Inter-Orthodox Feud Deepens over Ukraine

by

Jonathan Luxmoore

According to the transcript Patriarch Bartholomew defended his plan to grant autocephaly to a new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

A Greek Orthodox news agency has published the transcript of a three-hour summit between the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, and Patriarch Kirill of Russia over the future of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, showing that the Russian delegation angrily rejected Ukrainian self-rule and insisted the country’s current government was illegitimate. 

According to the transcript, published on 1 October by Orthodosia, Patriarch Bartholomew defended his plan to grant autocephaly, or independence, to a new Ukrainian Orthodox church during the 31 August meeting at his Istanbul see, and rejected Kirill’s warning that Russian-backed separatists would soon overthrow Ukraine’s “illegal government”. 

“Ukrainians do not feel comfortable under Russia’s authority – they want full freedom religiously, just as they have obtained it politically”, the Ecumenical Patriarch, who holds honorary primacy among the world’s 14 main Orthodox churches, told his Russian guests. “So they have turned to their mother church, which judges their claim fairly and will proceed in that direction… Everyone has come to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and begged for the granting of self-rule”.  Read More

SEPTEMBER 2018

Clerical Culture, Celibacy, and the Shadow Side of the Sexual Abuse Crisis

Point-Counterpoint: Constantinople vs. Moscow on the Autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

The Will of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine: Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) vs. the Statistics

Day of Mourning and Repentance

Ukrainian Autocephaly: Ecclesiology, Ecumenism, Politics

The Christian Right Is Looking to Putin’s Russia to Save Christianity from the Godless West

Meeting with the Exarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Official Report from the President of Ukraine

Sexuality & Gender: Open Letter to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America

White Supremacy in the Church: A Problem of Liturgical Theology

Homo Liturgicus Read More

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv (Kiev), Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (clockwise from top left).

The polemics and theological reflections surrounding Ukrainian autocephaly are very interesting from the perspective of historical theology. The two most controversial ideas in this debate are those of  universal primacy (cf. Constantinople) and canonical territory (cf. Moscow).

In passing, one can note that the term autocephaly gained importance primarily during the 19th century. As Archbishop Job (Getcha) has pointed out, Moscow has never been formally granted autocephaly.

One may also note that the charge of papism has been leveled against the Ecumenical Patriarch. This creates an interesting historical parallel with the ecclesiology presented in the post-Byzantine confessional controversy with Roman Catholicism.

An especially interesting example of this is Bishop Elias Meniates (1669-1714), whose posthumously published Rock of Offence (1718) was not only translated into Latin but also German. Meniates was one of the greatest Orthodox theologians to engage in “controversial theology” (Kontroverstheologie in German) in the post-Byzantine period, perhaps equaled only by Feofan Prokopovich and Vikentios Damodos.

Dealing with the controversy concerning the power of the pope, Meniates concedes that the Orthodox—unlike the Lutherans and Calvinists—do not consider the pope to be the anti-Christ, but are only willing to grant him the primacy of honor of an older brother established by the Ecumenical Councils. Read More

This article has proven difficult not only to write, but even to decide whether to write and publish it. For one thing, I have a personal investment in the topic of sexual assault, as I shall relate briefly; and for another, I wish to express my support for women, but in a manner that they see as proper. 

My experience of sexual aggression has ranged from the violence of getting beaten up when I was 19 and he was 20, to the shame of forcible intercourse with a woman over my strenuous objections (yes, it’s possible), to the nuisance of unwanted touching and physical advances that are more easily rebuffed.

The first two instances involved someone that I loved. This made the incidents at the time—and continues to make the memory of them even now—all the more painful a wound. As the decades pass, one doesn’t dwell consciously on these memories day and night; but neither does the wound entirely go away, and one never knows when and why the visuals will resurface in the mind’s eye, unbidden and without warning. You simply don’t “get over it,” no matter how much you might like to. It remains a “big deal” for the rest of your life, even if buried most of the time in your subconscious. 

Here are two true stories of  male vs. female sexual assault, the first related to me by the victim, whom I’ll call “Sandra,” and the second by the perpetrator, whom I’ll call “Paul.” Read More