Serbian Church 'doesn't recognize' Ukrainian church leaders' attempt to split from Russian Orthodox Church

RFE/RL
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 17:29 UTC

© Sputnik

Filaret and Petro Poroshenko.

The Serbian Orthodox Church says it will not recognize a decision by the leadership of Orthodox Christianity to rehabilitate the leaders of two Ukrainian Orthodox churches breaking away from Moscow.

The Serbian church's Holy Assembly of Bishops "does not recognize" Patriarch Filaret and Metropolitan Makariy or "their followers," a statement said on November 12.

Ukraine has three Orthodox churches: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate led by Patriarch Filaret; and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Metropolitan Makariy.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople last month agreed to recognize the autocephaly, or independence, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Comment: Something that is not in Constantinople's power to do, at least not traditionally. That requires unanimity among the churches. As the Saker recently wrote when describing the situation:

Second, crucial decisions, decisions which affect the entire Church, are only taken by a Council of the entire Church, not unilaterally by any one man or any one Church. These are really the basics of what could be called "traditional Christian ecclesiology 101" and the blatant violation of this key ecclesiological dogma by the Papacy in 1054 was as much a cause for the historical schism between East and West (really, between Rome and the rest of Christian world) as was the innovation of the filioque itself.

It also lifted excommunications imposed on Filaret and Makariy, who have been instrumental in pushing for an independent Ukrainian church.

The Russian Orthodox Church labeled the moves schismatic and announced it was ending its relationship with Constantinople in protest.

In its statement, the Serbian Orthodox Church -- which has its own decades-old disputes with unrecognized breakaway churches in Macedonia and Montenegro -- said it "regrets" Constantinople's "canonically unfounded decision" to rehabilitate Filaret and Makariy, and urged Orthodox leaders to "confirm and strengthen the unity of the Orthodox Church."

However, it stopped stop short of saying it was breaking ties with the Istanbul-based patriarchate.

The religious dispute came amid high tensions between Moscow and Kyiv over Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its backing for separatists in a war in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,300 people.

Comment: The Ukrainian churches supporting this move have made a deal with the devil, putting politics above religion. They should reread their Apostle Paul, or Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos (quoted in the Saker article above):

Saint Maximos the Confessor says that, while Christians are divided into categories according to age and race, nationalities, languages, places and ways of life, studies and characteristics, and are "distinct from one another and vastly different, all being born into the Church and reborn and recreated through it in the Spirit" nevertheless "it bestows equally on all the gift of one divine form and designation, to be Christ's and to bear His Name. And Saint Basil the Great, referring to the unity of the Church says characteristically: "The Church of Christ is one, even tough He is called upon from different places". These passages, and especially the life of the Church, do away with every nationalistic tendency. It is not, of course, nations and homelands that are abolished, but nationalism, which is a heresy and a great danger to the Church of Christ.