure: he had over a three-year period seen, for the first time, manifest proof of a very ugly sort of the far-reaching and well-nigh complete slavery of the MP hierarchy to their God-fighting KGB-masters, and he wished neither to cooperate in it nor to have any part with it. Why God did not provide for this to be manifested to him earlier, He alone knows, but it was in His good providence that He showed Met. Valentine and his people the unmistakably false character of the Soviet Church at the very time that they could sincerely reject that God-forsaking compromising and join themselves to a clear, readily-found, canonical, true, "Tikhonite" Church.

Having come into contact now with men who left the communist-ecumenist churches for insincere reasons, I can assure the inquirer that Metropolitan Valentine and the other non-Catacomb bishops of our Synod are nothing like those opportunists. He has always been quite blunt in saying (in writing) that neither he nor anyone else in the Soviet Church, however sincere or naive or whatever, has ever had the grace of God. Having dealt with opportunistic former-Sergianists now, I can say that this is certainly something they emphatically deny. They, on the contrary, like today's ROCOR, are all full of bluster about how we have no right to judge them, about how difficult it was under communism, how there was no other way, how they have seen (false) signs that prove they have grace, and how unrighteous and blasphemous those who say otherwise are. Although they frequently make rejections and even anathematizations of Sergianism and Ecumenism, nevertheless they are adamant that they (a part of it though they were) have always been true Christians, clergymen, and bishops and we must recieve them as such. They are so enamoured of their rank and spiritual pride, that they cannot admit that it is false and empty. Unlike them, Metropolitan Valentine and his people made a sincerely-motivated, whole-hearted rejection of the Soviet Church.

[尼古拉前执事]

2. Why did Met. Valentine reject the forced retirement of both Churches that he saw fit to be a part of, and instead went to a new Church? First the MP retired him and he went to ROCA. Then ROCA retired him and he decided to basically start his own group (while simultaneously sort of trying to reconcile with ROCA).

Before answering this, it should be noted that there is no allowance in the canons for such a thing as "retirement"; a bishop may only be removed by being deposed for some valid anti-canonical offense, or he may submit resignation if he is privately aware of his unworthiness to be a bishop. In either case, he is deprived by the synod of his episcopal rank and office for a anti-canonical crime; no bishop is simply put into mere "retirement", a recent innovation. The fact that retirement was tried shows that no canonical case really existed against the Metropolitan for which he could be deposed, but that they wanted to remove him for other nonecclesiastical reasons.

But, as to why he did not accept it, I think that a further explanation for both of these is that in each case the retirement was being imposed upon him without canonical reason by the enemies of Orthodoxy only for the destruction of Church life in Russia. The first MP attempt at retirement was prompted by its desire to obediently quash any element that refused cooperation in evil and falsehood with its master, the KGB. The second attempt at retirment, likewise lacked canonical basis, being on the (unproven) and unlawful reason of some vaguely rumored "ill-health". Furthermore, its chief instigators were Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Bishop Varnava of Cannes, both of whom had destructive plans for the Russian Church, which necessitated Bishop Valentine's removal. Both of them had been proposing seeking union with the communist churches and Bishop Valentine had been a leading voice of opposition. This second attempted "retirement" was but one in a series of failed attempts to get rid of one of the few remaining hinderances to moving toward union with the MP and the rest of World Orthodoxy. Slander campaigns had failed to make the faithful leave him; attempts to simply take the clergy and churches from the Suzdal diocese had failed; other undermining methods were being resisted; now came a sudden "retirement".

[尼古拉前执事]

3. Why was Met. Valentine so against ROCA hearing accusations against him? Why not do all that you can to get the truth out, rather than trying to obstruct an investigation?

The sole accuser was a layperson from the MP, a heretical organization. The canons forbid Church synods to even hear accusations against an Orthodox clergyman if they are made by someone who is not Orthodox and not of good (pious) reputation. Mark of Berlin, for the obvious purpose of undermining the FROC, sought to introduce this person's testimony, in violation of the canons, in order to find any means possible to remove Bishop Valentine from the leadership of the FROC dioceses. For this reason alone it would have been not only just to protest, but injust and anti-canonical not to protest. Furthermore, even if this accuser were Orthodox and of good reputation, even then, the Holy Scriptures and the canons forbid recieving an accusation against a clergyman from one person only. So anybody can see that this was just a lawless endeavor to destroy a true confessing bishop.

[尼古拉前执事]

4. If the Cyprianite union and acceptance of Cyprianite ecclesiology was such a horrible thing, then why did Valentine seek out reconciliation with ROCA even after ROCA had united with Cyprian?

He sought it as a last effort to save the ROCOR.

Why would Valentine and others allow themselves to be in "administrative and canonical submission" to ROCA (the language of ROAC's own site) if ROCA was so wrong to have communion with the Cyprianites?

Even the scriptures say after the second and third admonition reject a heretic. When a person wants to admonish it does take a little time. You don't cut someone off immediately. You try to reason with them.

If Cyprianite ecclesiology is really heretical, and ROCA said in 1994 that they had the same ecclesiology, then why was Valentine seeking reconciliation with them, and as a matter of fact (according to ROAC's own website) placed himself under ROCA's jurisdiction again?

There was lots of protest against this union, and even our Vladyka Gregory stayed with ROCOR because Met. Vitaly promised to correct this mistake.

At the Synod meeting that decided on acceptance of Cyprian and his ecclesiology, according to witnesses such as Met. Vitaly, Archb. Anthony of L.A., etc., there was not a clear discussion of what Cyprian exactly taught and what exactly his history and the history of the Genuine Orthodox Church of Greece was. The history was entirely distorted or ommitted where it made Cyprian look like anything less than the most-Orthodox defender of the Faith and recognized leader of the Greek Old Calendarists, rather than a deposed upstart plotter, simonaic, and ecumenist. Everything was done hastily and under pressure to move along and any potential red-flag points in what the bishops were being asked to do were slurred over if not ommitted entirely from discussion. Although it was decreed to publish the decisions of the Synod on this issue in the English and Russian Church periodicals for the faithful to see, yet they were held back from publication for as long as possible, until several months later it was heard by troubled faithful from other sources about what exactly had happened. Consequently, when Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), our Vladyka Gregory of Colorado, and others began to address protests and denunciations of the decision to the other hierarchs, some such as Met. Vitaly and Archbishop Anthony of L.A. reacted in shock with replies like: "I was never told this!", "I am sorry, please tell me what does this Cyprian teach?!", and many other such statements that showed they had sinned against the dogmas of the Church in ignorance. (According to the Holy Fathers, a hierarch is deprived of grace only for manifest and conscious denial of the Faith that has been handed down, not for momentary falterings out of ignorance.) Consequently, they rejected the union and promised to work to have the previous decision invalidated and corrected. Likewise, Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) wrote that it was just a momentary blunder on the part of the incautious hierarchs and that he had good hopes that the Synod would quickly correct itself. So it seemed at the time that the decision to unite with Cyprian was not a conscious betrayal of Christ on the part of the ROCOR, i.e. the Synodal body, and that it was quite possibly going to be rejected as invalid and of no force. After all, without unanimity on the part of the bishops, especially the head bishop or metropolitan, nothing of this Church-wide significance has any force according to the principles laid down in the Holy Canons. Such was the state of affairs when our Metropolitan travelled to the Sobor at Lesna.

He came with those same hopes and he had written a lengthy speech demonstrating the falsity of Cyprianism and requesting the repudiation of the decision for union with it. He and Archbishop Lazarus of Tambov once they crossed the threshold of the meeting-room were handed an "Act" which all the ROCOR bishops had signed and which they (the Russian bishops) were now told to sign as a preliminary to any talks. It was, as Vladyka Valentine later called it, an "Act of Capitulation", which he could tell from having skimmed over the first few sections. Although it talked frequently of mutual sins and mutual forgiveness, it required the Russian hierarchs to acknowledge themselves as schismatics, to abolish the Temporary Higher Church Administration, to acknowledge that none of them were currently bishops and the other hierarchs consecrated by them were to be essentially reordained at best, and so on and so forth. Bishop Valentine and Lazarus both protested saying that any such "Act" dealing with their relationship and the recent events would have to be composed by both parties. Archbishop Mark retorted: "If you don't want peace, if you don't want to sign, then leave the meeting-hall." Bishop Hilarion, the secretary of the ROCOR Synod, then interjected, as Vladyka recounted, "that they would edit the act, taking into account our remarks and suggestions". Lazarus then was willing to sign for the sake of peace, but Vladyka Valentine did not wish to, yet he eventually followed Lazarus so as not to create a schism among the Russian bishops. Having been allowed to be present at the meeting, Vladyka Valentine soon thereafter sought to deliver his protest against the hasty union with Cyprian before the ROCOR hierarchs and planned to discuss further the proposed reconciliation after this and other matters were suitably dealt with; however, the pro-Apostasy party in the ROCOR led by Archbishop Mark moved to muzzle this protest. "What?! Are we going to let this dog speak?!", said the Archbishop. The stress then-Bishop Valentin was already under and the further foul treatment by the Sobor on the floor of the Synod meeting lead him to suffer a heart attack right then, and he had to be rushed off to the local hospital. He barely survived.

Shortly after the doctors finished with him, as he lay critically ill in a French hospital bed, Archbishop Mark and Bishop Hilarion the secretary suddenly strode into the room and approached his bedside. He presented Bishop Valentine with several documents and demanded that he sign them. The very weak bishop tried to sit up and strain to read over it, but Mark interrupted with "Just sign." This document was the minutes of the Lesna Synod. If Bishop Valentine signed it meant that he was accepting the decisions of the Synod meeting. Bishop Valentine hesitated and said that he would not agree to sign it without being able to be sure that the contents agreed with what was right, because he had some disagreement with it. Both bishops replied with the blithe lie that there was nothing that he would object to in it and that he could make whatever changes to it he liked later and discuss it with the Synod. This was not the final draft. With this promise and much further coaxing and demanding, the two bishops obtained Bishop Valentine's signature to an unread document, which it turned out , among other things, included a redivision of the Russian dioceses, which meant having to reregister, in which case the government would simply refuse to register it and allow the MP to repossess it. Quite a bit later when the Metropolitan finally recovered enough to come to the Synod, he was denied the right to revise the document as promised by Archbishop Mark and Bishop Hilarion. After laboring much in vain to try to reason with and persuade the Synod against its wholly erroneous new course, he returned to Russia where he and the other Russian bishops discussed the situation among themselves and with the faithful. Finally, the Russian bishops and faithful composed a open letter to the ROCOR Synod (Jan/Feb 1995) stating their rejection of all the anti-canonical and unorthodox decisions of late and citing their rites on the basis of the canons to separate from the Synod, which they announced they had done. By the middle (June) of 1995, they had reorganized the administration of the FROC churches into their former Temporary Higher Church Administration, which would again some time later become the ROAC.

So, following the tradition of the Church, our Metropolitan did all he could to save the ROCOR from the disastrous course it had set out on. St. Gregory the Theologian says, we should not rush to make schisms but we should be patient to seek to correct potential schisms; so did Met. Valentine.

I hope this answers your questions satisfactorily. To sum it up, Metropolitan Valentine acted in all things to preserve the Faith as best he was able. He did not deny the Faith eversince he became a true member of the true Orthodox Church. This cannot be said of the ROCOR hierarchs who have their hands red with the blood of apostasy. Unfortunately, they embarked on this road of apostasy when Metropolitan Valentine was part of their Synod and our Vladyka Gregory as a hieromonk was part of their Church. Neither Vladyka Metropolitan or our Vladyka Gregory remained in this sinking ship when they saw that there was no hope, and to preserve themselves and those with them, they followed the canons as they dictate separation in such cases.

Dormition Skete