Dear Friends,
It is truly very sad that we've been deflected from a consideration of the message of this remarkable letter . . .
The issue of Eastern Europe and Kyiv's relation to it depends, as Tim said, on how one defines "Eastern Europe."
Clearly, the RC Slavic lands nor the Balkans figure in this definition.
Yet, the Kyivan Church has made both direct and indirect Christian contributions to these areas as well as we've discussed from time to time in the past. The Orthodox Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko wrote on this topic and it does come up in articles even on the Moscow Patriarchal website.
The old Kyivan Church not only gave birth to various church bodies that survive today and not only brought the light of Christianity to other peoples through her missionaries, trained in Kyiv and tonsured in the Kyivan Caves Lavra, but she also brought the Jesus Prayer Hesychasm and other spiritual movements to other Churches through her Saints.
Russian Hagiographers, when they list Orthodox Saints, do indeed categorize later Saints trained in Kyiv as "Kyivan Saints."
Let us not get derailed by what truly is a rather petty argument and one that is not peculiar to Husar, but to other Orthodox, who would agree with his assessment of the historic Christian role of Kyiv in Eastern Europe. One has only to read Russian-language Orthodox church histories of the Kyivan Church et al. to get a sense of this.
The letter itself presents a rather far-reaching vision and one that could indeed be considered a threat to entrenched Russian Orthodox interests in Kyiv and Ukraine.
However, the UOC-MP has gone on record as asserting itself to the "UKRAINIAN" Orthodox Church and not the Russian, even though it is linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. If the UOC-MP is serious about what it says it is, then dialogue with the UGCC and friendly relations with it should pose no problem - in fact, while the Russian Orthodox press attacks Husar regularly, it does bear a grudging respect for him, and Husar NEVER responds to personal attacks against him in kind.
The letter is threatening to Russian Orthodox interests and also mainstream Orthodox interests by its positive statements about the UOC-KP and the UAOC.
In fact, the Orthodox Churches of Ukraine that find themselves outside the canons of world Orthodoxy do not see in the UGCC any threat to them and relations between what the Russian Orthodox press calls, pejoratively, the "three churches of the Kievan tradition" (namely the UGCC, the UOC-KP and the UAOC) have never been better.
And now those on this forum who are sensitive to "nationalism" may chime in with their usual, oft-repeated shouts of "phyletism" and the like.
In fact, the Orthodox (AND Roman Catholic AND Anglican AND Lutheran) Churches of Europe are organized along national lines period. There is not other "animal."
Anyone who reads the Russian Orthodox press is, at once struck, by the great Russian nationalism and chauvinism that characterizes it. And it is significant that one reads and hears of all sorts of criticism of "Ukrainian church nationalism" and very little of the Russian kind that is almost accepted as a "given."
There is the comment made here by posters, including the Administrator himself, that Ukrainians who critique the Moscow Patriarchate et al. are somehow "anti-Russian."
There is most certainly an element of that among Ukrainians, but given their history with their Great Russian Brothers (Ukrainians may choose their friends), it is not surprising. The fact of continuing Great Russian chauvinism in church relations and the like means that Ukrainians have a continuing reminder of that history and the enduring wish of Moscow to control the Orthodox Ukrainians.
The fact that Ukrainians who see their country as independent of Russia (AND Poland AND . . .
) would want a Church that is specifically "Ukrainian" should be no surprise.
The fact is also that the UGCC, in the latter part of the 19th centruy, became a solid defender of Ukrainian values, despite its internal church life being controlled by Rome - something that is acknowledged by many Ukrainian Orthodox (canonical
) writers, church leaders and academics.
It is significant that UGCC Patriarch did not dismiss the UOC-MP as an "enemy" and indeed affirmed that its value lies in its canonical struggle to assert its independence of Moscow etc.
And it is significant the the Patriarch affirmed that the UOC-MP stands in the Kyivan tradition (as indeed the Moscow Patriarchate does as well since the bases for its being rest on the Kyivan tradition of St Andrew that it assumed as its own).
The letter by Patriarch Lubomyr represents a very ecumenical and solid basis on which the various warring churches in Ukraine just might make a new beginning at dialogue.
If the position is taken that only an Orthodox church that is tied to Moscow in whatever way may be truly legitimate in Ukraine, then that position is simply unacceptable and doomed to failure there.
It is the old colonial ideology of the Russian Tsarist empire that was later translated into a Soviet ideological framework.
The empire and the Church that helped maintain it are both dead in the water. It is time for Russia to focus on established itself as a Russian nation and not as an empire - the same is true for the ROC.
Church and nation go hand in hand and this letter is an important contribution to that process of national self-rediscovery and self-actualization.
It is a process that every Church goes through at some point in its history, and this includes the emerging American Orthodox/Eastern Catholic Church.
Alex
