Splitter!

‘Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.’ Winston Churchill.

One of the many problems with schism is that it tends to undermine legitimacy. A long-standing institution, such as a church, has a certain legitimacy among its members just due to inertia. A sufficiently long tradition can by itself justify an institution to those who belong to it. But when a group breaks free, it lacks the same justification, and thus the same legitimacy. Consequently, it’s not surprising that splitters may end up splitting up among themselves. And so it is that we shouldn’t be altogether shocked by the extraordinary goings-on in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine/Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or whatever it is the various factions are calling themselves today (People’s Front of Judea, maybe?).

From the late 17^th century onwards, Orthodox parishes in what is now Ukraine were part of the Russian Orthodox Church and were governed from Moscow; first through the Moscow Patriarchate; then following the latter’s abolition through the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church; and finally, after the Revolution, through the Patriarchate once again. This remained the case until the final days of the Soviet Union. At that point, the Church split. Russian Orthodox parishes in Ukraine formed a new Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which acquired autonomy from Moscow but remained ultimately subordinate to the Patriarch there. Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev, however, refused to go along with the new arrangements, and in due course broke away from the UOC to form a rival Church, also called the UOC, of which he proclaimed himself the Patriarch. Ukraine thus now had two UOCs, generally known as UOC (MP – Moscow Patriarchate) and UOC (KP – Kiev Patriarchate). Adding to the complications, from 1990 a third institution- the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) – also operated in Ukraine.

An interesting aspect of these schisms is that there was no apparent doctrinal reason for them. As far as I have been able to ascertain, none of the Ukrainian churches disagree on key doctrinal issues. Instead, the causes of the splits appear to have been the personal ambitions of certain clerics allied with nationalist politics. The latter then led last year to an attempt by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to unite the various churches in a single organization which would be free of control from Moscow. To this end, Poroshenko persuaded the Patriarch of Constantinople to issue a decree establishing a new independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which would combine the OUC (KP) and UAOC. The hope seems to have been that members of the UOC (MP) would then flock to join the new OCU, so destroying the UOC (MP).

This doesn’t seem to have happened. Some UOC (MP) parishes have joined the OCU (allegedly not all entirely voluntarily), but most have not, and those which have are mostly located in the west of the country. Rather than unite the country, the establishment of the new church seems only to have further accelerated its division into western parts (now overwhelming OCU) and eastern/southern parts (still mostly UOC (MP)). The new OCU also isn’t as independent as its creators imagined it would be, as it is officially subordinate to Constantinople and has been downgraded from being run by a Patriarch (Filaret) to being run by a mere Metropolitan (Epiphany).

The new arrangement has not pleased Filaret, who lost his position as head of the church he created. In May, Filaret declared that in his opinion the UOC (KP) had not been abolished, and he remained its Patriarch. He refused to sign the OCU’s charter at a meeting of its Synod, claiming somewhat bizarrely that, ‘The Synod (…) was aimed at the destruction of the Kyiv Patriarchate. Now there is an influence on our primate of these pro-Moscow forces that have entered. And their task is to destroy the Kyiv Patriarchate.’ Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, however, refused to back down, pointedly declaring that, ‘Filaret is no longer Kyiv Patriarch, but a former Kyiv Metropolitan.’

In response, Filaret has now gone one step further. On 14 June, he sent out messages to bishops inviting them to a Council of the supposedly abolished UOC (KP). The Council met yesterday. It announced that the UOC (KP) still exists, that Filaret is its Patriarch, and that it retains the rights to all its property. Unsurprisingly, the OCU has stated that it doesn’t recognize Filaret’s Council or its results. According to one source, on Monday the OCU will formally declare that Filaret and his supporters have split from the Church, albeit saying that, ‘it’s not a schism, it’s just separation of a specific group that supports the opinion of Patriarch Filaret’.

How many people will follow the Patriarch remains to be seen. His Council yesterday does not appear to have been well attended. Most senior clerics seem to be loyal to the OCU. Nevertheless, the new split can only harm the legitimacy of the OCU, and it makes it much harder for the OCU to claim that it is the one true Ukrainian church and that people should leave the OUC (MP) to join it.

Once again, religious doctrine appears nowhere in the disputes. Instead, the warring parties trade nationalist rhetoric, each portraying themselves as the true defenders of the Ukrainian nation. One article published with the headline ‘Only Patriarch Filaret will protect Ukrainian faithful in diaspora’ commented that the creation of the OCU had sold Ukraine out to the Greeks (i.e. Constantinople). By contrast, ‘Patriarch Filaret is almost the only leader in the Ukrainian Church who still believes that it must be independent and serve interests of Ukraine.’ Against this, supporters of the OCU accuse Filaret of playing into the hands of Moscow. As one Ukrainian religious scholar puts it, ‘It’s hard to say directly that this is exclusively the influence of the FSB, or some Russian intelligence services. But the fact that Holy Patriarch Filaret’s ambitions are being successfully warmed up is hard to deny.’

In the mid-19th century, the Slavophile theologian Alexei Khomiakov wrote an influential tome entitled ‘The Church is One’. He stressed the value of sobornost’, a sort of spirit of voluntary collectivism which results in decision making by consensus and agreement by all to respect the decisions taken. Sobornost’ seems to be rather lacking at the moment. And as the clerical battle heats up, God seems to have been forgotten. The OCU was from the start a political not a religious project. It’s hardly surprising that it’s floundering. There is, I think, I lesson there for religious and political leaders everywhere.