Metropolitan Philaret of New York and Eastern America, the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, responded to an appeal from the Moscow Patriarchate on this day in 1974. In the 1970s, relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad reached a nadir. The two churhces communicated officially only through rebuttals in the press. This led to the creation of two narratives running in parallel to each other, rather than to dialogue. The Moscow Patriarchate is sending out a message to the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, signed by Patriarch Pimen and members of his Synod, with an appeal to renounce their present canonical position and join this Patriarchate. The appeal is full of reproaches that we are allegedly filled with feelings of ‘enmity, bitterness and hatred against our brothers in faith’ in the USSR. This bitterness allegedly ‘reaches, at times, such proportions that it is expressed in the prohibition of any communion with the sons of the Church of the Motherland’. The present appeal differs from the previous ones only in that this time it does not contain the ridiculous demand that we declare our loyalty to the Soviet Government. The attribution to us of hostile feelings toward the sons of the Mother Church is slander and is not consistent with anything. For many years, we have been denouncing and will continue to denounce the Soviet government for the torture of the Russian people, so vividly depicted now in the books of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Our heart breaks with sorrow every time we hear about the suffering of the Russian people under the yoke of atheistic communism. We invariably pray in all our churches for deliverance from this suffering. We bitterly observe the apparent indifference of the Moscow Patriarchate to these calamities, which was so vividly manifested on September 17, 1973, in Patriarch Pimen’s statement in Geneva, when he asserted, contrary to common knowledge, that in the USSR “there is no such thing as the privileged and the oppressed” and when he and his staff categorically denied any oppression to religion by the Communists. Let Moscow not try to frighten us with isolation in the Orthodox world, which, alas, is often ignorant of what is happening in Russia. If some Eastern Patriarchs could be deceived even by the Renovationists in the 20s, it is all the easier for them to be mistaken now, when the plight of the faithful is hidden from them behind the screen of the external well-being of the Moscow Patriarchate. They do not hear from it about the suffering of the Russian people and especially of the faithful. They see the crowds in the few open churches and are surprised at their unusual prayerful zeal. Under these conditions it is easy for the hierarchy, which is controlled by the enemies of the Church, to present itself to them as the legitimate Russian ecclesiastical authority. We have never recognized it as such and do not recognize it, for we know its true nature. Our Church, as the free part of the Russian Church, stands firmly on the canonical basis of the Decree of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon of November 7/20, 1920, and does not intend to give up its freedom. Using it, we are obliged to loudly proclaim to the world the persecution of religion in the USSR. No pressure, no matter from whom, will change our attitude toward godless communism, for we remember the admonition of the Apostle Paul, which forgotten by the present-day leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” (2 Cor. 6:14–15). It is in vain that the Moscow Patriarchate tries to send its appeal around to the addresses of our clergy or believers: they will not listen to this appeal, for they know too well that it is not the voice of the true Russian Church, but of a stranger, and therefore, in the words of the Savior, they “will they not follow, but will flee from [it]: for they know not the voice of strangers.” (John 10:5). August 16/29, 1974, † Metropolitan Philaret. |
