The following is from the Paradosis/Orthodox-Tradition Yahoo! Group:
MP's assessment of the Catacomb church
Below is my translation of an article, posted on an official MP site, airing the views of the Metropolitan Kirill on the Catacomb church in Russia. I apologize for any mistakes in the translation.
Metropolitan Kirill does not speak the truth when he says that the Catacomb church ceased to exist after the 30's. We have parishioners who just 14 years ago left the catacombs. I know of ROCOR priests who are in contact with catacombniki.
The very title of I.M. Andreyev's seminal work on the New Martyrs - Russia's Catacomb Saints - illustrates the spiritual bond between the Catacomb church and the New Martyrs. How can the highest leaders of a church, which claims to have glorified the New Martyrs, speak boldface lies about them? How can they call the Russia's catacombs a sewer? How can we who venerate the New Martyrs even consider joining in communion with those who do?
Melissa Bushunow
The Russian original is located at: http://www.sedmitza.ru/index.html?sid=729&did=37848
Interfax-Religion/Sedmitza.Ru wrote:Metropolitan Kirill Compared the Russian "Catacomb Churches" with a Sewer Pipe, Draining Away Filth from Church Life
October 20 2006MOSCOW. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Head of the Department of External Church Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, considers that today's pseudo-church organizations calling themselves "catacomb" play the role of marginals [fringe elements] in church life. Seeking reunification with such structures radically in opposition to itself is ruled out for the Russian Church.
"Today marginal groups are cropping up which take this brand for themselves so as to give some importance to their mission," announced Vladyka Kirill, answering questions from students during a lecture at Moscow State University [MGU] on Wednesday evening, October 18 [2006]. In his opinion, "This marginalization is an absolutely normal process in any society," and "in the Church likewise there is permitted difference of opinion; without that there would be no movement forward."
"But radical church opposition isn't just opposition, but rather bellicose animosity towards the Church," declared the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate.
He noted that the concept of the "catacomb church" is today in Russia very relative and that such organizations did indeed exist in the Soviet Union in the 1920-30's. However, already at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War [WW II] no such catacomb church structures still functioned. Contemporary organizations, calling themselves "catacomb churches," in the words of Vladyka Kirill, "today play the role of a sewer pipe which contains the filth" existing in today's church life.
The main goal today for the Moscow Patriarchate, in the words of the President of the Department of External Church Relations, is the "establishment of unity with the Russian Church Abroad" — the overcoming of disagreements, sprung up in the course of history, which cannot be at all considered a schism. However, in spite of this, noted Metropolitan Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church "will never seek reunification with the so-called "catacomb churches." "They will further devote themselves to their folklore. Forget about them. Let that club be present according to interest [in it]," he added in conclusion.
