“Our aim is relations of mutual respect”. Interview of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia to Izvestia (Izvestia № 78 (26157)-M, 13 May 2002)

“OUR AIM IS RELATIONS OF MUTUAL RESPECT”
Interview of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia to Izvestia
(Izvestia № 78 (26157)-M, 13 May 2002)

In his interview to Izvestia Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Russia speaks of the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican, international events, which alarm the Church, and comforting tendencies as well.

— Your Holiness, in your previous interviews including your interviews to Izvestia you have spoken of the problems in the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican. The situation remains tense. Not long ago Cardinal Kasper stated in his article that the Russian Orthodox Church admitted its weakness in pastoral matters and evangelization and therefore is afraid of Catholicism, that the ROC lived by the double standard and tried to consolidate its hold at the expense of personal freedom.

— Such statements are a propagandistic cover-up, under which the actions are taken that are contrary to the generally-accepted practice of international and interchurch relations, mutual respect and a wish to consider each other’s interests. I shall remind you that the Catholic dioceses were organized in Russia without any preliminary consultations and negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church. In the sphere of human relations such line of action could be considered as unceremonious. The statements of our Church and of the Russian Foreign Ministry show that the unfriendly initiatives of the Vatican were taken precisely in this way. The point is that the Catholic structures parallel to the structures of the Orthodox Church were established in Russia with the blessing of the Pope, and our country with its thousand-year Orthodox tradition got an ambiguous status of the Vatican ‘church province’.

The notion of canonic territory rejected by the Vatican out of ad hoc considerations belongs not to the dogmatic, but rather to the historical and church sphere and can be applied to the countries with traditional Catholic or Orthodox majority. Yet, it is impossible to deny that there are countries in the world with Catholic or Orthodox majority, which is the reality of peoples’ spiritual and religious life. The above-said directly concerns the problem of the Catholic proselytism. However, priests and prelates of the Roman Catholic Church turn down the reproaches in such missionary policy and assert that they pick up only ‘no man’s’ and ‘strayed’ souls, but there are many cases of the Orthodox converted to Catholicism because those people lacked knowledge about confessional differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy or were in a hard material and financial situation. Moreover, I wonder whom the Catholics consider ‘no man’s’ and ‘strayed’ souls in the country where the two thirds of the population belong to Orthodoxy either by their faith, or baptism, or upbringing, or cultural self-identification.

At the same time the head of the Russian Catholics does not conceal the fact that the Catholic flock has not grown significantly for the last decade. It speaks for the only fact that in spite of missionary activity of Catholic preachers and financial opportunities of Catholic parishes, which can not be compared with ours, people in Russia do not give up the faith of their forefathers. So, we do not have reasons to be afraid of any significant growth of the Catholic influence in Russia. Our only aim is constructive relations of mutual respect with the Roman Catholic Church.

I would like to underline that our Church is principally against any attempts to bring ideology and terms of market competition into the inter-confessional relations.

As far as “double standards” are concerned, they say that there are dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe. But, to begin with, Orthodox priests take spiritual care mostly for their compatriots and people of the Orthodox faith living abroad, and secondly, our dioceses have not got official registration in France, Austria or Argentina, where the Vatican’s positions are traditionally strong.

It is not generally known that not long before the decision on the Catholic dioceses in Russia was announced, the Pontific met with the delegation of our Church that came to Assisi at the invitation of the Vatican. The Pope of Rome did not say a word to them about the decision, which he has already taken.

In all fairness we should mention that the Russian Orthodox Church maintains good relations with some Catholic dioceses, monasteries, educational institutions, charity organizations and the faithful of the Roman Catholic Church. They are not those Catholics, who come to us with the only aim to convert as many Russian citizens to Catholicism as possible. That is why the Cardinal Kasper’s reference to some kind of ‘aid’ given to us by Catholic structures is absolutely unfounded. Moreover, some Catholic organizations, which cooperate with our Church in educational, social, charity and other programs, do not hide their negative attitude to unilateral actions of the Vatican in Russia.

— Do not you feel any pressure on the part of political forces to change your position in the globalization processes? Has the campaign to discredit the Russian Orthodox Church …….?

— We can not ignore the fact that the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches are real and influential spiritual forces in Europe and in the world. We are convinced that the Moscow Patriarchate, the Vatican and other local Churches must cooperate with different institutions of the uniting Europe so that the religious factor of peoples’ life should not be marginalized in the integration process.

As far as the activities of the Vatican in Russia in the context of globalization are concerned, we are not inclined to see direct interrelation here. At the same time the Vatican’s claims for around-the-globe dimension are seen quite clearly. In practice this tendency is expressed in proselytic actions and cruel oppression of the Orthodox minority by the Greek Catholics in western regions of Ukraine. This policy is based on the unwillingness to consider traditional religious and cultural values of the Orthodox nations. However, history testifies that Catholic expansion in Russia had often chronologically coincided with the periods of temporary weakness of the Russian State and the Orthodox Church. Suffice it to recall the Vatican’s attempts to start a dialogue with the Bolshevik government at the peak of the most violent persecutions of the Russian Orthodox Church, or active participation of the Greek Catholics in the activities of nationalistic and first of all anti-Russian forces.

— What are the conditions for reconciliation with the Vatican?

— As the Russian Orthodox Church has already stated more than once that in principle its Primate is prepared to meet with Pope John Paul II, but this meeting can take place only when a common position on the basic questions of interchurch relations is worked out. Both sides should discuss proselytism in all its forms and agree on the inadmissibility of Unia as a method to reach unity in the past, at present and in future, to recognize the principle of canonic territory and strictly adhere to it. First of all, we must resolve the lingering conflict between the Greek Catholics and Orthodox faithful in Western Ukraine, where the three Orthodox dioceses, those of Lvov, Ternopol and Ivano-Frankovsk were actually destroyed. Moreover, the Vatican should give up the practice of proselytism among traditionally Orthodox people of Russia and the CIS countries.

— Is there a possibility to resume the dialogue, which will allow your meeting with the Pope on the neutral territory?

— The meeting of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Head of the Vatican was once planned and should have taken place in Austria in 1997. Great preparatory work was done; during which the parties agreed on final documents, extremely important for future Orthodox-Catholic relations. However, this chance was missed as the Pope personally crossed out the question of the relations between the Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Western Ukraine from the document already prepared for signing

Such a meeting will be meaningful, if it serves to heal the still bleeding wounds of the past and to resolve the painful problems in our bilateral relations. Some people are trying to convince us that the fact of a meeting between the two Primates is important by itself. Yet, the Pope’s visit to the Ukraine has shown that such a frame of meeting does not contribute to the resolution of the accumulated problems and is fraught with a further aggravation of discord in society.

— Which events in the world worry you most of all and at which you look with optimism?

— Our time is rich in alarming tendencies. Many of them challenge fragile peace on Earth and the very prospect of human survival. The traditional world order based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the states now gives way to a new one, based on global responsibility and ‘the right of the strong one’. Self-will instead of justice is becoming a basis of the world order. We are standing on the threshold of such a world order under which love to the neighbor is replaced by political correctness and tolerance of other people’s views by indifference. We see the world in which all efforts are directed at getting profit at any cost. I am also concerned with the fast spreading of the hotbeds of tension in the world. I think that these alarming phenomena are based on a certain wish to impose unification of cultures and world outlooks upon the world. ‘The universal formula of happiness’ imposed on all the peoples without considering their cultural, ethnic, religious and political background will have destructive consequences.

At the same time the attention, which the governments of many countries and the European international organizations pay to the opinion of the institutes of civil society with religious associations among them, gives grounds for a cautious optimism. It is impossible to consider religious convictions of people and whole nations as a private affair only, as something unimportant, as faithfulness to God and moral duty to live according to his convictions is more than life for a religious believer. That is why we cannot but welcome the readiness of society to cooperate closely with religious organizations in the resolution of the urgent problems of our time.

See also:

His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia