IS THE SERBIAN TRUE ORTHODOX CHURCH
SCHISMATIC?
An Analysis of the Greek TOC’s
Encyclical of August 9/22, 2011
The events surrounding the consecration of Bishop Akakije of Serbia by
bishops of the Russian True Orthodox Church in August, 2011 are complex, and
their canonical evaluation – difficult. The reason for this is simple: the body
of Orthodox canon law as contained in The Rudder was completed over twelve
centuries ago, and did not envisage the creation of new autocephalous Churches,
still less the re-creation or resurrection of autocephalous Churches after
their fall into heresy. At the same time, I believe that there is sufficient
evidence to be found in the holy canons, the writings of the Holy Fathers and
the history of the Church to come to the firm conclusion that the consecration
of Bishop Akakije was valid, and his condemnation as a “schismatic” by the True
Orthodox Church of Greece – unjust. However, there are still many who believe
that Bishop Akakije is a schismatic; so the purpose of this article is to
revisit this controversy now that, as we may hope, the dust has settled after
the battle of 2011. As a framework for the discussion, I propose to analyse the
encyclical of August 9/22, 2011 signed by all the hierarchs of the True Orthodox
Church of Greece headed by Archbishop Kallinikos of Athens.[1]
The encyclical is addressed to “the Sacred Clergy and Faithful of the
Church of the GOC of Serbia”… This in itself is a fact of the greatest importance.
For the whole argument in the recent years between Fr. Akakije and his
supporters, on the one hand, and Archbishop Kallinikos and his supporters, on
the other, has revolved around the question: does a Genuine Orthodox Church of
Serbia truly exist, parallel with and independent of the other True Orthodox
Churches, such as those of Russia and Greece? Or are there only Serbian
Orthodox Christians belonging to the True Orthodox Church of Greece but living on
Serbian territory? The fact that the encyclical was addressed to “the Sacred
Clergy and Faithful of the Church of the GOC of Serbia” can only mean that the
signatories accept that the True Orthodox Church of Serbia does truly exist
independently of the Greek Church. Of course, the signatories were not
addressing Bishop Akakije and his supporters (several hundred people), but the
small group (about 50 people) of his opponents and enemies in Serbia. But the
basic principle has been conceded to the supporters of Bishop Akakije: there is
such an independent, autocephalous Church of Serbia in True Orthodoxy. The only
argument is over which body of believers constitutes it…
Do all the signatories of the encyclical sincerely believe this? Almost
certainly not. For both before and after the consecration Archbishop Kallinikos
and his supporters were asserting precisely the opposite. Only recently one
leading Greek said that before 1995, when Fr. Akakije came to Serbia from Mount
Athos, there were precisely zero truly Orthodox Christians in Serbia; so the
Autocephaly of the Serbian Church no longer exists. Serbia is now “missionary
territory”, he asserted, like the missionary territories of Western Europe or
North America…
To the claim that Serbia is now “missionary territory” which has to be
re-evangelized by the Greeks, Bishop Akakije replied: “We wonder, with what
right do they claim this, even if we accept the absurdity that once again the
Greeks are enlightening the Serbian people?
What Greek missionary came and labored in the vineyard of the Serbian Church
over the past fifteen years? What Greek
took even one step among the Serbs and for the Serbs? Who suffered the humiliations from the
Belgrade Patriarchate? We know that for
eleven years no one from the Greek GOC synod visited the suffering believers in
Serbia!
“Financial help from Greece - which is loudly spoken about and put
forward as one argument why we Serbs are dependent on the Greeks and have no
right to leave their administrative rule - has been truly inconsequential
considering in what conditions the Serbian TOC actually exists. This financial help has arrived in the same
quantities from other jurisdictions and even from individuals in World
Orthodoxy. Involuntarily the question
arises: did the Greeks help the Serbian
Church only in order for her to be under their rule? The New Calendar Greek Church constantly
gives financial help to the Belgrade Patriarchate without demanding its
submission to her rule. Is this
submission a criterion for one church to help another or not?”[2]
The concept of “missionary territory” applies to pagan territories that
have not been evangelized by the Christian Gospel. In no way can this be said
of Serbia, which under the name of “Illyrium” was evangelized by the Apostle
Paul, which had Local Saints and Local Church Councils held on its territory in
the first millennium, and which from 1219 was recognized as an independent
autocephalous Church with its own native hierarchy. In the twentieth century
the notorious Patriarch Meletius Metaxakis of Constantinople took large chunks
out of the Russian and Serbian patriarchates and made them into “autonomous”
Churches – of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic States, etc. –
dependent on Constantinople. These illegal acts were never recognized by the
true Churches of Russia and Serbia. It would be sad indeed if the present-day
Church of Greece centred in Athens (which in any case is not, of course,
Constantinople) were to imitate the ecclesiastical imperialism of the notorious
heretic Metaxakis… As for the fact that
the Serbian Church has been in heresy since the 1960s, this is no excuse for
denying it its ancient status as an autocephalous Church. Old Rome fell away
from the faith in 1054, and there were no True Christians on its territory
after about 1100. And yet the Eastern Patriarchates did not deny it the status
of a (fallen) patriarchate right up to the Council of Florence in 1438-39. If
Rome had officially repented of its heresy in that period, there is every
reason to believe that the status of Orthodox patriarchate would have been
restored to it automatically. Or shall we say that Constantinople is no longer
an autocephalous patriarchate because there are no true Christians left in the
City?...
The encyclical continues: “What they [the supporters of Bishop Akakije] desired
is good. Yet the way that they chose to achieve this was wrong. In Orthodoxy
the end does not justify the means. This was the motto of the Jesuits. In
Orthodoxy the words of Saint John Chysostom apply: “The good thing is not good
if it is not done rightly.” The intention to restore the self-governance of the
Serbian Church is good, while the manner of its achievement is evil, when it is
accomplished through an unilateral decision of an elite group of clergy and
laity that represent none but themselves. In past eras, unilateral and
arbitrary decisions led to schisms and anathemas and other ills in the body of
the Church of Christ. Let us call to mind two examples from among the many: the
arbitrary pronouncement of the Archbishop of Serbia as Patriarch in 1346 and
the arbitrary pronouncement of the Autocephalous Church of Greece in 1833. In
the first case, the result was that the Church of Serbia was placed under
anathema for 20 years; in the second case, the Church of Greece was pronounced
schismatic for 17 years. Both of these cases were, however, the result of
pressures from political leaders who took advantage of the Church in order to
obtain their objectives. Today, we Genuine Orthodox Christians are disengaged
from local political powers. Political leaders [today] do not drag along
ecclesiastical leaders who create similar situations—which would be a
mitigating factor…”
Let us separate the wheat from the chaff in this paragraph. First, the
signatories assert that Bishop Akakije and his supporters tried to achieve
their good aim “through a unilateral decision of an elite group of clergy and
laity that represent none but themselves”. Now an elite is by definition a
minority group constituting the best or in some sense higher part of a larger
group. Thus we talk about an “aristocratic elite” as opposed to the plebeian
people, where the Greek word “aristocratic” means “rule by the better”. But Fr.
Akakije and his supporters, while they might indeed have been “better” than
their opponents in general, were not a minority nor an elite. Certainly, they represented only themselves –
that is, the majority of the True Orthodox Christians of Serbia. Who else were
they meant to represent? Who else could they represent?
Turning to the historical examples, it is certainly true that the
Archbishop of Serbia’s giving himself the title of “patriarch” in 1346 was
arbitrary – the bestowal of this title should have been agreed with the other
patriarchs. Nevertheless, since the Serbian Church was already autocephalous
(since 1219), it made no essential difference to its status. From a dogmatic or
ecclesiological point of view it was much less significant than, for example,
the Patriarch of Constantinople’s according himself the title of “Ecumenical” in
the sixth century. That step was opposed in the strongest possible terms by St.
Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, because it implied that he had jurisdiction
over the whole “inhabited world” (oikoumene)… Again, the Church of Greece’s
pronouncement of its autocephaly from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in
1833 was indeed arbitrary and wrong. But it is quite wrong to compare this to
the situation in Serbia in 2011. For there is no question that Greece was part
of the canonical territory of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833, whereas
Serbia has never been the canonical territory of the Church of Greece!
The encyclical continues: “There were good examples to follow, such as
the declaration in a canonical way of the autocephaly of the Church of Serbia
by Saint Sabbas, the First Archbishop of Serbia.”
The declaration of the Serbian Church’s autocephaly in 1219 by St. Savva
is indeed interesting and instructive – but it by no means proves what the
Greeks want it to prove. For what did St. Savva actually do? Knowing that his
bishop and canonical superior, Archbishop Demetrios Chomatianos of the
Autonomous Church of Ochrid, would never grant the Serbian Church autocephaly,
St. Savva “changed jurisdictions”, as we would say today (the Greek Church was
divided into four main “jurisdictions” at that time), and received autocephaly
from another “jurisdiction” – that of the Nicaean patriarch and emperor. If we follow
the iron logic of the encyclical’s ecclesiology, then St. Savva’s action was
not only not a “good example to follow”, but blatantly schismatic! For after
all, he disobeyed his bishop and even broke communion with him – a bishop,
moreover, who even now is considered by the Greeks to be (with Balsamon and
Aristides) one of the three great experts on canon law of the medieval period! Fr.
Akakije’s action was in fact very similar to that of St. Savva – but less bold.
For while St. Savva was forced to “change jurisdictions” in order that the
autocephaly of the Serbian Church should be created, Fr. Akakije only acted to restore
or reactivate that autocephaly – a very different, and far less ambitious
project.
As for the Serbian True Orthodox people, their “sin” was to believe that
the best candidate for the bishop of the resurrected Church of Serbia was not a
Greek bishop living a thousand kilometres away, who neither lived in Serbia nor
spoke Serbian nor showed any knowledge of Serbian problems, but rather the man
who had already built up the Church of the True Orthodox Christians of Serbia
from scratch with his own sweat, blood and tears, who was the spiritual father
to most of the clergy and monastics (including those who led the opposition
against him). Did they have the right to express such an opinion? Undoubtedly.
In fact, according to the Holy Fathers, they had the right to decide this
question themselves without the “veto” of any foreign authorities; for, as St.
Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, said: “You know, even if very few
remain in Orthodoxy and piety, then it is precisely these that are the Church,
and the authority and leadership of the ecclesiastical institutions remains
with them.”[3] This being the case, the most that a
foreign bishop of Synod could have done in Serbia was agree to help, or refuse
to help (if they found the candidate unworthy), the Serbians in their choice: what
they could not do was act “as lords over those entrusted to them” (I Peter 5.3)
and impose their own will and their own candidates (i.e. themselves) upon them.
In fact, this very important principle is enshrined in the eighth canon
of the Third Ecumenical Council: “The same rule shall be observed in the other
dioceses and provinces everywhere, so that none of the God-beloved Bishops
shall assume control of any province which has not heretofore, from the very
beginning, been under his own hand or that of his predecessors. But if anyone has violently taken and
subjected [a province], he shall give it up; lest the canons of the Fathers be
transgressed; or the vanities of worldly honor be brought in under pretext of
sacred office; or we lose, without knowing it, little by little, the liberty
which Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer of all men, hath given us by His own
Blood.”[4]
“From this,” writes Bishop Akakije, “it is already clear the Greek GOC
does not have the canonical right to take over the territory of the Serbian
Church, much less such moral rights before the Serbian Church and people. On the basis of our petition for help, the
Greek Church had the right only to set up a temporary governance over our
widowed Serbian Church and to ensure the establishment of a Serbian bishop for
the Serbian people as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, this did not happen…”[5]
Against this, the opponents of Bishop Akakije say that the situation in
Serbia is different, because the True Orthodox Christians had voluntarily accepted
to be under the omophorion of Archbishop Kallinikos. This is true, and
acknowledged by the Serbs. But they argue that they sought the temporary episcopal
supervision of a bishop of the Greek Church only until their own hierarchy
could be re-established: they remained the True Orthodox Church of Serbia, and
never became part of any other Local Church. There was not, and could not be,
any permanent engulfment of the Serbian Church within the Greek Church. For, as
the canon says, “none of the God-beloved Bishops shall assume control of any
province which has not heretofore, from the very beginning, been under his own
hand or that of his predecessors” – and there is no question about it: at no
time has Serbia been under the hand of any Archbishop of Athens. The boundaries
of the archdiocese of Athens could be redrawn to include the whole of Serbia
only with the consent of the other Local Churches - and, first and foremost,
with the consent of the Serbian people.
In fact, the “temporary governance” of the Greeks over the Serbs
continued for fifteen years, directly violating another of the Holy Canons, the
74th of the Council of Carthage: “It is hereby declared that it will not be permitted
to any temporarily governing bishop to keep for himself the altar that was
entrusted to him for his temporary governance, because of differences and
quarrels among the people: but he must strive to elect a bishop for it in the
course of a year. But if he is lazy about this, then at the end of the year let
another temporary bishop be elected.”[6]
After citing this canon, Bishop Akakije quotes from the commentary on it
by the famous Serbian canonist, Bishop Nikodim Milash of Istria, who died a
martyr’s death in an Austrian prison: “It has happened that those bishops who
should have maintained love among the people and cooperated in the election of
a new bishop have themselves, for the sake of their own personal interests,
encouraged disorders and stirred up disagreements with the aim of leaving the
Church longer without a permanent bishop and of having the opportunity of
carrying out the duties of governing bishop in it for a more prolonged period.
So as to hinder such an abuse, the Carthaginian Fathers forbid a bishop to
remain governing a widowed Church for longer than one year, and, if in the
course of this time he has not succeeded in doing everything necessary in order
that a new bishop should be installed, then, as the canon decrees, such a
bishop should be deprived of the governance, and it should be transferred to a
newly elected governor.”[7] Bishop Akakije points out that the fears
of the Carthaginian Fathers have actually been fulfilled in the case of
contemporary Serbia, since the Greek leadership “very subtly but steadily
reduced the authority of the first struggler for the renewal of True Orthodoxy
in Serbia, Fr. Akakije, along with his co-strugglers on the battlefield for the
rebirth of the Serbian Church and her interests”.
The encyclical continues: “Furthermore,
when the independence of the Church of Serbia was abolished because of
political reasons, it was recovered gradually and harmoniously initially with
autonomy in 1831 and then with full autocephaly in 1879 through a consensus
among the Mother and Daughter Churches.”
The encyclical is here referring to the Greek Church’s “abolition” of
the Serbian and Bulgarian Patriarchates in 1766-67. With the single word
“political” it covers up, and attempts to mitigate, a most serious historical
sin which is directly relevant to the present situation. ”The Bulgarians and
the Serbs,” writes Sir Steven Runciman, an historian highly respected by the
Greeks, “had no intention of becoming Graecized. They protested to some effect
against the appointment of Greek metropolitans. For a while the Serbian
Patriarchate of Peč was reconstituted, from 1557 to 1755. The Phanariots
demanded tighter control. In 1766 the autonomous Metropolitanate of Peč was
suppressed and in 1767 the Metropolitanate of Ochrid. The Serbian and Bulgarian
Churches were each put under an exarch appointed by the Patriarch. This was the
work of the Patriarch Samuel Hantcherli, a member of an upstart Phanariot
family, whose brother Constantine was for a while Prince of Wallachia until his
financial extortions alarmed not only the tax-payers but also his ministers,
and he was deposed and executed by the Sultan’s orders. The exarchs did their
best to impose Greek bishops on the Balkan Churches, to the growing anger of
both Serbs and Bulgarians. The Serbs recovered their religious autonomy early
in the nineteenth century when they won political autonomy from the Turks. The
Bulgarian Church had to wait till 1870 before it could throw off the Greek
yoke. The policy defeated its own ends. It caused so much resentment that when
the time came neither the Serbs nor the Bulgarians would cooperate in any
Greek-directed move towards independence; and even the Roumanians held back.
None of them had any wish to substitute Greek for Turkish political rule,
having experienced Greek religious rule....”[8]
So this is what “Greek religious rule” meant for the Serbs in the past:
financial extortion, the removal of their own hierarchy, and the attempt to
Hellenize their people. In spite of that, the Serbs in the twenty-first
century, hoping that times had changed, asked for help from the Greeks and were
sincerely grateful for what they received. It was only when this help turned
into a variety of obstacles and hindrances, and the attempt to deny them their
own native bishop, that they realized: tout ça change, tout c’est la même chose…
The encyclical continues: “Why do our separated brethren prefer to
imitate those examples that are to be avoided instead of those that should be
imitated? By using as their excuse various irregularities of the past they wish
to justify their illicit acts. Their unfortunate attempt elicits a simple
question: Does one irregularity from the past justify its repetition?”
This is a perverse way of looking at the present situation! The truth is
quite the opposite: the “irregularity” of past Greek behavior – the abolition
of the Serbian patriarchate in 1766 – is being repeated, albeit on a smaller
scale, today. This became obvious when, in June, 2011 the Serbs received a
letter from a senior bishop of the Greek Church in which it was proclaimed with
all seriousness that Archbishop Kallinikos was “the acting locum tenens of the
Serbian patriarchal throne”!
Let us conduct a thought experiment and imagine that Patriarch Irenaeus
of Serbia and all his bishops, priests and laity – or, at any rate, a
significant part of them – repented of their heresy and proclaimed that they
wished to be united to the True Orthodox Church. What would the Greeks do then?
Would they say: “You are no longer an Autocephalous Church, but must submit to
the authority of Archbishop of Kallinikos of Athens, who is now the first
hierarch or Archbishop (or even patriarchal locum tenens!) of all Greece and
Serbia”? Of course not - and yet that is the logic of the Greek position! For
this canonical nonsense – or should we call it megalomania? - implies that the
Church of Serbia has now been annexed to the Church of Greece without any
conciliar decision and without the knowledge or agreement of any Serbs except their
50-strong “Greek Serb” group!
“As we said above,” continues the encyclical, “for political reasons
many times autocephalous Churches lost this status, while other autocephalous
Churches were created. We must remember that the Church is one; the Dioceses,
Metropolises, Patriarchates, Autocephalous, Autonomous and Semi-autonomous
Churches are administrative divisions, which do not affect the essence of the
Church and which change according the political circumstances of each era and
the shifting of borders according to the maxim, “it is customary for the
ecclesiastical to change together with the political.” An example of this is
the Russian Empire’s absorption of the Georgian Kingdom in 1801 and the
subsequent abolition of the autocephaly of the Georgian Church, whose
autocephaly was restored again in 1917.”
For accuracy’s sake, it should be pointed out that the Georgian State
headed by the king asked to be subsumed into the Russian empire to avoid being
swallowed up by the Muslim Persians. That was indeed a good political reason
for temporarily abolishing state independence, if not Church autocephaly.
Moreover, it was done voluntarily – which can said of none of the instances in
which the Byzantines or Greeks deprived Slavs or Arabs of their ecclesiastical
independence.
In any case, the maxim “it is customary for the ecclesiastical to change
together with the political” was never enshrined in canon law, was not
recognized outside Constantinople, and became the cause of innumerable very
damaging quarrels between Constantinople and the other Orthodox Churches. For autocephaly
is, or should be, granted for purely pastoral, ecclesiastical reasons, because
in order that a newly evangelized people should be strengthened in the faith
they should have their own native hierarchy serving in their own native
language. Why should that pastoral need change because of purely political reasons,
because the people in question has involuntarily come under the yoke of another
Christian nation?
Take the case of Bulgaria. After Constantinople very reluctantly gave the
newly Christianized nation autocephaly, the faith spread strongly in Bulgaria,
and she was soon producing native saints of her own – kings (St.
Boris-Michael), hermits (St. John of Rila) and hierarchs and evangelists (SS.
Naum and Clement of Ohrid). However, after the death of King Peter, in about
971, the Bulgarian kingdom was conquered by the Byzantines, as a consequence of
which the local Bulgarian Church was again subjected to the Ecumenical
Patriarchate. There was a resurgence of Bulgarian power under Tsar Samuel, who
established his capital and patriarchate in Ohrid. But this did not last long.
In 1014 the Bulgarian armies were decisively defeated by Emperor Basil I, “the
Bulgar-slayer”. This led to the temporary dissolution of the Bulgarian kingdom
and its absorption into the Roman Empire.
The Byzantines continued to recognize the autocephaly of the Bulgarian
Church centred in Ohrid, but it was demoted from a patriarchate to an
archbishopric. And futher encroachments on Bulgarian ecclesiastical
independence continued. This elicited a firm rebuke from St. Theophlact,
Archbishop of Ohrid in the late eleventh century. Although a refined Greek, he defended
the rights of his adopted Church. Thus he stopped a monk from founding a
stavropegial monastery subject directly to Constantinople, since it was “in
accordance with neither the sacred canons nor the laws of the kingdom. I forbid
him, for what relations are there between the Church of Bulgaria and the
Patriarch of Constantinople? None at all. Constantinople possesses neither the
right of ordination, nor any other rights, in Bulgaria. Bulgaria recognizes
only its own archbishop as its head.”[9]
Constantinople made two further attempts to abolish Bulgarian
autocephaly, the first in the period of the Byzantine empire and the second in
the period of the Turkish yoke. And yet who can doubt that the Bulgarian Church
remained essentially unchanged in the whole of that time? And even now, when
Bulgaria has succumbed to the ecumenist heresy, she remains an independent
Church in law…
The encyclical continues: “The group of estranged brethren declared that
in coming into communion with the Russian Synod of Bishops under Archbishop
Tikhon (with whom we are not in communion) they desired to maintain communion
simultaneously with us as well. This is incongruous and they wrote it
rhetorically: in order to claim that they did not break communion with us but
that we cut them off. Furthermore, they claim that they do not desire that
their rebellion result in the disruption of the rapprochement between the
Church of the GOC of Greece and the Russian Synod of Bishops under Archbishop
Tikhon. This is incongruous too, because they knew from the beginning that
Archbishop Tikhon’s support of their rebellion would result in the breakdown of
this rapprochement, which indeed happened. The saboteurs that blew up the
bridge claim that they did not desire the break in traffic between the two
banks! The Holy Synod now finds itself in the unpleasant position of
discovering that the group of separated brethren in this way rendered itself
schismatic, transgressing Canon 31 of the Holy Apostles.”
Once again we see here muddled logic and a mixture of truth and
falsehood. It is true that Bishop Akakije, before his consecration, asked for
administrative independence for the Serbian Church from the Greeks without any
Eucharistic break in communion. Was that a crime?! Was that undesirable?! Does
not the encyclical itself say that “the Dioceses, Metropolises, Patriarchates,
Autocephalous, Autonomous and Semi-autonomous Churches are administrative
divisions, which do not affect the essence of the Church”? If the
administrative division between the Greek and the Serbian Churches, which was
established eight centuries ago, did not affect the essence of the Church, and
created no real schism within it, why did the Greeks not consent to its
continuation? Because that would have slightly diminished the size of
Archbishop Kallinikos’ ecclesiastical empire (which already encompasses Greece,
Europe, Australia and scattered parishes in Russia and Georgia!)? Yes, almost
certainly that was one reason. Because he would have done anything to stop the
promotion of Fr. Akakije, whom he suspected – rightly – of not wishing to put
the interests of the Greek Church above those of Serbia? Yes, that was another
reason. Because he feared the creeping influence of the Russians in the “lost
territories of the Byzantine empire” in the Balkans - the so-called “Panslavist”
bogey which the nineteenth-century Phanariots so feared? Yes, that was yet
another reason.
Is it true that “the saboteurs that blew up the bridge claim that they
did not desire the break in traffic between the two banks”? Yes, it is. But who
are the real saboteurs? In order to answer that question, we must look more
closely at the historical context. To do that, we shall elaborate the metaphor
a little…
The Russian and the Greek Churches are like opposite banks of a river in
the middle of which there is a large island – the Serbian Church. (The Serbs
are indeed mediators between the Russians and the Greeks in a certain sense,
having cultural, linguistic, racial and historical links to both nations.) Both
sides wanted to build a bridge from one bank to the other. But the Greeks
wanted to build a long bridge direct from bank to bank, bypassing the Serbian
island in the middle, which they considered part of their territory and to
which they had already built a smaller bridge. The Serbs, languishing under
Greek rule, were all in favour of the Greco-Russian union, believing that they
would benefit from closer relations with the Russians; for if the larger,
bank-to-bank bridge were built, they thought another short bridge from them to
the Russian bank would surely be built at some time. The Russians also went
along with the Greek plan at first; while sympathizing with the Serbs, they did
not want to build a small bridge to the Serbian island which the Greeks would
interpret as invasion of their territory; they were prepared to treat the
island as Greek territory for the sake of the general increase in trade that
would result from the building of the big bridge.
However, then the Russians ran into trouble with the Greeks. In 2009 the
Greeks refused to sign the contract for the big bridge because they thought –
falsely – that the Russians were deceiving them. The real problem was the Greek
governor of the Serbian island, who was determined, not only that no bridge
should be built between the island and the Russian bank, but also that the big
bridge linking the Greek and Russian banks should be built entirely to his
specification and by his contractors. (This was the attempt of the Greeks led
by Kallinikos to impose on the Russians their view of how akriveia and oikonomia
should be applied in the reception of converts from the Moscow Patriarchate.)
Although disappointed, the Russians persevered, and eventually, in 2011,
an agreement on the building of the bridge – that is, on the correct use of oikonomia
in receiving people from the Moscow Patriarchate in Russia - was reached.
Meanwhile, however, two important events had taken place. First, the leader of
the Greek trade and construction corporation (Archbishop Chrysostomos) died in
2010, and was replaced by the governor of the Serbian island (Archbishop
Kallinikos). And secondly, the conflict between the Serbs and the Greeks over
the Serb island intensified. Gradually, the Russians became convinced that the
Serbs’ case was just, and their pastoral needs great, and that they had a moral
obligation to help them by building a small bridge from the Russian bank to the
island and installing the Serb leader as governor of the island. They realized
that this would jeopardize the big bridge project, but so be it. They offered
to the Greeks that both bridges, big and small, should be built together, and
that they should cooperate with them in installing a new governor of the
island. But the Greeks refused and retreated from the island, blowing up the
bridge from their bank and leaving behind a small group of saboteurs (all
former officials of the new governor) who continue to snipe at the lawful governor
of the island…
Did the Serbs violate Apostolic Canon 31, as the encyclical asserts?... Apostolic
Canon 31 declares that a priest cannot break from his bishop except for reasons
of “piety” (blagochestie) or “justice” (pravda). “Piety” is usually taken to
mean “dogmatic truth”. The definition of “justice” is less clear.
What is clear is that it does not include the moral behavior of the
bishop, as St. John Chrysostom explains: “Anarchy is altogether an evil, the
occasion of many calamities, and the source of disorder and confusion… However,
the disobedience of those who are ruled is no less an evil… But perhaps someone
will say, there is also a third evil, when the ruler is bad. I myself, too,
know it, and it is no small evil, but a far worse evil even than anarchy. For
it is better to be led by no one than to be led by one who is evil. For the
former indeed are often saved, and often in peril, but the latter will be
altogether in peril, being led into the pit of perdition. How, then, does Paul
say, ‘Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves’? Having
said above, ‘whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation,’ he
then said, ‘Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves.’ ‘What
then,’ you say, ‘when he is wicked, should we not obey?’ Wicked? In what sense?
If in regard to faith, flee and avoid him, not only if he is a man, but even if
he is an angel come down from heaven; but if in regard to life, do not be
over-curious…”[10] This is not to say that a bishop cannot
or should not be brought to trial and defrocked for immoral behavior, but only
that a priest cannot break with him by reason of his immoral behavior before he
has been canonically defrocked.
If we look at the practice of the saints, then “justice” must include serious
canonical transgressions, for there are many cases of Orthodox breaking
communion with their superiors, not for reasons of heresy, but because of
serious canonical transgressions. The writings and actions of St. Theodore the
Studite in relation to SS. Tarasius and Nicephorus of Constantinople are
obvious examples. But there are many more.
A particularly interesting example can be found in the Life of St. Meletius
of Antioch. St. Dmitri of Rostov writes that the Christians of Antioch were
angry with their bishop, Eudoxius, because he “paid little attention to his
duties. This infuriated the Antiochians, who expelled him from their city… Then
the Antiocheans assembled to decide who would succeed Eudoxius… Saint Meletius
was chosen by general acclamation.”[11]
Now Eudoxius was an Arian. But it is significant that he was not
expelled “for reasons of piety”, or heresy, but “for reasons of justice”, that
is, his failure to carry out his canonical duties… Of course, it is always
preferable that a bishop who does not carry out his duties should be removed by
his fellow bishops in a canonical trial. However, very often in antiquity, and
even more often in modern times, either because of persecutions or because
bishops do not have the courage or will to investigate each other, appeals to
the Synod are ignored and even despised. In such cases, we recall the words of
the Eastern Patriarchs in their famous Epistle of 1848: “The protector of
religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves” (17).
Orthodoxy does not believe in the infallibility of any one man or Synod; and in
cases when bishops and Synods do not do their duty, it is the duty of the
people, the last earthly resort of truth and justice, to act for the good of
the Church. This is not anarchy, or rebellion, or Protestantism. It is Orthodoxy.
Two modern examples will clarify what breaking communion “for reasons of
justice” means. In 1928 St. Joseph of Petrograd refused to obey his canonical
superior, Metropolitan Sergius, not for reason of heresy, or even for a clearly
defined canonical transgression, but simply because he felt that his
translation from the diocese of Petrograd was caused by an intrigue against the
Church initiated by the Bolsheviks and supported by Sergius. And he said:
"The defenders of Sergius say that the canons allow one to separate
oneself from a bishop only for heresy which has been condemned by a council.
Against this one may reply that the deeds of Metropolitan Sergius may be
sufficiently placed in this category as well, if one has in view such an open
violation by him of the freedom and dignity of the Church, One, Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic. But beyond this, the canons themselves could not foresee many
things, and can one dispute that it is even worse and more harmful than any
heresy when one plunges a knife into the Church's very heart - Her freedom and
dignity?” In another place, St. Joseph points out that there were no priests or
bishops at the foot of the Cross, but only laymen and women…
The second example concerns Archbishop Kallinikos himself. In 1979, he,
as an archimandrite, broke with his canonical superior, Archbishop Auxentios,
and was ordained to the episcopate by Metropolitan Kallistos of Corinth and
another bishop. This new group, called the “Kallistites”, said that their
actions were “a temporary and curable deviation from the canonical order” whose
aim was the cleansing of the Church from moral vices, especially sodomy, since
“men have been raised to the priesthood who are both unworthy and incapable.”
Of course, it is possible to sympathize with the “Kallistites”, whose aim of
cleansing the Church of homosexuals was certainly laudable. Nevertheless, as
they themselves admit, it was uncanonical. For one cannot break with one’s
canonical superior for reason of immoral acts, but only for reasons of heresy
or major canonical transgressions. At most, they could have withdrawn from the
Synod in order “not to take part in other men’s sins” (I Timothy 5.22). That is
what, for example, Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Kiousis), the future archbishop,
did. But the Kallistites created a new Synod, with new bishops, thereby
creating serious long-term difficulties for the Greek Church.
However, let us suppose for one moment that Kallinikos’ consecration to
the episcopate in 1979 without the blessing of his archbishop could be
justified on the grounds of “justice” or “the cleansing of the Church”. And let
us compare his motives with those of the future Bishop Akakije. Was Bishop
Akakije proposed for consecration by his flock “in order to cleanse the Church
of unworthy and incapable priests”? No, he was not. Their motivation in
proposing him, and his motivation in accepting, was much simpler, much closer
to home: the salvation of the maximum number of Serbs; for they knew that very
few Serbs would agree to come under a non-Serb bishop who belonged to another,
non-Serb Local Church. They knew that they were in desperate need, not of a
bishop living many hundreds of miles away, knowing next to nothing about Serbia
and visiting it just once in over ten years, but of a native Serb who spoke
their language, lived their life, knew their enemies and fought their battles.
It is of such men that the Apostle says: “If a man desires the office of a
bishop, he desires a good work” (I Timothy 3.1)…
“What is more,” continues the encyclical, “in the document of their
rebellion the severed brethren express their gratitude in words for everything
that the Church of the GOC of Greece has provided them. But because we did not
ordain for them as bishop the one whom a small group desired at the time that
that group demanded, they decided to appeal to the Russians. What a concept of
gratitude and obedience. They pay no heed to the bishops that ordained them
because they will not promote a specific person among them. They set fire to
their mother’s house and harm their brethren who remain faithful to her and
then they utter into their mother’s ear, “thank you”.”
This is really rather spiteful. So an expression of gratitude is
considered sinful! Would they have preferred ingratitude?! Bishop Akakije
announces administrative separation from the Greek Church – that is, the return
to the canonical order of the last 800 years, – while expressing the desire to
remain in eucharistic communion – that is, rejecting any thought of essential
schism - and expressing gratitude for services rendered. What a sin! What
profound evil!
Bishop Akakije himself is described as “the one whom a small group
desired at the time”. But they were not a small group in the context of the
Serbian TOC: they were the majority, headed by the senior priest and rebuilder
of the Serbian Church, and consisting of the majority of the monastics and
laity. Nor did they desire his consecration only “at the time”: they had
desired it for at least five years and sent numerous appeals for his
consecration in the name of the Administrative Council of the Serbian True
Orthodox Church to the Greek Holy Synod. They included believers from the
north, south, east, west and centre of Serbia.
The Greeks are obsessed with the smallness of the Serbian flock in
absolute terms. But let us remind ourselves of the words of St. Nicephorus
quoted above: “You know, even if very few remain in Orthodoxy and piety, then
it is precisely these that are the Church, and the authority and leadership of
the ecclesiastical institutions remains with them.” After all, mighty oaks from
tiny acorns grow…
Besides, there is no minimum number of people required for the formation
of a diocese. When St. Gregory of Neocaesarea came to his diocese for the first
time there were only 17 Christians in the city (when he died there were only 17
people who were not Christians). In North Africa in the early centuries, almost
every village had its own bishop. In the Irish Church most abbots of
monasteries were also bishops. The criterion is not the size of the existing
community, but its spiritual needs. And if the community grows with the
blessing of God, then its needs will increase proportionately. So it is not
only the present, but also the future needs of the flock that must be measured.
In order to satisfy these needs, God is willing to multiply the bishops of the
Church indefinitely, for He wishes that all men be saved and come to a knowledge
of the truth. There is no need for the Church hierarchy to be parsimonious in
the provision of bishops – provided, of course, that the candidates are worthy
men. Thus the Prophet Moses once exclaimed: “Oh, that all the Lord’s people
were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!” (Numbers
11.29). Again, the holy Patriarch Tikhon once cried out to Archbishop Andrew of
Ufa from his captivity: “Vladyko, consecrate more bishops, as many as possible!”
And he did (about forty in all)… And yet the demand still outstripped the
supply. And today who can say that the True Russian Church has too many
bishops?
As for Serbia, who can claim that the several hundreds of True Orthodox
Christians, and the many millions of potential converts from the patriarchate,
do not need even one true Serbian bishop?! In view of this manifest need, what
can be the motivation of a bishop who, living in Athens but already utterly
unable to supply the needs of his already vast territories (Greece, Europe,
Australia and scattered parishes in other lands), refuses to consecrate the man
who has already worked for many years in Serbia, building up the flock from
zero to several hundreds in spite of huge obstacles created from both within
and outside the Church? If this man had canonical obstacles to his
consecration, the delay would be understandable. But the Greeks have not been
able to cite any such obstacles…
Later in their encyclical, the Greek bishops appear to accept that size
of the flock is not an important factor, but instead attack the “democracy” of
Fr. Akakije’s administration: “We too desire the rebirth of Orthodoxy in Serbia
and the restoration of the autocephalous local Church of Serbia, understood in
the genuine Orthodox sense. As we have declared in the past in writing, we have
no plan to absorb the local Genuine Orthodox Church of Serbia. Moreover, in the
memorandum our currently separated brethren submitted to us this past January,
we did not set the small size of population as an impediment for the ordination
of a bishop, but merely specified [as a condition] the better organization of
the community of GOC of Serbia through the implementation of a Governing
Council in which would be heard all views and which would truly express your
voices. The separated brethren did not agree. They did not desire to have
dissenters with them in this body. Why not, if they represented the majority?
How would it have mattered, if there were a minority view? Did they fear that
they really represented a minority view rather than the view of the majority?
This is what in the end proved to be true. The system of sending away
dissenters and of establishing deliberative bodies that prove to be merely
cheerleaders of a leader suggests the totalitarian regimes of the past.”
Coming from the pen of Archbishop Kallinikos, this is not only false,
but deeply hypocritical. Kallinikos’ own treatment of the Serbian Church has
been dictatorial and divisive. While repeatedly refusing the petition of the
majority, - whose fulfilment, as we have seen, was actually demanded by the
Holy Canons, - he has encouraged the minority to rebel against their spiritual
father, spread foul slanders with impunity and generally make his already very
difficult task even more difficult.
This is confirmed if we look at a short account of events in the STOC in
the years 2006-2011. The divisions began towards the end of 2006, when the
majority of believers began to murmur at the fact that no Greek hierarch had
visited them in the last ten years. They concluded that they had been patient
enough with this spiritual negligence and it was time for them to have a bishop
of their own, or at least they should write to the GOC Synod and ask for
Metropolitan Kallinikos’ replacement as Exarch for Serbia. Another problem was
his tendency to give “double blessings” – that is, one person would come to
Corinth, give his view of the situation, and receive one blessing; then another
person would come, give his view of the situation and receive a different
blessing contradictory to the first. Long distance from Serbia, and the
metropoitan’s long absence from the country, created the mess.
At the end of 2006, the Administrative Council of STOC gathered together
for the last time in its fullness. All the clergy were present, and all signed
a document passed by a majority of votes in which the GOC Synod was requested to
consecrate a bishop from the Serbian clergy. However, knowing that the GOC were
constantly repeating that the STOC was too small and immature to have its own
bishop, the signatories offered an alternative solution: the replacement of
Metropolitan Kallinikos by another Greek bishop. The STOC Administrative
Council also decided to deliver this request personally to Archbishop
Chrysostomos during the next GOC Synod meeting, and organized preparations for a
trip to Corinth and Athens.
Then Fr. Athanasius, who was the only one among
the Administrative Council clergy who had opposed this request (although he
signed the conciliar decision), together with a few of his followers, organized
a shameful and disgusting propaganda campaign among the faithful. They made
copies of an audio cassette on which the Athonite monk Fr. Danilo, who was a
member neither of the GOC of Greece nor of the STOC at this time, used his
authority and respect among some of the faithful to slander Fr. Akakije, attacking
him in a vulgar and insulting manner. Of course, they used and manipulated Fr.
Danilo’s words, because, at the same time Fr. Danilo used even more vulgar and
rude words about Metropolitan Kallinikos and the Greek Florinites, but they
didn’t spread those because it would have harmed their goal of slandering the supporters
of the Metropolitan’s dismissal from the post of Serbian Exarch.
Then Fr. Athanasius organized some of the faithful, gathered their
signatures, and without informing the STOC Administrative Council, secretly
sent a counter-document to Metropolitan Kallinikos. In time, this secret
counter-document became the main counter-argument in the fight between the
fraction of Fr. Athanasius and those clergy and laymen who were loyal to the
STOC Administrative Council.
Now let us return to the journey of the delegation of the STOC
Administrative Council to Greece. The delegation first went to Corinth to
inform Metropolitan Kallinikos about the STOC’s request for his replacement. He
listened to it and kindly accepted it, without saying that he had a secret
counter-petition in his pocket, which had arrived earlier. The delegation
agreed with Metropolitan Kallinikos that they would go together to the GOC
Synod meeting. The evening before the departure for Athens, the metropolitan
said that the delegation should go first while he would come soon after them.
In Athens, the delegation was received by Archbishop Chrysostomos and
all the bishops. The request was formally handed in, and after receiving a short
explanation of its content, Archbishop Chrysostomos asked: ‘’Where is bishop Kallinikos?
Without him, this topic cannot be discussed. We will solve that when he shows
up.’’
But he did not show up… Sadly, the STOC
delegation had been cunningly out-maoeuvred by the Metropolitan. They realized
too late that their delegation has been deceived, and that their time, effort
and money had been wasted because of the Metropolitan’s deliberate refusal to show up at the Synodal
meeting.
The delegation went back to Serbia, completely demoralized. But there was
more to come. After several requests to be informed by the Synod about what had
been decided, the answer finally came back from Greece. The Administrative
Council of STOC discovered for the first time that the Metropolitan had brought
the counter-petition to the Synod. And because of it and ‘’Serbian discord’’, the
request for the Metropolitan’s replacement was rejected.[12]
After this sad development, the reputation of the Administrative Council
of STOC was ruined, its members were demoralized and the divisions deepened,
especially because Fr. Athanasius’ group started to rejoice, openly glorifying
their ‘’victory’’, and continuing their campaign of slander and gossip. For this
reason, although there was still some communion between the two groups, the Akakians
and anti-Akakians, it was very one-sided: some Akakians would commune in Fr.
Athanasius’ parish for the sake of restoring good relations within the STOC,
but the ‘triumphant’ minority of anti-Akakians did not reciprocate…
At the same time, Metropolitan Kallinikos began shamelessly and publicly
to accuse his senior priest in Serbia, Hieromonk Akakije, of being power-hungry,
full of pride, spiritually deluded, etc. He sadly abused his Metropolitan
authority, because some people began to change their attitude towards Fr.
Akakije, trusting that a Metropolitan would have to be telling the truth. In
Serbia, meanwhile, the relentless propaganda coming from sources close to Fr.
Athanasius reached its highest peak, with new kinds of defamation and lies
against Fr. Akakije. This joint venture between Metropolitan Kallinikos and his
supporters in Serbia caused some believers to waver in their belief that Fr. Akakije
was worthy of becoming their first Serbian bishop, forgetting how much he had
done for the sake of the development of the STOC. It was from this time that some
became so deeply influenced by the lies preached by Kallinikos and his
followers that they came to believe that the Serbian Church did not exist, that
the National Serbian Church was an historical mistake, that it was just a small
part of the Greek Church, that it is was not only unnecessary to fight for an independent
Serbian Church but wrong, being a manifestation of ambition and ingratitude on
the Serbian side…
“Our separated brethren and children attempt to make a parallel between
their case and the case of the Greek GOC, when they found themselves without
bishops in 1955. This parallel is incongruous. In 1955, the Church of the GOC
of Greece was fully organized and formed as an organization and the 66 priests
(with all of those able present) elected a twelve-member Council (Governing
Ecclesiastical Council) through a transparent democratic process for their
administration until they found Bishops. The term of office of the members of
the Council was renewed every year by election. They chose their Episcopal
candidates through an absolutely transparent process and secret ballot.”
“Our separated brethren” – it sounds very much like the condescending
language of the Second Vatican Council when talking about the Orthodox Church…
As for the exemplary democracy of the Greek TOC in the 1950s, that is all
very well and is not in dispute. But the encyclical fails to say what happened
next… For just as Archbishop Kallinikos likes to overlook his own
unconventional path to the episcopate, so the writer of the encyclical here
overlooks the uncanonical way in which the Greeks originally acquired their
episcopate from the Russian Church Abroad in the 1960s. Did the Greeks present
a petition to the Russian Synod and then wait for the whole Synod to come to a
“democratic” decision? By no means! They hid the matter from Metropolitan
Anastasy, and secretly - “through the back door” and in violation of Apostolic
Canon 34 - obtained the consecrations they desired from other bishops of his
Synod. At the same time, the democratically elected future Archbishop
Chrysostomos (Kiousis) was rejected in favour of the unelected, and disastrous,
Archbishop Auxentius. However, the next metropolitan, St. Philaret, decided,
for the sake of the unity of the Church and the good of the Greek nation, to
regularize the uncanonical consecrations in 1969.
And how did the Greeks repay the Russians for their literally priceless
gift – the gift of a hierarchy? By gross interference in the canonical rights
of the Russian Church! First, in 1978 their new archbishop, Auxentius, took a
clergyman of the Russian Church, John Rocha, baptized him (on the grounds that
he had not had a canonical baptism) and reordained him, before raising him to
the episcopate of “the Autonomous Church of Portugal”, where he distinguished
himself by becoming an extreme ecumenist heretic! Naturally, this stopped
Eucharistic communion with the Russian Church Abroad. However, the Russians
carefully refrained from calling the Greeks “schismatics”, but simply decreed
that they would not unite with any single Greek jurisdiction until the Greeks
had all united amongst themselves.
Then, in September, 2009, after the fall of the major part of the
Russian Church Abroad, when the remnant of the faithful Russians under
Archbishop Tikhon came to Athens seeking to renew Eucharistic communion, the
Greeks at first agreed, and even appointed a date for the first concelebration,
but then, in October reversed their original decision on the grounds that they “did
not trust” the Russians.[13] This was because Metropolitan
Kallinikos, arriving, as so often, late on the scene, threatened to leave the
Synod or at least retire… The Greeks’ official explanation, however, was that
at their first meeting, on September 13 in Megara, the Russians had promised
that they now had no priests with a defective baptism. However, the Russians
have strongly denied this, saying that they never asserted that all their
clergy had been baptized through triple immersion. On the contrary, assert the
Russians, they readily admitted that many of their clergy and laity had been
baptized in an irregular manner, and that these people had been serving and/or
receiving Holy Communion for decades. Furthermore, based upon the most recent
past practice of the Russian Church, and the oikonomia that had had to be used
during the Soviet persecutions, they said that they would not be able to
rebaptize everyone in the Russian Church who had had an irregular baptism. And
as an independent Local Church, they asserted their right to apply oikonomia in
this matter as their Synod deemed it necessary. The Greeks said that their
confidence had been undermined when the Russian Bishop Germogen – boldly and
honestly, as the Greeks admitted – confessed to having “baptized himself” to
correct his irregular baptism shortly before coming to Athens. However, the
Russians replied that they had deceived nobody; Bishop Germogen’s confession had
been as much a surprise and a shock to themselves as it had been to the Greeks.
And their sincerity in this is proved by the fact that they have recently, in
their Synodal meeting of December, 2012, removed Bishop Germogen from the Holy
Synod precisely because of his “self-baptism” – a decision that Bishop Germogen
humbly accepted...[14]
Even if we were to suppose (which I do not) that the Russians deceived
the Greeks in this matter, the fact remains that for the second time in just
over thirty years communion between the Russian and Greek True Orthodox
Churches had been broken because the Greeks insisted on imposing their
conception of permissible oikonomia on the Russians. The first time, in 1978,
they went further by “stealing” a Russian clergyman and rebaptizing and
reordaining him. The second time, in 2009, this did not happen. But the end
result was the same: a break in communion or reversal of a decision to enter
into communion. The Greeks seem unable to understand that Athens is not the
centre of the Orthodox world, and that they do not have the right to impose
their conception of oikonomia on other Local Churches.
In September, 2010, Archbishop Chrysostomos, a sincere proponent of
union between the Greek and the Russian Churches, died. To the surprise and
shock of many, his elected successor was – Metropolitan Kallinikos! (Junior
bishops were not allowed to vote, and Kallinikos won a majority only on the second
round, when Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Attica withdrew his candidature and
his supporters transferred their votes to Kallinikos). Some (on both sides) saw
this, correctly, as the end of any real hope of union. However, the Russians
decided to persevere, and they agreed to the Greek offer, made in 2009, that
the two Churches send delegations to Odessa to attempt to come to an agreement
on the issue of oikonomia and akriveia.
However, by this time the Serbian problem was reaching a climax. At the
beginning of 2011 a Serbian delegation went to Athens and handed in another,
final petition, which they hoped would be answered by Pentecost. So when the
Greek delegation, containing some non-Greek opponents of Fr. Akakije, arrived
in Odessa in February, and began raising the Serbian question, the Russians
responded cautiously. On the one hand, they defended the Akakian position,
insisting that the autocephaly of the Serbian Church could not be denied, and
that the Serbian TOC would benefit from the consecration of native bishops. On
the other hand, not knowing what the Greek answer to the final Serbian petition
would be, and not wishing to endanger the outcome of their own union talks with
the Greeks, they did not deny the Greeks’ claim that this was their own
internal problem.
In spite of some ups and downs, the two delegations reached agreement on
oiikonomia; and when the Greek delegation reported back to their Synod in
Athens, the Synod welcomed the agreement. At the same time, however, they said
that, in order to give their own people time to digest the prospect, and in
accordance with the Russians’ own request, the union would not be put into
effect for another two years. The Russians were surprised by this – they had
not asked for any two-year postponement! This may have been a genuine
misunderstanding. But after the “misunderstandings” of 2009, some began to
suspect that the Greek leadership was reluctant about union and were playing
for time…
But time was running out…
For although the Serbian petition
had been rejected orally by the Greeks in Athens, no formal written reply had been
received by Pentecost. So the Serbs decided to make a formal petition to the
Russians to consecrate Fr. Akakije for them. The leaders of the Serbs and the
Russians met in Odessa late in June, 2011, in order to discuss the petition.
After a long and thorough discussion, the Russian Synod decided that the Serbs’
petition was justified (especially in view of the schismatic Bishop Artemije’s
inroads into the flock), and that they, the Russians, had the canonical right
and moral obligation to help them. A date for Fr. Akakije’s consecration was
appointed for August 12 (new style) in the Russian monastery of Lesna in France…
A last-ditch attempt to salvage the Greco-Russian union was made. On the
Russian side, Protopresbyter Victor Melehov suggested that both Greek and
Russian hierarchs take part in the consecration of Fr. Akakije. This idea was
enthusiastically accepted by Bishop Photius, secretary of the Greek Synod. And
he suggested that the union of the Greeks and Russians – a necessary condition
of a joint consecration - could be brought forward to November, 2011. However,
the idea must have received a cold reception from Archbishop Kallinikos. For
when the Russians, postponing the consecration for three days, sent a
delegation to Athens on August 11, and again put forward the idea, the Greeks
rejected it outright…
At that meeting the gist of the Russian argument, which was expounded by
Bishop Germogen, was as follows: "We consider Serbia to be a Local Church
regardless of its numbers. A Local Church
may not be subject to another Local Church.
Serbia first appealed to Greece for help, and then later to us. We, of
course, recognize the GOC's ability and right to help the Serbian Church, but
this in no way stops the Russian Church from helping also." He gave the analogy of a ship in distress. Just
because one country begins to help, this does not preclude another from helping
also. "The Serbs asked us to ordain them a bishop. As brothers in Christ,
we have to let you know that we intend to do so. We do not wish to do so
secretly in the night, but with your knowledge, and hopefully your
participation."
The response of Archbishop Kallinikos was violent. He shouted, pounded
his fist on the table, stood up and leaned over the table to Bishop Germogen.
At one point he asked him: "How well do you know these people? Have you ever even visited them? We know them
for a decade." Bishop Germogen
responded calmly, saying that they knew those who had come to them rather well.
At that point Protopresbyter Victor Melehov could not resist, and
interjected: "Despota, you know the Serbs have been with the GOC for so
many years, and you were assigned as their ruling bishop. How many times have
you visited them over the past decade?
Do you know them at all?" Of course, everybody knew the answer to
that. Archbishop Kallinikos was momentarily speechless, and Metropolitan
Chrysostomos of Attica hastily changed the subject…
“This action of our estranged brethren is even more condemnable in that
they knew that on the agenda of the Synodal Meeting of August 3rd was a
proposal for the Synod to adopt a time table for the ordination of a bishop of
your choosing and the reorganization of the Serbian Church of the GOC
immediately after the union with the Russian Synod under Archbishop Tikhon, with,
moreover, the cooperation of Greek and Russian bishops. They did not await at
all the result of the Synod, but the eve of August 3rd they ran to make their
plan a fait accompli through their coup. The Holy Synod will not abandon the
faithful children of the Church that remain in canonical order and will move
forward with the reorganization of the Serbian Church of the GOC.”
“The ordination of a bishop of your choosing” – that is, a bishop
elected by the small minority of anti-Akakians? How could that possibly solve
the problem?! And of course the Russians would never have cooperated in that,
since they backed Fr. Akakije and the STOC majority.
In any case, what was there for the Russians to wait for? They had
already postponed the consecration once in order to travel to Athens and seek a
last-minute resolution, but had been greeted by rudeness, violence and the
words: "Serbia belongs to the Greek Church, and only the Greek Church has
jurisdiction over the Serbian Church's future." They were told that the
Greeks were not interested in any joint consecration of a bishop for Serbia,
and if the Russian Church did ordain a bishop for Serbia, there would be no
possibility for any union between the GTOC and the RTOC. After such a reply, there
was no reason for the Russians to believe that any future meeting of the Greek
Synod would deliver any other verdict. So they returned to France, and the
consecration took place on August 2/15.
“Toward this end the Holy Synod decided to call a Clergy-Laity
Conference in Belgrade on Saturday, August 21/ September 3, 2011, in the presence of His Beatitude Archbishop Kallinikos of Athens and All
Greece. All Genuine Orthodox Christians of Serbia that remain in canonical
order and recognize the Holy Synod, which from the beginning was responsible
for the reorganization of the Serbian Church, will have a right to participate.
In this conference, the current situation will be evaluated, you will elect a
Governing Council which will truly express your desires, and you will freely
address your legitimate hierarchy with your proposals and petitions.”
And what has this “reorganization” done for the anti-Akakian Serbs? Very
little so far. Their first demand was that Archbishop Kallinikos defrock Bishop
Akakije and his fellow clergy. He hasn’t done that.
Also, they have not received any bishop of their own. Indeed, it would
be naive to expect that the Greeks would keep their promise and “adopt a time
table for the ordination of a bishop of your choosing” when they refused
precisely that same request so stubbornly for so many years. Only if there
appears a candidate who is willing to submit the interests of Serbia to Greece
in a way that Fr. Akakije refused will the Greeks considering ordaining him –
and such a candidate may, of course, appear… But that, of course, would be a
terrible betrayal of the interests of the Serbian Church and of Orthodoxy in
general…
It seems that what this “reorganization” really means is the continued
domination of Metropolitan Kallinikos over a very small and decreasing flock
which is already riven by divisions over whether their liturgical language
should be Serbian or Church Slavonic. Perhaps, to be consistent, it should be
neither Serbian nor Church Slavonic, but Greek… After all, since they had
rebelled against their former spiritual father, Fr. Akakije, on the grounds
that they wanted to belong to the Greek and not the Serbian Church, then they
should learn Greek and serve in Greek, abandoning all claim to being the GOC of
Serbia...
Let the last word be with Bishop Akakije: “We have been told that our
exit from under Greek administrative rule means the end of friendship and
help: ‘You will lose your friends and no
one will help you anymore...’ Where is their genuine brotherly love for us,
which we True Orthodox Serbs still cherish for them? Does this mean that we Serbs are only their
good friends as long as we are submitted to the Greek GOC? Is the progress of the Serbian TOC not also
their joy as well as ours? We hope that
the irrational resentment exhibited from the side of the Greek GOC is temporary
and that their sharp words spoken and shot at our hearts are only an
involuntary and short-lived reaction.
Although such positions and statements of our Greek brothers, like those
of their Serbian followers, have caused much harm and hurt us, we will not
harbour hard feelings, but will wait with patience for them to become more
sober, praying to the Lord of all to sow brotherhood, mutual love, and
understanding between us...”[15]
Vladimir Moss.
February 2/15, 2013.
The Meeting of the Lord in the Temple.
[2] Bishop Akakije, “The Serbian
Church, Serbian People, True Orthodoxy, and the Greeks”. This article was
placed on the website of the Serbian True Orthodox Church. However, hackers
from the Serbian patriarchate have made it impossible to read it there at the moment.
[4] This canon was invoked in 1928 by
St. Joseph in Petrograd, when Metropolitan Sergius tried to remove him from his
diocese. And yet St. Joseph and Sergius belonged to the same Local Church. How
much more justly can the canon be invoked in the present case, when one Local
Church is claiming jurisdiction over another!
[6] Bishop Akakije, op. cit. Cf.
Apostolic canon 36; Fourth Ecumenical Council, canon 25; Council in Trullo,
canon 35.
[7] Bishop Nikodim, The Canons of the Orthodox Church, originally
published in Serbian in Novi Sad, 1896. We quote here from the Russian
translation published in St. Petersburg, 1912, volume II, p. 226.
[8] Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge University Press, 1968,
pp. 377-380. Thus, as J. Frazee writes, “the first Greek had been appointed to
the patriarchate of Peč in 1737 at the insistence of the Dragoman Alexandros
Mavrokordatos on the plea that the Serbs could not be trusted. The Phanariots
began a policy which led to the exclusion of any Serbian nationals in the
episcopacy” (The Orthodox Church and
Independent Greece, 1821-1853, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 7, note
1). Again, Noel Malcolm writes: “By 1760, according to a Catholic report, the
Patriarch in Peč was paying 10,000 scudi per annum to the Greek Patriarch. In
1766, pleading the burden of the payments they had to make under this system,
the bishops of many Serbian sees, including Skopje, Niš and Belgrade, together
with the Greek-born Patriarch of Peč himself, sent a petition asking the Sultan
to close down the Serbian Patriarchate and place the whole Church directly
under Constantinople... The primary cause of this event was not the attitude of
the Ottoman state (harsh though that was at times) but the financial oppression
of the Greek hierarchy. In the Hapsburg domains, meanwhile, the Serbian Church
based in Karlovci continued to operate, keeping up its de facto autonomy.” (Kosovo, London: Papermac, 1998, p. 171).
Again, Stanoe Stanoevich writes: “The Patriarchate of Constantinople was
aspiring to increase its power over all the Serbian lands in the hope that in
this venture the Greek hierarchy and Greek priesthood would abundantly increase
their parishes. The intrigues which were conducted for years because of this in
Constantinople produced fruit. By a firman of the Sultan dated September 13,
1766, the Peć patriarchate was annulled, and all the Serbian lands in Turkey
were subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Immediately after this the
Greek hierarchy, which looked on the Serbian people only as an object for
material exploitation, began a struggle against the Serbian priesthood and
against the Serbian people” (Istoria
Sprskogo Naroda (History of the Serbian People), Belgrade, 1910, p. 249 (in
Serbian)). Again, Mark Mazower writes: “A saying common among the Greek
peasants, according to a British traveller, was that ‘the country labours under
three curses, the priests, the cogia bashis [local Christian notables] and the
Turks, always placing the plagues in this order.’ In nineteenth-century Bosnia,
‘the Greek Patriarch takes good care that these eparchies shall be filled by
none but Fanariots, and thus it happens that the… Orthodox Christians of
Bosnia, who form the majority of the population, are subject to ecclesiastics
alien in blood, in language, in sympathies, who oppress them hand in hand with
the Turkish officials and set them, often, an even worse example of moral
depravity.’ The reason was clear: ‘They have to send enormous bribes yearly to
the fountainhead.’ This story of extortion and corruption spelled the end of
the old Orthodox ecumenicism, created bitterness between the Church and its
flock, and - where the peasants were not Greek speakers – provoked a sense of
their exploitation by the ‘Greek’ Church which paved the way for Balkan
nationalism.” (The Balkans, London:
Phoenix, 2000, pp. 61-62)
[9] Quoted in the translators’ introduction
to Blessed Theophylact’s Explanation of
the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians, House Springs, Mo.: Chrysostom
Press, 2011, pp. xvii-xviii.
[10] St. John Chrysostom, Homily 34 on Hebrews, 1.
[11] St. Dmitri of Rostov, Great Collection of the Lives of the Saints,
February 12.
[12] This account has been gathered from
Akakian sources, but is confirmed in all essentials by an anti-Akakian source.
[13] Letter of the Greek TOC Synod to
Archbishop Tikhon, December 8/21, 2009.
[14]
http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=1897
[15] Bishop Akakije, op. cit.
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