From a ROCOR Monastery, Saint Edward Brotherhood's publication, The Shepherd:
http://www.saintedwardbrotherhood.org/shepherd7.html
ROCA DELEGATION TO RUSSIA
AT THE TIME of going to press, there have been numerous reports regarding the ROCA delegation, led by His Eminence Metropolitan Lavr, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, to Russia. These reports describe the Metropolitan’s meeting with His Holiness Patriarch Aleksii II and other Moscow Patriarchal Hierarchs, and his attendance at services, but as yet, other than short expressions of enthusiasm by members of the delegation regarding what they have seen of church-life in Russia, there have been no substantive reports of the nature of the discussions between the hierarchs of both parties concerning a possible rapprochement. Doubtless, it is early days yet, and the ROCA hierarchs will first report to their brother bishops before disclosing in greater detail the issues which have to be addressed. For his part, Patriarch Aleksii has stated that he believes that the main obstacles to rapprochement have been overcome, and yet he does not rule out problems in the dialogue, because “seventy years of separation have left a trace.”
Committees from both parties are to work together, to develop a common understanding on the following four points:-
- The principles of the relationship between the Church and state in accordance with the teachings of the Church;
- The principles of the relationship between the Orthodox Church and heterodox communities and inter-confessional organisations in accordance with Church traditions;
- The status of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church;
- The canonical conditions for the establishment of Eucharistic communion.
Rather unexpectedly, while the ROCA delegates were in Russia as his guests, Patriarch Aleksii took the opportunity on the 60th anniversary of the death of Patriarch Sergiy (15th May), to give a rather robust apology for Sergianism. Quoting the 1927 Declaration of the then Metropolitan Sergiy, which led to the rupture between the Church Abroad and the state recognised administration, he picks on the expression therein which perhaps caused the greatest hurt and scandal (“We wish to be Orthodox and at the same time to recognise the Soviet Union as our civil native land, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose failures are our failures. Every blow directed against the Union … we regard as a blow directed against us.”) After some discussion of the use of the terms “Motherland” (which he says Sergiy used*) and “Fatherland,” the Patriarch opines that Metropolitan Sergiy was distinguishing the country itself from its Soviet government. He then goes on to demonstrate that this distinction was not adhered to in practice, stating “when disaster came to our land,” Sergiy believed that “all the insults inflicted on the Church were forgotten.” Unless the translation published on the Patriarchal website is at fault, this itself seems to be endorsing a Sergianist attitude, placing the concerns of the nation and the state above those of the Church. One cannot but believe that such sentiments would have been hurtful to the ROCA delegates, and it is surprising that the Patriarch made a point of expressing them at such a delicate juncture.
At the end of the delegation’s stay in Russia, President Vladimir Putin took the opportunity of saying that, while declining to interfere in the Church’s internal affairs, his government would do all within their power to further the anticipated union of the two jurisdictions.
Footnote: * - Actually Sergiy used the Russian word rodina - see “Patriarkh Sergiy i ego Dykhovnoe Nasledstvo,” published by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1947, page 61. Rodina is probably best translated native land.