DEAR EDITORS OF The Day:
I am a regular reader, and I am particularly interested in your religious coverage. Talking of recent issues, I consider the feature on Patriarch Dimitry especially informative, warmly worded, and showing respect for this prominent clergyman. I was also pleased to share the author’s belief in the forthcoming unity of all Ukrainian Orthodox churches; this idea is the leitmotif of all your religious articles. Actually, this is the reason for the following message addressed to a newspaper broaching subjects which are especially topical for me. I am forwarding this message to show my appreciation of your good work and hoping to be heard and understood correctly. Thus, permit me first to narrate my concept of Orthodox unity, based on historical facts.
Thinking back to Ukraine joining the Russian Empire and Peter I’s reforms, followed centuries later by the Russian Revolutions, and Moscow’s attempted coup after the USSR’s collapse, I try to analyze the current rift in the Ukrainian Orthodox community. Russia, Ukraine, and all of us have paid a very dear price for turning the Russian Orthodox Church into yet another department of the Russian Empire. Indeed, the Church will always be regarded as one, she has begotten saints and martyrs, retaining her inner beliefs and apostolic grace. It is also true, however, that we have been made to pay the cost of the people’s getting estranged from the Church en masse, driven away from her by a system of totalitarian militant atheism, induced split-ups, revolutions, the civil war, and the Soviet-made famine of 1933 known as the Holodomor.
The Russian Orthodox Church has remained a house built on rock, except that its foundation was now running cracks. What will happen if Ukraine receives a church built on sand? Let us face it: there are only two canonical religious communities in Ukraine — the Catholic and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate. Let us also take a closer look at the notion of canonicity. Our Lord makes no distinction between the Greek and the Jew. Likewise the Church does not differ between Russians and Ukrainians. Instead, it abides by Canon Law carrying forth His wisdom. Thus, Peter I’s ukase establishing the “Unified Independent Holy Apostolic Church” — or propagandized centuries later by the dissenting Rev. Denysenko — is unlawful, ungodly, and to be condemned. Here my personal feelings toward Volodymyr Yarema or Mykhailo Denysenko do not count for much — or the way Messrs. Kravchuk and Omelchenko try to capitalize politically on their “Ukrainian National Church” project. What else could one have expected from them anyway?
I suggest that we all face the truth and admit that a UAOC and UAOC KP merger would result in the emergence of something akin to a Ukrainian Protestant Church very similar to the Anglican. We must realize that we would have a church completely under government control (at best) or taking orders from certain politicos (the worst and most likely possibility). Then what? What will come of Ukraine and its “Local Church” built on such quicksand? What will come of our children, grand-, and great-grandchildren? Look up history, see what happened to Peter I’s posterity? What happened to all of us back in 1917, 1933 and from 1937 on?
Or maybe all this started not with Peter I? Maybe what happened next was not rooted in church rifts and discord? Could it be that He has averted His Face from our Church? We can only pray for our Lord to bestow on Ukraine its own Church built on rock!
Taras Makhrynsky, Kyiv
From the Editors:
The Day wishes to thank Mr. Makhrynsky for his informative, heartfelt message, and particularly for his interest in the newspaper’s coverage. Basically, of course, the Editors are grateful for his deep-going ideas and historical juxtapositions which will, hopefully, warrant quick readers’ comments.
There is something The Day would like to contribute in terms of canonicity and the position of local churches within the ecumenical religious framework. This problem has remained extremely complex at all times, under all political orders, often causing dramatic developments. To begin with, in the early Middle Ages, after the first bishoprics took shape, theologians considered that there could exist only five canonically independent churches. By analogy with the body of man created by Him in His Image: four limbs and the head — e.g., the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. The question was, which one would serve as the “head”. Rome or Constantinople? Centuries passed leaving this unanswered until the 1054 schism. Today, we have 14 recognized (and unrecognized) canonical autocephalous churches and there is no reason to expect that their number will not rise. After all, we have not reached the prophesied end of time.
In all countries, people and societies would usually start thinking of independent churches in connection with political independence. Significantly, the causal nexus between church and political independence is established by ecumenical Orthodox rules, albeit not very clearly.
It so happened that most “latter-day” autocephalous churches had to assert their independence and canonicity the hard way. Getting independent status was always an extremely complicated procedure because the parent church was more often than not loath to part with that which had belonged to it for so long.
Mr. Makhrynsky, you must be well aware of the fact that the Church of Moscow remained formally unacknowledged by Constantinople for 150 years. In other words, it remained uncanonical. The same was true of the Greek Church which withdrew from the Constantinople See as soon as Greece won its independence.
To sum up this long historical experience, getting autocephaly officially recognized depends on several standing factors: (a) the polity’s condition in which a given autocephaly is being formed, i.e., that state’s weight in the international community, its impact on world politics, and its allies; (b) the temporal factor: the autocephaly procedures are known to have taken decades, and (c) the historical factor: the Polish Orthodox Church (out of which the current Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was revived during World War II) would have never got its autocephalous status without the Russian Revolution.
Regrettably, Ukraine has created yet another unwelcome precedent: a massive religious rift. None of its churches now claiming autocephalous status has the canonical right to do so. On the other hand, if the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had not split the way it did soon after Ukraine became independent, we could have had an independent church by now, well on its way to recognition by Ecumenical Orthodoxy. Because the situation within the Orthodox community worldwide was and remains favorable for Ukraine.
Last but not least, it is considered generally established that Ecumenical Orthodoxy has still to clearly define the procedures for forming new local churches. The Next Ecumenical (World) Church Council, if and when it takes place, will have among the priorities on the agenda precisely such procedures. Word has it that the Eighth World Eastern Orthodox Church Council might never take place because of this issue, regarded as an insurmountable obstacle. It suffices to remind oneself that the last such council was convened 1,211 years ago.
With warm regards,
Klara Gudzyk, The Day








