On this day in 1976, Metropolitan Seraphim of Krutitsy responded to Dr. Potter, President of the World Council of Churches, regarding the reassignment of Fr. Dmitry Dudko. When I was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1985, at the age of 17, I learned that my role as a layman was to work on my spiritual life through participation in the holy mysteries of the Church. One had to focus on living ascetically and not develop critical thinking. Materials from the Russian Church Abroad about the New Martyrs could disturb this frame of mind and had the potential of leading one into conflict with the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate, which publicly denied the existence of persecution in the USSR. The hierarchy, beginning with Metropolitan Sergii (Stargorodskii), justified this compromise by giving people access to the Holy Mysteries. Those like Bishop Germogen (Golubev), who exposed the reality faced by the Church in the Soviet State, were treated as personae non gratae for their disloyalty to the corporative mentality. In the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union, citizens had no right to disagree with the authorities. The Church was not excepted from this principle. This explains why Metropolitan Seraphim (Nikitin) wrote to The Times of London following the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn from the USSR in 1974: “In the eyes of the believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, he has long forfeited the right to call himself a Christian.” One year before, Metropolitan Seraphim suspended a missionary-minded priest, Fr. Dmitry Dudko, by accusing him of breaching church discipline (= corporative culture). Realizing his own profound unworthiness to stand in front of the altar, Fr. Dmitry apologized and was reinstated in active ministry. At the same time, he remained outspoken and independent in his activity. As a result, in 1976, the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) – taking advantage of a warden in the village of Kabanovo where Fr. Dmitry was serving – had Fr. Dmitry expelled from the parish. Explaining this event, the Chairman of the CRA, Vladimir Kuroyedov, wrote that Fr. Dmitry’s parishioners had “rejected the services of the priest Dudko, expelling him from his church for preaching with an anti-social context.” Following suit, Metropolitan Seraphim explained to the President of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Potter, that the parish council terminated its contract with Fr. Dmitry “for his systematic inclusion in his sermons and conversations of political material of an antisocial nature, containing tendentious criticism of the life of our state.” In the same way as Metropolitan Sergii’s Declaration, the Metropolitan Seraphim letter was an exercise in sophistic, steering away from a complex analysis of the situation. In the Moscow Patriarchate, reflection on this so-called Sergianism became possible in the era of Perestroika. In 1991, the former head of the office of Moscow Patriarchate, Patriarch Aleksei wrote, explaining the tit-for-tat church-state relations in the Soviet Union, said: “From the people who were hurt by these concessions, silence, forced passivity or expressions of loyalty allowed by the Church leadership in those years – from these people, not only before God, but before them, I ask for forgiveness, understanding, and prayers.”
Sources:
Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History (Keston College, 1986). Dudko, Pravolsavnaia Entsiklopedia. Monk Benjamin, “Letopois’ tserkovnykh sobyitii: 1972-1982,” [Timeline of Church Events 1972-1982]. Part VI. Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. |
