Former monk Philaret (Denisenko) caught red-handed in violating the Eighth Commandment
9.03.2001 · English, Архив 2001
FORMER MONK PHILARET (DENISENKO) CAUGHT RED-HANDED IN VIOLATING THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
The February issue of the Ukrainian Golos pravoslaviya (Voice of Orthodoxy) presented to the world a voluminous declaration under the much promising title “The Church and the World on the Threshold of the Third Millennium”.
The publication of this text could have been assessed as an outstanding event, for until now only the Russian Church in the Orthodox world has had a social concept of her own – a fundamental theological and worldview document giving, on the basis of Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition, exhaustive answers to the most acute questions facing the modern man and society today. Elaborated for several years and subsequently adopted by the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Basic Social Concept has provoked a great interest in the country and the world.
Perhaps this is the circumstance that has led the producers of the declaration into the temptation to publish it. For a closer look into this text and its comparison with the Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church published earlier have exposed the drafters of the Ukrainian declaration as downright and cynical violators of the commandment not to steal.
However, there is a circumstance that explains all and dots all the i’s. The unfortunate declaration has been made by a “jubilee local council” of the self-proclaimed “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate” (UOC-KP), while Golos pravoslaviya is the newspaper of this schismatic group led by the former monk Philaret (Denisenko) excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church.
In case of the UOC-KP declaration plagiarised from The Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, the “patriarch” Philaret and his confidants have proved to be faithful to their old tactics. While demagogically accusing the “Moskalska Tserkva” (Ukrainian for the Moscow Church) of every inconceivable sin, they try on the quiet to appropriate the property of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The whole difference is that while until now it has been true for parishes and communities in Ukraine, now it has come to an unconcealed plagiary of theological documents which belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. For they “store up violence and robbery in their palaces” (Am. 3:10).
As is known, a sufficiently educated and moderately intelligent person can appropriate others’ ideas in such a way as to make them look in his interpretation as his own. But the collective schismatic thought could generate nothing better than a hurriedly turned and roughly compiled texts the origin of which from The Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church does not raise the slightest doubt. While in some cases the spiritual and intellectual effort of the UOC-KP to master The Basic Social Concept of the Russian Church was reduced to a different layout of the chapters, in others it amounted to a simplified rendering to the extent the problems treated in original document are understood. But what dispirits most of all is the poverty of thinking when the direct textual reproduction was made under the UOC-KP banner with regard to such clauses of the Basic Social Concept as Bio-ethics, Cloning, Eutanasia, Family, Secularization of Society, Globalization, etc.
Perhaps those who drafted the Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church may be credited with having formulated its whole sections so precisely and comprehensively as to make it impossible to formulate them differently. But it does not eliminate the fact that the UOC-KP has sinfully appropriated the intellectual and spiritual fruits of the efforts made by our Church.
Still, the question remains open why the UOC-KP committed as much as a direct forgery, even at the risk of being caught red-handed. It can be explained by an acute need of a self-proclaimed community under a self-proclaimed “patriarch” to legitimatise itself in the eyes of the Orthodox world, which neither knows nor recognizes the anti-canonical structure of the UOC-KP, and to make up for its own lack of grace by stealing the spiritual experience of the canonical Churches and passing it off as its own. Thus a downright plagiary becomes much more evil in the context of the schismatic activities carried out by the UOC-KP among the Ukrainian Orthodox and the unceasing attempts of the “patriarch” Philaret to provoke an inter-confessional and inter-ethnic confrontation in Ukraine, while appealing to Constantinople and Rome in its dispute with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
As regards the actual problem of relations between the Church and the world, the Orthodox in Ukraine, lured by the craftiness and deception of the UOC-KP, may be advised to address themselves to the original text of the Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church. There are at least two reasons for doing it: the original of a painting is always better then a daub of an unskilled copy-maker, while a stolen property will not bring profit. For it is said: nor thieves, nor covetous, nor extortionists will inherit the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-10).
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