Correspondence dialogue

The Russian Orthodox Church expressed hope that three priests from Izhevsk, who were recently banned from serving, will repent and not follow the path of schism, Interfax-Religion reports.

“I would like to hope that the first love of these priests for Christ and for the Church will break through in their hearts and lead them to look at the situation from the outside and, perhaps, repent and return to that Church where there are people with different opinions, with different life histories, with different positions regarding the present and future of Russia, but they are all moved by the unity of Christ and, despite all their differences, are ready... to perform a single work of salvation, which... is the main meaning of the existence of the Church of God in this world," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on the air of the Orthodox TV channel "Soyuz".

At the end of March, Archpriests Sergius Kondakov, Mikhail Karpeev and priest Alexander Malykh on the Internet made an appeal to the Patriarch . They, in particular, accused him of ecumenism and union with papism, as well as blind agreement with the authorities and flirting with moneybags.

The head of the Synodal Department for Relations between the Church and Society, Father Vsevolod, called on Izhevsk clergy to think about whether they always act “truly independently”, whether they are under the influence of forces that would like to “push the Church and the people, the Church and the government, Orthodox Christians together at any cost.” with each other and through this divide and bring Orthodox Russia to its knees." The priest pointed out the similarity of the arguments of the Izhevsk clergy with the arguments of the ultra-liberals, in particular, that both of them accused the Church of “collaboration with the KGB.”

According to Father Vsevolod, there is nothing wrong with the very fact of contacts with certain authorities. “It was bad when believers used these contacts in order to tell lies about their neighbors, in order to expose certain brothers and sisters in Christ who entrusted them with this or that information about themselves to the blows of the repressive machine,” and The Church, as Father Vsevolod noted, “said very clearly” about the inadmissibility of this kind of behavior.

He rejected accusations of the Church’s allegedly uncritical attitude towards state power, noting that of all the forces that continue to maintain normal relations with the authorities and which enjoy real trust in society, “The Church is practically the only one that constantly says that the authorities are doing wrong ", and about what needs to be changed in social and economic policy, in relation to such social problems as juvenile justice and state intervention in family affairs, etc.

Summing up, Father Vsevolod stated that the Church today is open to a broad discussion - all issues can be spoken out both within the framework of the Inter-Council presence and within the framework of the debates that are currently taking place in the church media and on the Internet. However, the Izhevsk priests chose, in his words, a different path - “the path of accusations, stopping the commemoration of their primate, that is, practically the path of going beyond the fence of the canonical Church.”

Considering this path “very, very wrong,” leading to a “spiritual dead end,” Father Vsevolod admitted that he “sincerely feels sorry for the three sincere people who support the Church who followed this path.”