www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Antoine Arjakovsky on the Russian Patriarchate

The following article was posted today by Professor Antoine Arjakovsky on his frustration with the Russian Patriarchate. I was personally moved by some of what he had to say about the Ukrainian Church.

For those who can read French, you will have no problem; for those who cannot, blogspot and Google offer an imperfect translation. But you will get the gist.

http://arjakovsky.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/je-ne-peux-pas-me-taire_31.html

Anyone? I was kind of hoping for an interesting New Year's argument...

In French ?

I'm still digesting it

Interesting article.

Or should I say, a booklet.

It is nice that he sees things from 3 views, not only from the Russian side, then Ukrainian side but also from a expat side living in France with the Russian community.

I offer you the article again, this time in English [priestofthechurch.wordpress.com].

I strongly urge you to read it, as Arjakovsky raises many important points with respect to contemporary Russia and its self-understanding that bear on the whole Church, and most particularly relationships within the Orthodox world.

And besides, it took me days to do the translation work...

Nonsense.

Hmm. You read and digested that awfully quickly. More than 3000 words in just over 3 minutes?

Perhaps you would like to elaborate more precisely on where exactly the nonsense is in what the renowned Russian theologian has to say?

Well now that's easier.

I read it in Russian. Calling Arjakovsky a theologian is like calling Obama a statesman.

Good. You read it in Russian.

Now, can you substantiate your ad hominem comments?

I, for one, do not necessarily agree with everything Prof. Arjakovsky says. I think he is too uncritical of Sergei Bulgakov and, in other places, the radical orthodox.

But criticisms of one or two particular positions do not undermine whole arguments. And furthermore, only one of these things is even applicable in the case of the article I have posted - and that to the smallest extent.

I suspect, by contrast, that you are just being dismissive because of your love for all things Muscovite.

A hard-hitting article, to be sure.

The statement that the UOC-MP isn't interested in Ukrainian-language services isn't correct, however - the UOC-MP in Kyiv is experimenting with such and Archbishop Oleksandr Drabenko works with a parish that has all of its services in Ukrainian.

(Archbishop Drabenko has also started to serve Panachydas for Hetman Ivan Mazeppa on his own - he has met with quite vitriolic attacks from non-Ukrainian quarters for this.)

I'm more interested in the issues faced by the UOC-MP, however. His Beatitude, Met. Volodymyr has had to balance the ethno-national tensions within his jurisdiction to avoid a schism along those same lines. What will happen after he is gone is anyone's guess (when he was out of commission for a while last year, the Russophile UOC-MP hierarchs took over and actually removed Drabenko, as you will know, from his various positions and the like. After Met. Volodymyr returned, Drabenko was reinstated and the tensions eased greatly.)

There is no reason, today, why the Ukrainian Orthodox Church cannot be established as a canonical patriarchate, independent of Moscow, as the national Church of Ukraine.

Such a Church would reunite the Orthodox Ukrainians - and would even pose a serious challenge to the UGCC.

Russians in the UOC-MP tend not to like even that Church's name. They say, "it was Russian Orthodox before - why can't it be so again?"

But the Ukrainian intelligentsia and others in the UOC-MP wouldn't countenance that and are working toward a de-Russification of the Church. Not only the UOC-MP, but also the Moscow Patriarchate as well have embraced a "pro-Ukrainianization" stance for the UOC-MP.

The Moscow Patriarchate has urged the UOC-MP to hold memorial services for the Holodomor and to otherwise assume a "Ukrainian identity" which is pro Ukrainian culture.

The West tends to see Ukrainians who speak (only) Russian as "pro-Russian." And in reality, that isn't true.

Such Ukrainians could not have learned Ukrainian, so they speak Russian (and the Russian language was, historically, developed under the influence of many Ukrainian scholarsb, see "The Ukrainian Influence on the Development of Russian Culture" and also Metropolitan Ohienko's works in this area.

That doesn't mean they have no "Ukrainian" identity as opposed to "Russian" identity. There are also Russians living in Ukraine who chose to do so and they have a very sympathetic attitude to Ukraine as well.

The UOC-MP knows all this which is why the efforts aimed at "Ukrainianizing" the church.

The movement for autocephaly for the UOC-MP is one that cannot be reversed. The alternative to this is one that will not be palatable to either the UOC-MP or the MP or canonical Orthodoxy as a whole.

But just as the MP is truly the "Church of Russia" - it cannot be the "Church of Ukraine."

Those who ignore these realities do so at the perial of the MP itself.

Alex

I will let Nicolai Gogol answer this.

A very interesting movie.

Mykola Hohol is very popular among Ukrainians, including his "Meditations on the Divine Liturgy."

I don't understand a lot of the movie because it is spoken in a foreign language! (Is that you doing the talking there? If so, bravo!!)



Alex

Dr Roman, I have often wondered, how does a real Ukrainian pronounce всегда?

Sigh.