Suitcase, station, Constantinople

What is the “first in honor” Church of World Orthodoxy, which has become a refuge for anti -tuned priests from Russia

Restored

On January 10, according to the results of the fleeting and completely formal church court of the Moscow diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill deprived the Moscow Archpriest Alexei Uminsky San. On February 27, Patriarch Bartholomew, Constantinople, signed a decree on “restoration in the Holy San” by Father Alexy. As established by the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Cyril’s act was “determined not by church criteria, but a fair disagreement of this cleric with *** in Ukraine”.

Traditionally, the Orthodox Church did not recognize politically motivated “Poles” - for example, the most authoritative in the history of the Russian Church, the Local Council of 1917-1918. Rehabilitated by Metropolitan Arseny (Matsievich), "deprived of the dignity" on the initiative of Catherine II for a protest against the secularization of church possessions. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is illiterately applies to the anti-tuned clergy of the 25th Apostolic rule, punishing for "oath-crime". As the elementary linguistic analysis shows , the Greek term “ἐπί-satedα” in the text of the rule means the moment of bringing the oath in court. This is the rule, writes Professor Fr. Cyril (Govorun) condemns “those clergymen who deliberately imprinted in court or other legal processes provided for by Roman law.” And they do not condemn those who do not agree with the next political statement of the church administrator, who correctly served in different qualities to various political regimes.

Over the past two years, Patriarch Bartholomew has repeatedly accepted the clergymen punished by the Russian Orthodox Church for refusal to pray for the victory of the RF Armed Forces.

For example, in June last year, he restored in the dignity of the Moscow priest John Koval , who replaced the word “victory” in the “patriarchal prayer for Holy Russia”. O. John was forced to leave Russia and now serves at the parish of the Constantinople Church in Antalya.

A year earlier, Bartholomew accepted a group of Lithuanian and Belarusian clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church , repressed by their priesthood for an anti -war position. He established for them a new canonical jurisdiction - the Lithuanian exarchate - citing the fact that until the end of the 17th century. The territory of modern Lithuania was part of the Kyiv Metropolitan Patriarchate of Constantinople, illegally annexed by the Moscow Patriarchate.

The shelter under the Constantinople Omophore was also found by the permanent author of the “new” Archpriest Andrei Kordochkin , who previously served in Spain, but dismissed from all posts in the Russian Orthodox Church for criticism of “Theology ***”.

Now he serves at the parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Germany and is involved in the project “Peace to all” , which assisted priests supplanted from the Russian Orthodox Church after February 24, 2022. The project leads its martyrologist "Confessors of the World", in which today 15 names. In addition to material and legal support, the “world to all”, if necessary, helps to move from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Geopolitics in Orthodoxy

Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are extremely annoyed by this new church-geopolitical reality-because for the first time in many years their clergy has a real canonical alternative, a chance to get out of the serfs from the bishops and the patriarch. Moreover, to enter the catacombs or marginal groups that are stigmatized as a “split”, but to a respectable patriarchy, recognized by all official local churches.

According to the deputy chairman of the Moscow Church Court, who “judged” Koval and Uminsky, Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, the Russian Orthodox Church broke out communication with Constantinople and has the right to ignore his decisions. Moreover,

The Moscow Patriarchate denies the ancient right of the Patriarch of Constantinople to have jurisdiction over the Orthodox diaspora and act as the latest instance in resolving the disputes of clergy with his bishops and patriarchs.

This right was given to him by the 9th, 17th and 28th rules of the IV Ecumenical Council (451), which the Russian Church also recognized in the Middle Ages, since the wording of the rules sound unequivocally:

“If the cleric with his own, or with another bishop has a ship case: may he sue in the regional cathedral. If the bishop or cleric has displeasure to the metropolitan of the region, but he turns ... to the throne of the reigning Constantinople, and let him suck before him. ”

The Moscow Stogniy Cathedral of 1551 admitted that only the Patriarch of the Constantinople Patriarch to judge the bishops of other patriarchies; This position was repeated in their letters to Constantinople Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Patriarch Nikon. After the establishment of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589, the Council of Constantinople established the dependence of the Patriarch of the Northern countries on the Ecumenical throne. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church adheres to a new interpretation of these rules, limiting the concept of “diaspora” by three geographical areas mentioned for example in the 28th rule, and equating the Patriarch of Constantinople (also called universal) to all other patriarchs.

Such an understanding began to form in the era of the Russian Empire, especially in the 19th century, when Petersburg was the main sponsor of the Orthodox East, and the poor Greek or Slavic churches under the oppression of the Ottoman Empire did not recall their historical rights and privileges. After the fall of the Empire in 1917, Constantinople announced his leadership in world Orthodoxy and the special rights of the Ecumenical throne. For example, he carried out the calendar reform of 1924 (the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet accepted it and serves according to the “old style”), and also included the Orthodox parishes of America and Western Europe, including Russians.

The results of the Second World War gave rise to a new model of the structure of the Orthodox world - without the absolute leadership of Constantinople or Moscow. Exactly in accordance with the borders of the military-political blocks of the Church of Eastern Europe, Moscow became satellites, and the Church of the Greek world and the West became satellites of Constantinople. Between these poles were balanced by the communities of Orthodox Arabs and the Jerusalem Patriarchate.

But after the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the center of gravity again shifted towards Constantinople, which restored positions in the churches of Eastern Europe, revived the Estonian Apostolic Church and granted the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, rejecting the right of Moscow to the church colonization of this country. Soviet propaganda dubbed Constantinople “US puppet” - and this rhetoric was revived in modern Russia, where Ukrainian autocephaly is called the “State Department project”.

The Apostolic throne

The leading position of Constantinople in world Orthodoxy is associated not only with current geopolitical factors. Unlike the Russian Orthodox Church, the Constantinople Church belongs to the so -called "apostolic", since its founder is considered the first disciple of Christ - the apostle Andrei the First -Called .

According to legend, he ordained his student Stachius to Bishop Byzantium - then a small town, on the site of which Constantinople, the capital of the Great Orthodox Empire, which lasted more than 1,100 years later, will kiss three centuries later. Actually, the position of this city as a new Rome predetermined the status of its bishop as the first in the Orthodox world. This status became absolute in the XI century, when the final split of the Western and Eastern churches occurred, and the Orthodox began to look at the Catholics, led by Pope as heretics.

Today, the Church of Constantinople combines approximately 3,200 parishes consisting of 130 dioceses on all continents except Africa (this is the territory of the Alexandria Patriarchate) and Antarctica. According to the World Council of Churches, 5,255,000 people consider themselves parishioners of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. At the same time, in Constantinople itself (Istanbul) and in the adjacent territories there were only about 5 thousand Orthodox.

Relations of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the residence of which is located in the Istanbul region of the Fanar, are quite complicated with the Turkish authorities: for example, since 1971, a conflict has been stretched around the Higher Theological School of the Patriarchate on the island of Halka, which the authorities have closed and are not allowed to restore.

Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (Archondonis) remains a patriot of Turkey and is proud of the officer title, which he received in the early 1960s, serving in the Turkish army. He was born in the Greek village of Ai-Theodori on the island of Imvros-one of the two islands of the Aegean Sea, which remained in Turkey following the results of the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922. The initial theological education received on the very island of Chalk, but improved it in the West - in Rome, Switzerland and Germany. Having become Metropolitan of Philadelphia in 1973, he represented Constantinople in various ecumenical organizations, paying special attention to rapprochement with Catholics. He continued this course, and becoming a patriarch in 1991, he even announced different reunion dates with the Western Church, for which he was criticized by the Orthodox conservatives-anti-alignments.

In 2016, Bartholomew completed almost 100-year preparations for the All-Orthodox Council and conducted it on the island of Crete-however, the Russian Orthodox Church literally 10 days before the cathedral refused to participate in it, which unleashed hands to normalize the church situation in Ukraine. At the cathedral, it was supposed to adopt a new procedure for the provision of autocephaly to national churches, but since the Russian Orthodox Church decided not to discuss it, then Constantinople retained the right of sole gift of autocephaly and issued the corresponding Tomos of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in early 2019.

In response, the Russian Orthodox Church broke the canonical communication with Constantinople, paradoxically preserving such communication with churches that recognize the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Later, already together with the Serbian Church, Patriarch Bartholomew gave the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of North Macedonia.

After February 24, 2022, he more than once harshly criticized his Moscow fellow for the inability to convey the gospel truth to the authorities, urging Cyril to resign. On December 10, 2022, at a conference on international politics in Abu Dhabi Bartholomew, he spoke of evading from the Russian Orthodox Church from Christianity, calling the National-Hovinistic doctrine of the “Russian world” “the basis of the ideology of the Putin regime” and the theological heresy.

In the era of unprecedented challenges that were abandoned by the Christian world, the Ecumenical Patriarchate turned out to be the leader of the Orthodox resistance of tyranny and aggression under pseudo -Christian slogans.