www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Patriarch Kyril visits Ukraine

Dear Subdeacon Borislav:

There are some other points in your note which I am not certain accurately convey the present situation, but what you write here would be an extremely important statement, if true. Therefore, I would be grateful if you would please explain what you base this on.

As far as I know, Patriarch Mstyslav always addressed Metropolitan Filaret with full respectful titles, even when the content of the letters reflected a disagreement. I do know that Patriarch Mstyslav did indicate that he considered both parts of the UAOC, that part which joined with part of the UOC to form the UOC-KP and the smaller part which chose not to, under his protection.

From everything I know about Patriach Mstyslav, I cannot imagine him ever siding with the Moscow Patriarchate, who never ceased, even after his death, referring to him as "self consecrated" and worse. Patriarch Mstsylav's entire life in the church was devoted to preserving an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The relationship between Patriarch Mstyslav and Metropolitan Filaret was strained, even after Ukrainian independence, but I would really be shocked by what you write. I have honestly never heard this before from anyone else.

A statement like this should not be made lightly, and not without verification.

Yours in Christ,

Priest Paul Koroluk, UOC-KP

Actually it is a known fact in Bound Brook Vladyka Mstislav contacted the Ecumenical Patriarch and after the decision to defrock Filaret was confirmed by him Vladyka Mstislav recognized it as valid.

This is a fact known by EVERYONE in Bound Brook. My professors from St Sophia Seminary were in the room when this happened.

Moreover everyone knows that Vladyka Mstislav NEVER accepted Filaret as the Patriarch. This is a widely known fact.

Finally it is rather silly to claim that Vladyka Mstislav was "self consercrated". In fact he was consecrated by Canonical Bishop Polikarp of Lutsk (Sikorsky) who was appointed by Canonical Bishop Vladyka Dionisy of Warsaw who was in turn assigned by the Patriarch Of Moscow.

While the dubious honor of being called "self consecrated" is applicable to some leaders in the Ukrainian Church, it clearly does not apply to Vladyka Mstislav.

Dear Subdeacon Borislav:

I would be very grateful if you would please share the name or names of the people who you cite as witnesses to this action, and, if possible, their contact information. If you do not wish to post that here, then please send it by private e-mail.

Alternatively, if you can obtain from them a clear statement of what they profess to have witnessed, to which they are willing to associate their name, it would be of value to everyone to post it here publicly. As the Ecumenical Patriarch himself has never publicly commented on Moscow's action, has always spoken with representatives of the UOC-KP, and in 2008 communicated to Patriarch Filaret an invitation to accept the UOC-KP as Metropolia of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it is difficult to understand why His All-Holiness would have spoken so quickly back in 1992.


Yours in Christ,

Priest Paul Koroluk in Tokyo

Well, yes, because Filaret was not elected Patriarch until 1995 after the repose of Patriarch Volodymyr, who succeeded Patriarch Mstyslav in 1993.

Dear Father Paul,

Can you tell us where (on the web) we can find a list of Ukrainian liturgical books and how to order them? Thanks!

Fr. Serge

"Well, yes, because Filaret was not elected Patriarch until 1995 after the repose of Patriarch Volodymyr, who succeeded Patriarch Mstyslav in 1993."

I phrased that incorrectly. What I meant to say is that he never accepted him as his representative in Ukraine.

"Alternatively, if you can obtain from them a clear statement of what they profess to have witnessed, to which they are willing to associate their name, it would be of value to everyone to post it here publicly. As the Ecumenical Patriarch himself has never publicly commented on Moscow's action, has always spoken with representatives of the UOC-KP, and in 2008 communicated to Patriarch Filaret an invitation to accept the UOC-KP as Metropolia of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it is difficult to understand why His All-Holiness would have spoken so quickly back in 1992.
"


Surely Father, you will not make the claim that the Ecumenical Patriarch is in communion with KP...

"
Alternatively, if you can obtain from them a clear statement of what they profess to have witnessed, to which they are willing to associate their name, it would be of value to everyone to post it here publicly."

Why exactly would it be of value to post private information here publicly?

Father Paul, in your posts you insinuated that the Ecumenical Patriarch did not uphold the excommunication of Filaret Denisenko. You also asked me to provide proof. Let me in turn ask a question.

If Filaret was to travel to Constantinople tomorrow would he be allowed to enter any altar vested? Would any priest of KP be allowed to concelebrate with a priest of the EP?

If the answer to these questions is a negative one, I hardly need to provide any more proof, needless to say the private information of our clergy.

It is not the same thing to refuse to permit the clergy to serve with a particular jurisdiction, and to uphold the excommunication of the head of that jurisdiction.

Fr. Serge

So what you are saying Father, is that the EP does not recognize that the MP has the right to depose one of her bishops?

I just don't get it. Do people here have so much disdain for Russia and or anything Russian that they try to re-write/ re-invent Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology?

Can you provide a link or a statement where the EP makes such a claim? Can you perhaps provide a statement where the EP recognizes the KP? Maybe you have a record of an oficcial meeting between representatives of EP and KP?

No,I am not saying what you attribute to me. I suppose, though, that the right of appeal to Constantinople remains intact.

What I actually said was - and is - that refusing to permit clergy to serve with clergy of a certain jurisdiction is not the same thing as a excommunication. This is hardly a denial of Orthodox ecclesiology; there are several cases in point, going back for almost 200 years.

In addition, there is the distinction between ekonomia and akribeia, which is also not at all new.

to put it another way: most of us will have learned in school that "things equal to the same thing are equal to each other". For better or worse, this does not apply to ecclesiology.

I remember - and I trust you do too - that the Church of Serbia managed to remain in communion with both the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate. I have a friend, a Roman Catholic priest, who has studied a lot about Orthodoxy, but who would go ballistic whenever I reminded him of this double-communion of the Church of Serbia.

For that matter, it frequently happened that Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia who were visiting Jerusalem would receive Holy Communion at the Life-Giving Tomb of the Lord.

And so on.

Fr. Serge

I agree with Fr. Serge. One can also look at the intercommunion of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad with the Synod in Resistance of the Old Calendar Greeks and also with various other Old Calendar Greek Synods during the period up to May of 2007.
The relationship between the Synod in Resistance and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem is also interesting. The Ecumenical Patriarchate put pressure of the Jerusalem Church to discontinue its relationship with the SiR (which never was at a point of intercommunion) since the EP doesn't recognize the Old Calendar churches as Orthodox.

I don't think anyone is anti-Russian (and if I have ever come across that way I am sorry- I have a great love of the Optina Fathers and Saint Seraphim) but I do think it is okay to be a little suspect of the current political situation in Russia and the Churches relationship to it and since many Ukrainians and other eastern Europeans still remember the old days, that where not that long ago, of a dominate state that used (and persecuted at the same time) the Russian Church. Many Greeks whom I know still talk about the Fourth Crusade and that happened long before the rise of the Soviet Union.

Dear Subdeacon Borislav:

We seem to have gone off on a number of tangents. If you would be willing, I would like to try to first clearly address your statement that Patriarch Mstyslav recognized the 1992 decision of the ROC Synod to defrock Metropolitan Filaret. I promise that I will then answer any remaining questions you have. As I noted, there are some other points you make which I would also like to return to, but I do think it might help if we focused on this one point first.

Although I tried to explain why your statement is startling to me, it may not be not so important why I question this statement. What I believe is important is that that the basis for such an assertion be clear.

From my reading of your messages above, it appears that many people in Bound Brook, including your instructors at St. Sophia Seminary, hold this assertion to be a fact. I understand that their belief is based upon statements by people who have stated that they were present when Patriarch Mstyslav made this decision. According to them, Patriarch Bartholomew communicated to Patriarch Mstyslav his recognition of the ROC decision to laicize Metropolitan Filaret, and Patriarch Mstyslav then stated that he would also recognize it. If I have misunderstood or misrepresented any facts, please do correct me.

The most preferable support of this occurrence would of course be some kind of written documentation, such as an 'ukaz' or letter from Patriarch Mstyslav himself. If the exchange between Patriarch Mstyslav and Patriarch Bartholomew was in writing, then one would hope that someone would have saved the letter from Patriarch Bartholomew, which would at least provide corroborating evidence of this exchange, and also confirm the Ecumenical Patriarch's position.

If Patriarch Mstyslav wrote nothing, and no letter from Patriarch Bartholomew is available, either because it was not archived or because the exchange was over the telephone or relied by a human agent, then all we have are the statements of the people who describe this event. It is not clear to me how much weight to give a verbal statement made by the Patriarch behind closed doors, but to give it any weight at all, it seems that we would at least have to know who these witnesses are and exactly what they believe Patriarch Mstyslav said.

You are correct that you should not share private communication or divulge information given to you in confidence, but it may be helpful if you would give these witnesses an opportunity to have the truth as they understand it told in their own words.

This could be a chance for you, and they, to clarify a matter that many of us outside of Bound Brook never understood, if someone can trace this statement to something a little more solid.

Yours in Christ,

Priest Paul Koroluk, UOC-KP