1987 Epistle of the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR
"... The
power of the Church lies not in an intact external organization,
but in the unity of faith and love committed by Her to Her
children!"
Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, children of the
Russian Orthodox Church! The millennial jubilee of the baptism of
our forebears is now approaching, an event which marked the
beginning of the life of the Church and grace in the Russian
land, and which has made us, their posterity, Orthodox
Christians.
This jubilee must be a festival for each Russian Orthodox
Christian, wherever he may live, as well as for all the
non-Russian children of our Church who participate in Her
grace-filled life.
But, alas! our Mother Church has had to live through a
terrible era, and is still trying to survive it to this very day.
Her ancient shrines are desecrated. She weeps for Her children.
They have received a new baptism in blood as they end a thousand
years of their Christian history.
Oppression and persecution of Her faithful children continues
and the gates of the forced-labor camps and prisons even today
yawn wide to receive them. The Patriarchate of Moscow, officially
recognized by the godless dictators of our homeland, is powerless
to help the persecuted or to better its own position in any way.
The millennial jubilee is not a particularly happy occasion for
us, even though a "great celebration" is being prepared
in the homeland to mark it.
In the paschal epistle of the Patriarch of Moscow the faithful
read astonishing words about a supposed "universal
renewal" of the life of our land. We hope that this renewal
will touch, first of all, the life of the much-suffering Church.
Apparently believing in the possibility of such a renewal,
members of the synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow say, in their
pre-jubilee epistle of 21 June 1987, that "the coming
jubilee must be a celebration also for those children of the
Church of Russia who, for various reasons, are not at present in
her salvific fold.... They therefore address to the hierarchs,
clergy, and laity who comprise the Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia ... a fraternal appeal to overcome the spirit
of bitterness and divisiveness, and to glorify the all-holy name
of our Lord and Saviour with one mouth and one heart,... that the
approaching jubilee may become a celebration for the totality of
the Church of Russia...."
We welcome this good desire and give thanks for the
invitation. But even they who call upon us speak in their epistle
of the various reasons which divide us.
The first reason is the denial by the Patriarchate of
Moscow of the martyrs and confessors of our time. It is
impossible to say that we have had no martyrs for the Faith, as
we have heard repeatedly from the lips of representatives of the
Patriarchate of Moscow; we cannot remain silent about their
struggle or avoid speaking of it, especially at the millennial
jubilee of the baptism of Rus', thereby distorting the histo~y of
the Church of recent times.
The fullness of the Church is not confined only to the
faithful who live on earth. She cannot be conceived of without
all the saints of Russia, among whom are the martyrs of recent
decades. It is for this reason that the celebration of the
jubilee coincides with the day on which all the saints who have
shone forth in the Russian land are commemorated and invoked in
prayer. The Russian Church is one, the heavenly and the earthly
comprise her fullness.
Thus, keeping in mind the "universal renewal" in
which those who invite us believe, we, for our part, invite them fearlessly
and openly to confess the struggle of the new martyrs and
confessors of our Church who have now been glorified.
Without ardent prayers to them, without sharing one mouth and
one heart with them, there cannot be a jubilee and the fullness
of the Church. They are our brethren and sisters by blood and the
Faith; they are the glory of the Church; they are Her victory;
their struggle is the justification of the thousand-year history
of Christianity in Russia.
The second reason is that the declaration of Metropolitan
Sergius (subsequently Patriarch), that the interests of
the Church and the atheistic government are identical, to this
day still forms the basis of their relations. It deprives the
Patriarchate of Moscow of freedom, justifying the total arbitrary
rule of the regime in the affairs of the Church.
We know that this declaration was not accepted in Russia by
the majority of bishop-confessors, by the clergy faithful to
them, and the flock, at the time of its promulgation, and on the
strength of this they ended their life in martyrdom, in the
terrible death camps.
Even while in the camp on Solovki, these confessors, doomed to
death, appealed to the Soviet government with a memorandum in
which they spoke of the "irreconcilability of the religious
teaching of the Church with materialism, the official philosophy
of the communist party and the government guided by it. The soul
of the Church, the condition of Her existence and the reason for
Her being is that very thing which is categorically denied by
communism. No compromises and concessions, partial changes in
religious teaching or reinterpretation of it in the spirit of
communism will satisfy the militant atheists." The voice of
the pastors who wrote this historic memorandum was at that time,
in 1925, the voice of a Church of Russia still free.
In the circumstances then created, the Solovki prisoners saw
the only way out of the situation: a full and consistently
implemented law on the separation of the Church from the state.
Even more than sixty years later, this is what the best
Russian people now desire. Thus, for example, in his article
"From Repentance to Action" (Literary Gazette, 9 Sept.
1987), the academic D. S. Likhachev boldly and truthfully wrote
that "if one would speak of the contemporary Church, one
should, especially today, on the eve of the millennial
anniversary of the baptism of Rus', emphasize: we stand in favor
of the complete, genuine separation of the Church from the
state."
These are the changes which the faithful in Russia are waiting
for in the life of the Mother Church. They expect the
representatives of the Patriarchate of Moscow, during the period
of "universal renewal," to find within themselves the
strength to cast off the heavy yoke imposed upon the Church by
the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius.
The third reason is that the epistle of the
Patriarchate of Moscow distinctly maintains, even though it calls
us a Church, that we are "outside the salvific fold of
the Mother Church."
Is this so? Our Russian Church Outside of Russia is
established upon a firm and immovable canonical foundation: the
decree of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon dated 7/20 November 1920,
#362. This historic decree is one of the very last—we shall
say, more prophetic—acts of the FREE Church of Russia
which has not lost its meaning even to the present day, in view
of the fact that the Patriarchate of Moscow is until now not free
and is enslaved to the atheists.
The authors of the epistle call upon us to return to what we
have never left. We have never thought of ourselves as outside
the Mother Church, preserving a spiritual and prayerful unity
with those who have been martyred and who have suffered for the
Faith, with those who have departed into the catacombs, with all
the true Orthodox Christians, with all the fullness of the Church
of Russia, for which time and space do not exist: "The
Spirit bloweth whithersoever It wisheth." We, living outside
the boundaries of our homeland, have not repudiated the name
Russian, have not sought out the omophoria of other bishops, for
which for all these years we have had to endure persecution and
disdain from false brethren and those who hate not only our
Church, but our homeland as well. And now they call upon us to
return. But to what?
We remain faithful to the testament of the Solovki prisoners,
that "the power of the Church lies not in an intact
external organization, but in the unity of faith and love
committed by Her to Her children."
These are the basic reasons why we are still unable to glorify
the all-holy name of our Lord and Saviour with one mouth and one
heart with those who call upon us to do so.
Yet apart from these very vital impediments, another, no less
important, matter disturbs us: the direction taken by official
representatives of the Patriarchate of Moscow in the sphere of
the confession of the truth and unity of our Holy Orthodox Faith.
We have observed with regret the ever greater attraction of the
Patriarchate of Moscow to ecumenism, with participation in prayer
services even with pagans and idolators (we have in mind here the
ecumenical encounter at Assisi).
All Russian people anxiously follow what is now happening in
the homeland, for they want to believe in the "universal
renewal" in the ecclesial, political, social, and cultural
life of our native land. They want to see signs of this renewal.
Forthright voices fearlessly condemning the mistakes and
crimes of the past decades in the life of Russia and desiring a
better future are heard. Those in the homeland who ponder over
the moral problems of contemporary society, the root causes of
the lack of spirituality, falsehood, disintegration, dishonesty,
are beginning to realize that formerly the Church opposed evil,
that She had experience in moral education which communist ethics
is unable to give. The voices of those who demand to be able to
live according to their conscience, who seek firm and reliable
bases for a renewal of life, resound; they think that the
fundamentals of the Christian Faith, which the founders of the
godless state so arrogantly repudiated, provide such bases.
Strivings and demands for justice have begun.
In the same article, "From Repentance to Action," D.
S. Likhachev avers that "We need the truth. The truth not
only about the past, but also about the recent past and the
present.... If we will tell the truth only with hindsight, this
will not deliver us from the repetition of past mistakes. Only
trust and openness are capable of withstanding violence and
criminality."
This is what the children of the Church are waiting for, in
the hope that to these bold voices the free voice of the Church
of Russia will be added: a voice demanding religious freedom,
freedom to preach Christianity, freedom for the "minister of
the cult" to become a pastor of the Church, openly
proclaiming the word of the divine Truth everywhere and to
everyone, like the apostles, having free access to the faithful,
the youth, the children, the sick, those who suffer in hospitals
and private apartments, the unfortunate, the lonely, those
incarcerated in prisons and forced-labor camps.
Let us all rely on the omnipotent help of God, for what is
impossible for men is possible for God, Who worketh wonders. We
shall await the results of the "universal renewal,"
believing that what is impossible today may become possible
tomorrow.
+Metropolitan Vitaly of Eastern America and New York
+Archbishop Antony of Los Angeles and Southern California
+Archbishop Antony of Geneva and Western Europe
+Archbishop Antony of Western America and San Francisco
+Archbishop Laurus of Syracuse and Holy Trinity Monastery
+Bishop Alypy of Chicago and Detroit
+Bishop Hilarion of Manhattan
November 7/20, 1987
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