Five Years of Political Anathema
On February 20, 1997, the Council of Archpriests of the Russian Orthodox Church anathematized Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv and All Rus’. In other words, Moscow denounced the head of another church located in a different country. It was one of the most dramatic events in Ukraine’s recent history. Also, it was a brilliant manifestation of the Moscow Patriarchate’s age-old strategy aimed at keeping churches under control at all cost.
What does anathema mean? Why is it so important in Christianity? It originates from the Greek and translates roughly as excommunication, meaning total exclusion from the Christian community. It is an ecclesiastical curse. The notion figures in the New Testament, first used by Saint Paul precisely in the sense of excommunication. Anathema is the gravest church punishment. In the first centuries of Christianity it was levied on Christians in retaliation for lack or abuse of faith – al in other words, for professing heretical teachings, ones that did not conform to established dogmas. Once a heretic was anathematized, his name was struck from the diptychs, or church records of the living and the dead, and the church would offer up no prayers for him. With time, anathema became a tool in the struggle not so much for the purity of faith as for spiritual influence, power within the church. Among its victims was St. John Chrysostom (404 AD). 85 years later, the church council anathematizing him was nullified and the anathema lifted posthumously.
The history of the so-called political anathema did not end in the first centuries of Christianity. It was broadly used, among others, by the Patriarch of Constantinople as the national churches of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, etc., began to withdraw. In 1872, the Council of Constantinople anathematized all Bulgarian archpriests and their followers departing from the Mother Church. The Bulgarians were condemned for schism (split) and ethnophilitism, or division of the church according to ethnicity. (Incidentally, current Russian ecclesiastical politicians also condemn Ukrainian clergymen supporting the independence of the Ukrainian church of ethnophilitism). Constantinople recognized Bulgarian autocephaly only in 1946, 74 years later.
The Moscow church has been using political anathema since the fifteenth century. The Moscow diocese had hardly formed in 1446 (incidentally, its autocephalous status was appropriated, not conferred) when Metropolitan Hryhory Bolharyn of Kyiv was anathematized. The same lever was repeatedly used in the course of the maturation of the Russian Empire, the more so that with Peter I the church became a state institution, carrying out all the instructions of the Russian crown. It was for deeds against the state, not the church, that Grigory Otrepiev, Stepan Razin, Yemelyan Pugachiov, and schismatic Old Believers were anathematized (the latter anathema was lifted under the Soviets, using the formula “as that which never happened”). Also the ill-famous excommunication of Count Leo Tolstoi (the church did not dare use “anathema” at the time), the pride and glory of Russian literature and the nation.
Ivan Mazepa was anathematized ad infinitum on November 12, 1708, at the Church of the Holy Trinity of the town of Hlukhiv, as ordered by, and in the presence of, Peter I, for siding with Swedish King Charles XII. That same day the same ritual was performed at the Dormition Cathedral of Moscow, attended by the political leadership and royal family. This was a purely political anathema having nothing whatever to do with faith. Hetman Mazepa was a devout adherent of the Eastern Orthodox Church and generously financed the construction of temples, supported cloisters, and made costly presents to other churches, including one in Jerusalem.
Let us return to our realities and the Moscow Patriarchate latest anathema against Patriarch Filaret. The act was preceded by stormy religious events in the first half of the 1990s. Consider a brief chronology. In 1990, on the wave crest of democratic reforms, the Council of Archpriests of the Russian Orthodox Church resolved to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church the “status of independence in terms of administration” but on the condition that it remained part of the ROC.
Metropolitan Filaret of Kyiv was elected head of UOC for life. On October 27, he received a diploma attesting the UOC rights from Moscow Patriarch Aleksiy II.
Ukraine proclaimed its independence a year later and now UOC being part of the Moscow church was at variance with the status of the newly formed state (as was the case once in Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia). In November 1991, a Local Church Council was convened at the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves attended by Ukrainian bishops, other clergymen, and adherents. It unanimously passed a resolution on UOC autocephaly, meaning separation from the Moscow Patriarchate.
The church administration in Moscow could not allow this, of course, because the withdrawal of the UOC denied it its previous status of the world’s largest and most influential Orthodox church. In addition, the Moscow Patriarchate was resolutely opposed to the dissolution of the USSR and tried (and is still trying) in every way to restore the Soviet/ Russian empire by preserving a single Orthodox church throughout the post- Soviet world. For this reason it promptly launched a campaign to discredit Metropolitan Filaret who only a year before was appointed lifelong head of the UOC. In 1992, the Moscow Patriarchate convened a Council of UOC Bishops at which those same Ukrainian clergymen that had shortly before voted for UOC autocephaly embarked on a different, Moscow, road and elected another UOC head, Metropolitan Volodymyr Sobodan, then business manager of the Moscow Patriarchate (there are different opinions concerning the bishops’ “firm resolve.” Most likely, files borrowed from some clandestine agency archives were used). That same year Metropolitan Filaret was demoted all the way down the religious chain of command; he was banned to celebrate divine services and was from then on “Monk Filaret” for the Moscow church.
Metropolitan Filaret refused to recognize the Moscow religious adjudication and proceeded with his efforts (still ineffective) to set up a single independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In 1995, he was elected Patriarch of the UOC Kyiv Patriarchate operating independently of Moscow. It was then that Moscow levied the ultimate punishment, anathema, so as to finally discredit Patriarch Filaret in Ukraine and in the eyes of world Orthodoxy. The Council of ROC Archpriests resolved on February 20, 1997, to “excommunicate Monk Filaret (Mikhail Antonovich Denisenko) from the Church of Christ. May he be anathematized before the whole people.” The Act of Excommunication reads, in part, “The Blessed Council of Archpriests held judgment concerning the anti-Church activities of Monk Filaret (Denisenko) deprived of all ecclesiastical ranks as per the Act of Adjudication of the Council of Archpriests of June 11, 1992, and admonished by the Council of 1994 that “in the event of continuation of ... such outrage he will be excommunicated by anathematization.” The act proceeds to state the grounds: “He paid no heed to the message on behalf of the Mother Church, urging him to repent, and continued with ... schismatic endeavors, extending them beyond the limits of the ROC... Feloniously ignoring the justified interdiction of the legitimate Church authority unfrocking him, he continued to blasphemously conduct divine services... Monk Filaret had the nerve to appropriate the title ‘patriarch of Kiev and All Rus’-Ukraine,” while the Kiev Diocese is rightfully led by the canonical Head of the UOC holding the rank of Metropolitan (Vladimir Sabodan)... Monk Filaret has not ceased to cast aspersions on the episcopate, clergy, and faithful flock of the UOC which stays in canonical contact with the Russian Orthodox Church and, through it, with the whole Ecumenical Orthodox Church... In view of everything stated above, the Blessed Council of Archpriests, pursuant to Apostolic Rule No. 28, reading, ‘Should any of the bishops or presbyters or deacons, having been correctly dismissed from office, dare resume the divine services heretofore entrusted him, that person shall be excommunicated from the Church,’... hereby admonishes all that will dare join him in prayer that under the Holy Canons they shall be subject to excommunication unless they sever such communication.”
After securing a canonical episcopate and anathematizing the most active, purposeful, and dangerous exponent of autocephaly, the Moscow Patriarchate did not rest on its laurels but proceeded to brainwash the flock in a neighboring country on a broad scale, convincing the believers that separating from the Mother Church (500 years younger than the Ukrainian “Daughter Church”) was a grave sin. Numerous Orthodox brotherhoods, societies (mostly Russian-speaking) emerged in Ukraine, Moscow preachers went on regular tours (no less active and eloquent than all those missionaries from overseas). A steadily increasing number of parishes were formed, often artificial ones (at present we have quite a few small villages each with three parishes). Blitz construction projects of church buildings began (Nozdrev says in Gogol’s Dead Souls: “Everything that you see on this side of the post is mine, as well as the forest on the other side of it, and what lies beyond the forest”). All this was aimed at instilling in the masses of the faithful the dogma that only a church remaining part of the Russian Orthodox Church could bring salvation and grace. These days one can meet a lot of believers, ordinary people professing not His Faith and Word, but the “canonicity of the Church.”
As time passes the situation in the Ukrainian Orthodox community at large and between churches of the same confession goes from bad to worse. Here is an excerpt from the Message of the Council of Archpriests of the UOC to the Clergy and Faithful of Ukraine in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the Church Council of Kharkiv: “We treat the will of the Ukrainian flock to achieve independence with understanding and a sense of responsibility. We are not against the legitimate, canonical autocephaly of the UOC. Except that this issue must be resolved with His peace in mind, patience, by offering up sincere prayers, and acting in accordance with the Rules and Canons of the Church, rather than with acts of violence and threats.” The document is signed by all the bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (MP UOC) and published in 1997. Today such a message would be impossible, as a considerable part of MP UOC, clergy in the south and eastern regions, as well as Orthodox brotherhoods (the ROC’s most militant force in Ukraine) consider even autonomy synonymous to heresy. In fact, one would be in peril even mentioning autocephaly, as TOGETHER FOREVER is the watchword.
This appears to be the result of that apt church-political strategy which has been underway for the past ten years, courtesy of public and governmental exponents of the United Local Independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The campaign for Orthodox autocephaly is a complete fiasco, and this on home turf, among millions of Orthodox believers truly devoted to the idea of Ukrainian autocephaly! (Polls show that most Ukrainian Orthodox believers support the idea of an independent church, but there are cases recorded in the western territories when MP UOC clergymen concealed their Moscow affiliation from the parishioners). Skilled politicians, aren’t they?
As for the anathematization of Patriarch Filaret, the fact remains that he is the most influential, capable, and active hierarch championing the ecclesiastical interests of Ukraine, even if these interests tally with his own ambitions.
P.S.: The Dictionary of Religious Studies , published by the Religion Department of the National Academy’s Institute of Philosophy, explains that “Anathema is not practiced today in its religious and political sense.” Today? Perhaps, but obviously not in Ukraine.
