How Civilized Are We?

It is now an established fact that Patriarch Filaret, the accompanying clergy, and other Kyiv Patriarchate faithful visiting Mariupol were physically assaulted when sanctifying the cross in what will hopefully become another Orthodox church in the city. Patriarch Filaret received several blows, his Panhagia vestment was torn off, whereupon water was poured over the Hierarch, and his staff was broken. The windshield and rear window of his automobile were smashed. Some of the clergymen accompanying him also suffered body injuries - e.g., Hegumen Dmitry (Kyiv), Rt. Rev. Volodymyr (Donetsk), and several local adherents. The Day contacted the Donetsk office UOC (Moscow Patriarchate), asking for comment. The clergyman answering the call refused to identify himself but confirmed the story. In a word, what happened in the Donbas is another vivid testimony that the Memorandum on Nonuse of Force in Settling Interfaith Conflicts, ceremoniously signed by the hierarchs of the Ukrainian churches in the President's presence, is just another sheet of paper.

The events preceding Patriarch Filaret's visit to Donetsk oblast included Moscow Patriarchate zealots picketing the municipal authorities, carrying posters demanding that the Patriarch be barred entry to the Donbas; such pickets were also positioned on the boundary between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk oblasts. In Donetsk, the Patriarch was made to spend five hours in his vehicle parked in front of the Transfiguration Cathedral which is under Kyiv Patriarchate jurisdiction. The militant "Christian" crowd never let him out of the car or inside the house of God. And the militia just stood by looking on.

The video accounts of Mariupol and boundary events convinced the journalists present that there were comparatively few adherents campaigning for or against the Moscow and Kyiv Patriarchates; a couple of dozen at best. Most of the "zealots" turned out to be characters wearing church clothes, yet more evidence that the interconfessional rift in Ukraine is mainly due to the machinations of priests themselves. Plain ordinary believers seldom bother to have an insight into the canonical complexities, as evidenced by a recorded conversation between two women looking on from a safe distance:

"Who are those people wearing dark clothes?"

"They are the Orthodox believers."

"And the others, also wearing black?"

"They are also Orthodox."

"Then why are they fighting each other?"