www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Old Believers and Rome

Persecution can make bed fellows of unlikely compatriots, but I would say again the history of the Old Believers has shown they have not looked outside. During the worst of the persecutions with the self immolations, the Old Believers remained steadfast in their denunciations of both the church of the Nikonian reforms and the church of the West. The persecutions of both the state church and the Old Believers during the Soviet era did not draw the two sides together in a substantial way.

The argument remains is it because of history or contra to history that individual Old Rite adherents or enthusiasts would seek communion with the Roman church. I maintain that it is contra history and not because of history that such a thing would happen. This [kirov.ru] Old Believer link sums up the reason best in this quote

This shows in a nutshell why Old Belief would preclude ecclesial relations with the west.

The example of the Novus Ordo is not tangential but illustrative as a straightforward indicator. To be in communion with another church is to say all of its theology and practices are legitimate and valid. One can imagine how an old believer would react to a typical western mass, to women handling the Eucharist, mixing of the sexes in the nave and so on. This simple example shows how far the two sides are apart, and how unlikely it would be for Old Believers to find the practices of the western church acceptable. This has absolutely nothing to do with their maintenance of their own rubrics.

I�m not really clear what the Western Orthodox have to do with any of this, but I don�t know enough about them to really comment. I would say if the people that are the Western Orthodox now had a history of denouncing Eastern theology, or identifying Orthodox patriarchs as harbingers of the coming of the anti-Christ; then I would have to say I would find their willingness to establish communion with the Eastern Church most bizarre and unlikely. Counter intuitive to expectation based on history one could say.

Andrew

Father Patapy Emilianov (who is a great spiritual figure, an authentic martyr and certainly should receive beatification) discovered the Catholic Church first by reading Patristic texts and then made contact with Metropolitan Andrew and Blessed Leontius (Leonid Feodorov). Both the Metropolitan and the Exarch assured him and the faithful that there would be no thought of any interference with the pre-Nikonian tradition; on the contrary it would be maintained. And so it was until the Soviets closed the parish and imprisoned Father Patapy.

Metropolitan Andrew also arranged a lovely Old-Rite church right around the corner from Saint George's Cathedral in L'viv, where some Studites maintained the Old Rite for floating groups of refugees from Russia in the interwar period.

Concerning Soloviov: he supported the civil and religious rights (note spelling) of the Old Ritualists and this naturally brought him to their attention. He can scarcely be called anti-Russian; he loved Russia and the Russian spiritual-cultural heritage dearly.

Incognitus

I actaullay think the amin reason some Old Believers, and this is documented, aligned with Rome is because the Roman patriarchate was unaffected by the Nikonian reforms and therefore could be seen as having valid priests.

Ned W

Does any one know more about the history of the old Believers. I read that they fled to Poland during the reign of Catherine the Great, when they were being persecuted. Does anyone know where exactly they went in Poland? I wasn't clear that there was a place Poland in the 17th or 18th C.

Apparently the Old Believers returned to Russia at some point. Many are in the far east now.

Just wondering if anyone knew any more about this.

Nonna, the bookstore at the Old Rite parish in Erie has a very nice selection of Old Rite history in their bookstore: http://www.churchofthenativity.net/ and click on Bookstore.

I recommend "The Old Believers in Modern Russia" for the current conditions of the Old Ritualists within Russia. The little book about Nikolaevsk is also a nice snapshot of the conditions that prompted the Old Ritualists to leave Russia for such places as Harbin, China; South America, Oregon and Alaska.

Regarding Soloviev - he indeed loved Russia, hence his never leaving the Russian liturgical and spiritual tradition. He did specifically mention historical injustices shown the Old Ritualists, and while he certainly didn't profess the Old Rite he taught nothing that would be inherently contradictory to an Old Ritualist - in fact his social commentary of the Tsarist regimes and his speaking out about the past injustices would likely be seen with agreement by some Old Ritualists.

Regarding the Studite chapel (on Skarga I believe?) unfortunately it was destroyed by the Soviets.
FDD

I once saw an article somewhere on a group of OBs in the Suwalki area in the far NE of Poland. They were priestless but had small community of nuns. There are a small group of priestless who migrated to the SW of Western Australia from somewhere in North America. I have not heard of them for ages. There is Church in Sydney which has a priest and a very nice church. I think they may have arrived in the 1950 from China.

ICXC
NIKA

Ah! Thank you! The Church of the Nativity has a
nice website.
-N

I've been told that the present Old-Rite parish in Erie originated, five generations back, in Suwalka, Poland.

Incognitus

In for a penny, in for a pound. If something seemingly contradictory in spirituality, thought, liturgy, etc. can occur in the one instance, and be acceptable, it most certainly can in the other. History has shown that both a Western Rite can exist in Byzantine Orthodoxy, and the Old Rite can exist in communion with Rome.

To be in communion with a Church maintaining signficiantly different lex orandi has indeed happened - both with the Western Rite and with the Old Rite in communion with Rome as we have discussed show this.

It seems a bit polemic to assert one always makes sense and the other would never make sense. These two examples are both fact, regardless of how one can't "understand" why one happened or can't "find" a reason for one to occur.
FDD

Nonna, you will also want to read Paul Meyendorff's Russia: Ritual and Reform for an excellent overview of many of the liturgical considerations. It's available from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.
FDD

I never said Soloviev/Soloviov/Solovyov (as his name is variously transliterated) was anti-Russian. I said his view of history and many of his philosophical influences and conclusions were distinctly un-Russian, and that these factors would make him a figure that ordinary Old Believers would not identify with.

This I do not believe is accurate for at least two reasons. The first would be his overall view of the history of the church in Russia. The second, and much more obvious, is his speculative views of divine wisdom, aka the Sophiology later picked up by Bulgakov. Traditional Orthodox of many stripes have vociferously denounced this whole line of thinking. Old Believers at best would view these speculations as obfuscation (what Avvakum called �almanac mongering�), and at worst as outright heresy. Keep in mind the Old Believers were originally not only hostile to the western church, but to the educated Ukrainian clerics who populated the Russian Church who they viewed as being contaminated by western ideas.

Also, they were not opposed to religious autrocracy, in fact far from it. What they opposed was the use of autocracy to promote error, which is what they viewed as happening with the enforcement of the Nikonian reforms. They later came to identify the westernized Tsars starting with Peter as manifestations of the Anti-Christ.

The form of worship is not what is in question here, although the forms of worship may certainly point to the deeper issues. Have the people that are Western Orthodox in the past denounced Eastern theology? Do they have a history of being vocally and visibly hostile to the East? Do they identify their own part of the church or a single western see as the one, true and pure church? Those would really be the relevant question, not do their rubrics differ.

I believe the Polish-Lithuanian aristocracy had various reasons for wanting to settle a group like the Old Believers on their lands. They certainly believed that like the Jews, the Old Believers would not seek to spread their faith to the locals.

The various factions of the Old Believers often went abroad or moved to the fringes of the Empire like the Baltics or what was then Finnish Karelia. After the Soviets took power many went to the Far East and then to North/South America. My wife and I visited the community in Nikolaevsk, Alaska a number of years ago. That was an interesting community. They had been priestless, but decided to go back to having priests. It split the community and the remaining priestless believers moved on. I believe they sought out an Old Believer bishop in Romania in order to restore the priesthood.

Andrew

Oh, dear. I may have just discerned an insuperable barrier between Rome and the Old-Ritualists. They would be apt to find it difficult to have a connection with a Church which frequently chants as follows:

Tantum Ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui
Et antiquum documentum
novo cedat ritui!

Any suggestions?

Incognitus

Andrew, I believe the OB community you saw in Alaska has been the subject of an very interesting article (with photos) on them in the National Geographic in recent times.

Yes, aside from studying the history of Old Belief one could read currently published viewpoints. The Erie church for instance has this on their FAQ [churchofthenativity.net] page regarding both theology and praxis:

What are the main differences and similarities between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church?

In the Orthodox Church, there is no figure equivalent to a pope; rather, the authority of Church rests in all the bishops acting in concert according to the rules of Faith established by the seven universal councils of the Church; each bishop is of equal authority, although among them the patriarch or metropolitan has a higher place of honor, or is "first among equals."

Our churches differ on many dogmatic issues. The Nicene Creed itself, which we hold as the most sacred of all statements of our Faith, was altered by the western Church, resulting in a confused understanding of the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox Church firmly believes that the Mother of God was born into this world in a natural, although miraculous, manner, and does not accept the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory for the dead is also unknown in our Church.

There are many aspects of our faith that we share with Catholics, of course, but even in these we are distinct. Both Churches accept the use of images, but we do not accept the use of statues. Both Churches have monastic communities, but in the Orthodox Church there is only one "order" to which all its monks and nuns belong. Both Churches recognize seven major sacraments, but the Orthodox understanding of each of them is essentially different from the Catholic. In short, the reason for the multitude of similarities between our faiths is not so much that we agree on those particular doctrines or issues, but that we have come from the same roots: the undivided Church of Jesus Christ.

Does your Church participate in the Ecumenical Movement?

Our Church deeply desires the unity of all Christians, but not at the expense of compromising what we hold to be the true Faith of Jesus Christ. As our Church observes the progress of the Ecumenical Movement, we do not see a desire among the Churches for true unity of dogma, but rather opposite. That is, a desire for unity but with each member believing whatever they wish. In such an organization, the Orthodox Church would always be a contradiction, and for this reason our Church does not participate in the movement.

I will say I also believe it is unlikely that the overwhelming majority of Old Believers would seek communion with most of the rest of the Orthodox world either. Again from their FAQ page:

What is the relationship of your Church to other Orthodox Churches?

Our parish is associated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The title of our Church organization makes it obvious that we are distinct from the Orthodox Church in Russia. In our own country, we are at variance with out Orthodox brethren who prefer to use the Gregorian (New Style) calendar for marking the feasts and those Orthodox who tend to modernize the Orthodox faith, or who are slipping away from the traditions of Orthodoxy, such as fasting, the observance of holy days, and the like. While we regard them as our brothers and sisters in Faith, we politely abstain from communion with them until there is full agreement among us.

Things that Old Believers would consider standard practice - i.e. separation of women and men in the nave, the expectation that all women will have their head covered inside the church, restriction of the chanting of hymns to men, or adherence to the purity canons such as prohibiting women from approaching the chalice during their period of menstruation - have now widely fallen in to disuse in a good many Orthodox churches. (I would btw fully expect any group practicing the Old Rite, no matter who they are in communion with, to continue to observe these practices.)

That is all in addition of course to their historic independence, self reliance, and now restored episcopate. All of which would lead one to believe they will probably be happy to continue existing as they have.

Andrew

Dear Andrew,

One issue with your analysis of Old Believer history is that, in my view, it tends to assume a homogeneity among them that is simply never there.

There have been and are "Yedinovertsy" or United Old Believers with the Moscow Patriarchate - like Eastern Catholics, these had their own Particular Church establishment, even with "biritual" Orthodox parishes where the two rites would be observed together, but they accepted what all other Old Believers never would - that the state Orthodox Church and her "New Rite" was as valid as the Old Rite. In other words, the accepted the same ecclesial perspective as the EC's did with respect to RCism.

Then there were the priestless and priestly Old Believers, divided into various groups. Old Believers with the Mysteries today are not united and cannot even agree on the list of their own Old Believer saints and martyrs.

In addition, I have trouble seeing what the wider history of the Old Believers would have had to do with the decision of some to join with Rome.

Tsar St Nicholas Romanov had come out to assure the Old Believers that their religious rights were guaranteed and that they would no longer be persecuted. With the destruction of Tsardom, the Old Believers really had no friends in Moscow. It is not hard to see the context in which communion with Rome, in the aftermath of a successful establishment of a Russian Catholic Church in 1904, could have been a realistic option for some Old Believers.

In addition, the highly educated Russian aristocratic class that was deeply familiar with the best of European culture and civilization had none of the acrimonious feelings toward Rome that was historically characteristic of the backward Russian peasant and of "barbaric Muscovy" as Europe as a whole referred to Russia.

The Old Believers were not a phenomenon solely of the peasant class in Russia. In fact, their first martyrs actually came from the aristocratic Boyar class, such as Morozova (a canonized martyr of the Old Believers) and others.

And St Avvakum the Hieromartyr was actually not killed for the Old Rite, but for insulting the memory of Tsar Alexis IV before his son and successor, the studious and very pious Orthodox Tsar Theodore.

Avvakum related to him his dream in which he said he saw Tsar Alexis in hell for introducing the Nikonian reforms.

Theodore personally really didn't get involved in all that, but he wasn't going to allow Avvakum, or anyone, get away with such a public insult to his father.

Although very political and insidious in his chicanery, Tsar Alexis was very pious himself, e.g. daily he made 1,000 prostrations and heard ALL the Church's horological services - when he was ill, he asked the bishops to come to his sick-room to serve them. He spent seven hours on his feet daily in church and afterwards used to personally bind - and kiss, to everyone's horror - the open wounds of sick people.

Alex