The following letter is in response to “Putin’s Useful Priests” (September 14) by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. I am a Greek Orthodox Christian under the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople and not a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, an attack against one local Orthodox Church is an attack against all. The politicization and secularization of the Orthodox Church is deplorable. Perhaps some criticism can be directed at former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former American Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt for blatantly interfering in the spiritual life of the Greek speaking Orthodox Churches of Constantinople and Greece.
American officials asked these two Churches to recognize a schismatic sect of pseudo bishops and priests in the so called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” for the sole purpose of turning the Greek Churches against their sister Church in Russia. American officials had no business asking these Churches to recognize this fake
Church and bishops in Constantinople and Athens had no business granting the Americans this request. From the standpoint of Orthodox canon law and ecclesiology,the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the synod of Metropolitan Onuphry is the legitimate Church of Ukraine as it possesses canonicity, catholicity, and apostolic succession.
American officials have made a mockery of the Orthodox Church and its canonical precepts by blatantly deciding what constitutes an Orthodox Church. Such secular intervention in Church affairs deserves condemnation. It is hypocritical therefore to accuse the Russian government of using the Russian Orthodox Church when it is
clear it is the State Department which is attempting to use Orthodox Churches in their foreign policy against Russia. Even more deplorable, for many years before the
invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been fiercely persecuted and many bishops, priests, and faithful Ukrainians have been harassed, arrested, or beaten for attending the Church that the Kiev government and its backers in Washington disapprove of.
This is not to suggest that the war is justified. Indeed, the war cannot be justified and some of the rhetoric from the Moscow Patriarchate stands in conflict with Orthodoxy as the Orthodox Church does not endorse Crusades or religious wars of any kind. It is however deplorable and condemnable to suggest that the Russian Church is somehow an instrument of Moscow. Church-State relations in Russia are similar to Church-State relations in Greece and other Orthodox countries.
Church-State relations are defined by the Justinian principle of “symphonia” or harmony in which Church and State are partners but function separately. This is how the Church functioned in Byzantine Constantinople and at the present in Orthodox countries. Church and State function independently of one another but serve as allies. It is absurd to suggest that the Russian Church either in Russia or abroad function at the service of the government. Westerners are simply upset that the
Russian Church does not behave in accordance with their own wishes.
The position of the universal Orthodox Church today has become very complicated as a result of the schism that has begun over Constantinople’s intervention in the affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (under the omophorion of Moscow since 1686). This division has been gradually widening and has made the possibility
of Orthodox Churches gathering to oppose the war entirely impossible. The Orthodox Church is “not of this world” and does not serve secular political interests.
Let us keep in mind exactly which governments have been blatantly looking to use the Orthodox Church for political and secular purposes.
Theodore Karakostas
Boston, MA
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