To Act in the Awareness of Responsibility before God, History and Humanity

TO ACT IN THE AWARENESS OF RESPONSIBILITY BEFORE GOD, HISTORY AND HUMANITY

Full version of the abridged article published under the headline ‘Vatican’s Temptation’ in Rossiskay Gazeta on July 5, 2002

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin
Vice-Chairman
Department for External Church Relations
Moscow Patriarchate

The recent decision of the Vatican to establish Catholic dioceses in Russia has raised a whole series of most serious questions concerning relations between the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox Churches. Since February 2000 when this step was made, both sides, Orthodox and Catholic, have made quite a few statements and given a great deal of interviews. Now their positions are clear, and their fundamental discrepancy is evident. It has become clear to all that the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue has reached a deadlock. Each of the sides has its own truth and is ready to stand up for it to the last. But what are the true, deep-laid, reasons for this new tragic confrontation?

The first attempt to move the discussion up from a polemic to a more serious level, ideological and theological, was made in the article by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontific Council for Promoting Christian Unity, published this March in the Jesuit Civilta cattolica. The article described seriously the present theological conflict between East and West. It is certainly a challenge, as it represents an offensive action strongly criticizing the positions of the Russian Orthodox Church.

We accept this challenge, and I will try to explain why not only the Russian but almost all the National Orthodox Churches have regarded the Vatican’s above-mentioned step as a blow to Orthodox-Catholic relations, a strategic mistake made by the Roman Catholic Church, for which it bears historical responsibility.

From the very beginning I would like to challenge the statement that the establishment of Catholic dioceses in Russia is a solely “internal” affair” of the Catholics and is thus beyond any outside criticism. On one hand, this decision of the Vatican is really a matter of the internal organization of the structures of the Roman Catholic Church which has a full legal freedom to order its own life. But it is true only if everything is considered from the formal, legal, perspective. For, on the other side, this re-organization has directly affected the interest of another, Russian Orthodox Church. In addition to being a majority Church in Russia, it is officially considered by the Catholic side to be also a partner and a “sister” Church.

When at one time the West accused the USSR leaders of violating human rights, Soviet officials also replied by saying that it was an “internal affair” of the country. Today’s dictators did and do the same. They may be right in legal sense, but an “internal affair” that affects others’ interests or insults others’ dignity ceases to be internal. Indeed, there are universal ethical norms that cannot be written off.

This is even more relevant to relations between Churches. We as Christians cannot and should not be motivated in these relations only by legal principles. Love and concern for the neighbor are fundamental notions in Christian teaching. But if the Catholic Church wants to work in Russia as if it were in a kind of vacuum, ignoring the opinion and interests of the Orthodox, what it implies for partnership and dialogue? Nevertheless, we still would like to regard our relations not as competition but partnership and to live not according to the dead letter of legal provisions, but according to the law of brotherly love. Our Churches should not be like two firms fighting for the market, but like two allied nations.

Partnership inevitably presupposes coordination of actions, mutual openness and responsibility. Until last February we had trust in a similar attitude of the Catholic Church, but the method of taking the decision concerning new dioceses was a bitter disappointment for us. The Russian Orthodox Church was simply presented with an accomplished fact, notified of it only a few days in advance. This is how a war is declared, not a fraternal advice asked! Literary on the eve of the decision, namely, December during the Catholic Christmas in December and the Orthodox Christmas in January, Metropolitan Kirill, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, twice had lunch with Archbishop Taddeuzs Kondrusiewicz, the head of the Russian Catholics, and he said no word about the planned decision. On January 25, 2002, a delegation of our Church, who participated in the interreligious meeting in Assisi, was received in audience by John Paul II, and again no word was said about the forthcoming establishment of dioceses. The decision was made in secret. What was then left for us to discuss with Cardinal Kasper whose visit was planned for the end of February? Dialogue should certainly be conducted before, not after taking specific decisions affecting the interests of one of the sides of the dialogue. Otherwise its loses its meaning.

I will explain now why, properly speaking, our Church is against the division of Russia, a major Orthodox country in the world, into Catholic dioceses and making it a “church province” of the Roman Catholic Church. This means the creation in Russia of a full-fledged centralized National Catholic Church. True, Christ commanded every church to preach and teach. And since a National Church is part of the Universal Church, it should teach, according to the Saviour’s words, “all nations” (Mt. 28:19) regardless of nationality or language. And in this Cardinal Kasper is certainly right. The difficulty though is that Russia has had her own National Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, for a thousand years. And to create centralized structures parallel to it means in fact to refuse to recognize it as part of the Universal Church. Such an attitude violates the principles declared by Vatican II. Is it worth talking after this about some “sister” relations between Churches?

In the polemics that followed, the Catholic side has rejected completely the notion of canonical territory, which is a clear indication of a return to the thinking that prevailed before Vatican II when the Catholic Church did not regard Orthodoxy as part of the Universal Church. However, on second thoughts, the Orthodox, in setting forth this principle, apply to the Catholic Church the norms of the one undivided Church which are common to both Churches and which do not allow the existence of parallel church structures. This approach is impossible in principle with regard to those Christian communities which, in the Orthodox opinion, have no continuity with the Early Church.

The most amazing thing is that only recently we were completely unanimous on this issue. I will remind you the history. When in 1991 Catholic administrations were set up in the Russian Federation, Rome elucidated to the Moscow Patriarchate the meaning of the notion “administration” as well as the reason for which the Catholic Church neither restored former dioceses precisely in Russia, nor created new ones, as it did in all other post-totalitarian countries in the beginning of the 90s. The point was to avoid creating parallel structure so that the world public might be aware that the Catholic Church recognized Orthodox Churches as sister Churches.

A year after these developments, Rome issued a document entitled “General Principles and Practical Norms of Coordinating Evangelism and Ecumenical Work of the Catholic Church in Russia and Other CIS Countries” It established clear limits for Catholic pastoral work in Russia. It stated in particular that instead of accepting those deprived of pastoral care into the Catholic Church, the Catholic clergy should help the Orthodox Church as much as it can (II,2). Besides, the document urged Catholic bishops to see that no activity in the areas under their jurisdiction should be interpreted as a “parallel evangelizing structure”.

What we see now is a direct contradiction to the good intentions of ten years ago. Catholic structures parallel to the Orthodox ones are created in Russia today in order to conduct parallel preaching. Referring to the Saviour’s commandment to preach to all nations, the Catholic side seems to forget the words of St. Paul: “I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not there Christ has already been named” (Rom. 15:20), and tries to work in Russia building on the spiritual foundation which has been built by the Orthodox Church for a thousand years.

Those are very wrong who think our people to be atheistic to a man and essentially godless. Quite the contrary. Our compatriots were forcible torn away from faith throughout the Soviet time, but they managed in many ways to preserve such spiritual values of Holy Russia as tenderness, self-sacrifice, reverence for shrines, the idea of sin and repentance. A major feature in this world perception is the notion of spirituality as the dominant of life. The persecutors of our Church failed to exterminate this deeply-rooted, genetic religiosity of our people even for long years of severe persecution. It is has been strong to this day. Precisely this sensitivity of the Russians towards faith has been conducive to the success of preaching, both ecclesiastical and sectarian. It is the millennium-long spiritual work of the Orthodox Church, the feat performed by her enlighteners and martyrs, Christian formation and the spiritual culture of the people that fertilized the soil for the Word of God.

Precisely these factors rather than some “advanced” missionary technologies that contributed to the relative success of the Catholic mission in Russia, which Cardinal Kasper refers to in his article. Moreover, he mentions the “weakness” of the Russian Orthodox Church which is allegedly afraid of the “pastoral effectiveness” of the Catholic Church. We have nothing to be afraid of with regard to this “effectively”, because we can see that the success of the Catholic mission in Russia is not that great even with such a favorable soil for preaching. Russia has not become Catholic after the ten years of hard work by all kinds of missionary orders. The increase in the number of Catholic believers in our country has been but very small. For anyone who is a little bit familiar with Russian realities, the figure of 500-600 thousand believers, repeatedly cited by Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, looks more than overstated. At the same time, he himself has stated that the number of his flock has not changed in fact since the 90s. For this reason it is even more surprising that a “church province” has been created for such a “small flock” to be led by a “metropolitan”. The impression is that the Russian Catholics have only two things growing – administrative structures and titles.

Continuing the theme of ‘pastoral effectiveness” of the Catholic Church, let us look at the West where it has always been traditionally strong. In almost every European capital city, you will be shown a Catholic church and a former Catholic seminary. People have abandoned them. We do not gloat over this, for we know the causes of these tendencies, namely, the spirit of consumerism, hedonism, all-permissiveness, which is actively imposed on people today. Two great Christian Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, should together oppose this spirit of “this world”, rather than compete in “missionary effectiveness”.

Instead of this, preachers of the “strong” Catholic Church continue coming to Russia in hope to replenish their ranks with people spiritually nourished and cultivated by the Orthodox tradition of the “weak” sister Church. Precisely because of this exploitation of the Orthodox heritage we invariably qualify the Catholic mission in Russia as proselytism, that is, enticement of people from one tradition to another.

The active missionary work of the Catholic Church in our country has nothing to do with pastoral care for the already existing flock. Common sense suggests that a certain number of Catholic parishes would be sufficient for this task. But what purpose but proselytism can explain the presence of missionary orders in Russia? Many of them have mission indicated even in their names, for instance, “Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (Claretines), “Missionary Sisters of the Divine Love”, Missionary Women of the Holy Family”, etc. Other orders, such as Verbists, were established as missionary organizations from the very beginning.

Responding to our reproaches, Russian Catholics like to appeal to the freedom of conscience, which we allegedly seek to restrict. They argue that Russians come to them only by their own free will. Without denying the existence of such cases, we will point out that such a “free choice” is normally well prepared and fertilized with preliminary missionary effort. It is one matter if a person comes to a Catholic church on his own and it is quite another matter if he is nudged by a missionary. And the cases of the latter kind are quite a few.

We disagree also that the Catholic regard as “non-believers” those of our compatriots who were baptized in the Orthodox Church or identify themselves with the Orthodox culture, and such are almost the entire ethnically Russian population of the Russian Federation as well as many traditionally Orthodox peoples of the Commonwealth of the Independent States and the Baltics. Though not all of them are actively involved in church life, if they are regarded as non-believers, then just in the same way the overwhelming majority of Catholics in Western Europe and the Americas can be regarded as non-believers.

We refuse completely to accept the Catholic mission among Russian children, especially orphans and those who were raised in troubled families. Most of them were baptized in the Orthodox Church and thus are her full members. Catholic missionaries, mostly nuns from various orders, go to schools and orphanages and under the pretext of charity preach their teaching there. They also establish orphanages for homeless children who are so many in the streets of Russian cities today. In these institutions, little Russians, who mostly come from low-income Russian families, are converted to Catholicism. In this way a foundation for a new “church province” is cultivated. Naturally, nobody asks Russian children whether they want to be Catholics. There are direct violations of the freedom of conscience that is often referred to by our opponents in their criticism of the Orthodox response to their missionary activity.

By no means we suggest that homeless children should be left alone in the streets. Our Church has exerted great efforts to restore her social and charitable work, which was prohibited under the totalitarian regime. And here cooperation with the Catholic Church would be just the right thing to do. Joint charitable work would become an excellent practical form of our cooperation. It should be noted in all fairness that this is partly the case, but not with the Catholic orders acting in Russia. In this or that Russian region, there may have already been an Orthodox orphanage, but Catholic nuns, showing wonders of secrecy, would establish an orphanage of their own to cultivate little Catholics. If they had real concern for children rather than mission, why would they not bring them to the Orthodox? Why not share their experience? Why not allow children baptized in Orthodoxy to receive religious instruction from an Orthodox priest?

Alas, with rare exception this almost never happens. The Catholics who take care of Russian children normally do not want to cooperate with their Orthodox colleagues, for they have apparently different tasks. For instance, we have reliable information that three under-age orphaned brothers in the Catholic orphanage in Novosibirsk, who were baptized and raised in Orthodoxy, are not allowed to talk with their god-parents and to read Orthodox books and prevented in every possible way from being nourished by the Orthodox Church. Is this example not a direct evidence of proselytism? And there are many such examples in Russia. Another one is the activity of Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta in Moscow, where they run an orphanage for homeless children. In the Russian capital city there is a sufficient number of Orthodox charitable establishments which are ready for cooperation and exchange of experience with Sisters of Mother Teresa in the field of charity and aid to the poor. However, as is evident, the Catholic sisters do not wish it and act without coming into contact with the Orthodox Church.

Summing up the above, I consider it necessary to state that we in Russia have to deal with the purposeful missionary efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to expand their presence there. The Russian Orthodox Church believes that it is precisely for these purposes, not for “normal” nourishment of their flock, that the four Catholic dioceses have been established in our country together with a new exarchate and two new dioceses in Ukrainian regions where the Catholic comprise a scanty minority.

In response the Catholic side has always adduced the same counter-argument, pointing to the dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, such as the dioceses of Berlin, Brussels, Korsun, etc. Our opponents seem reluctant to observe that the Russian Orthodox dioceses abroad are ethnic, not geographical, in nature. They take care mostly of the Russian-speaking Orthodox diaspora and do not conduct mission among the local population. A bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church can have under his jurisdiction several parishes located in different countries, as is the case of the diocese of Korsun which includes our parishes in France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The Archbishop of Argentina and South America based in Buenos Aires takes care of the faithful in the territory of entire South America! Thus, our Church has not divided any other country into dioceses as the Catholics have done in Russia. We have not created, for instance, a Local Orthodox Church in Italy or France, though there were many opportunities for doing it. Suffice it to recall the efforts of Eugraph Kovalevski, a Russian emigrant in France, who tried to create an “Orthodox Latin Rite” in the early and mid-20^th century. His initiative met with a certain success, and a similar movement exists to this day. But we consciously refuse to support this and many other similar projects because we believe the West to be a territory of pastoral responsibility of the Catholic Church first of all.

For the same reason our bishops and priests do not go on mission to Italian, French, Belgian schools and universities as the Catholics do in Russia. Indeed, our Church could use the “weakness” of the Catholic Church in Western Europe where her churches have been abandoned, closed or sold, in order to launch our own “alternative” preaching. We believe that Western youth should hear the preaching of their own clergy. And the point is not our “pastoral weakness”. We just have no missionary strategy with regard to the West. Our presence in Western countries has emerged because of the emigration caused by numerous tragic events in our Fatherland, such as revolutions, wars, economic disorder. Russian Orthodox people came and still come to the West in search of asylum for one person or more stable and well-provided life for another. It is their right. It is also their right to have their own churches, priests and bishops. The Russian Church in the West is not a conqueror or a spiritual conquistador. We are not going to compete with the Catholic Church in “pastoral effectiveness”. Let every one work in his own spiritual field.

We would like very much to see the same understanding and attitude on the part of the official Vatican in its policy in Russia. Unfortunately, the recent events violating the fragile confidence established by common efforts in the period after Vatican II, have strengthened many Orthodox people in the convictions, formed by examples from remote and not so remote history, that when Russia and the Russian Church have hard times the Catholic Church seeks to strengthen its positions here. And the most painful are of course the memories associated with the severe time of the 1917 Revolution and the persecution against the Church it began. We remember the Catholic martyrs for faith, but it is impossible to forget the Vatican’s “Eastern policy” which sought to come to an arrangement with the Bolsheviks while they persecuted “schismatics”. This was exactly what the Pro Russia commission set up by the Congregation for Eastern Churches in 1925 in Rome and its head Michel d’Herbigny did. The establishment of a Catholic diocese in the Russian Far East also fell on that time.

We hoped that Vatican II put an end to this policy towards Russia and Russian Orthodox when it described the Orthodox Church as a sister Church. This change in attitude toward us was confirmed by the 25 post-Council years when an intensive theological dialogue was held between the two Churches and when we were united in face of challenges coming from the world that lost faith.

Disappointing signs appeared during the events of late 80s and early 90s. The legalization of the Greek Catholics in western Ukraine was accompanied by the forcible expulsion of the Orthodox from their churches. The churches that belonged to the Uniates before World War II were used by the Orthodox for fifty years. The task was to find a reasonable and a conflict-free way out of that difficult situation which developed as a consequence of the tragic events of the mid-20^th century. The Russian Orthodox Church proposed to the Catholic side the way of dialogue, and soon a quadruple commission was set up consisting of representatives of the Russian and the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, the Greek Catholic Church and the Vatican. The Greek Catholics however withdrew from the commission unilaterally and continued their barbarian campaign of severe persecution against the Orthodox. The Vatican failed to stop the Greek Catholics in their senseless zeal, though this conflict was one of the two themes that began to be urgently discussed during all the official talks with the Moscow Patriarchate.

The second theme was the above-mentioned Catholic proselytism. In the early 90s, a flow of missionaries including Catholic ones rushed to the now open religious space of the former Soviet Union. This made one think whether it was appropriate to use the term of “sister Church”. But at that time the Orthodox side did not give up its intention to tackle the existing problems in the spirit of peace: official meetings between delegations of the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches were held very often, almost annually. The last two of them took place in November 1999 and June 2000, with the next one planned for the February of the same year. The reproach for a lack of desire for dialogue, made on our Church by Cardinal Kasper, appears incorrect. The problem is that these meetings were actually fruitless as during them the same themes – conflict in western Ukraine and proselytism – were discussed and certain commitments were made but the Catholic side was not in haste to fulfill any of them. Nevertheless, we continued to stand ready for negotiations till the Vatican’s February decision in dioceses.

Our Church conducted a dialogue with the Russian Catholics. Until very recently, we had in our country a Christian Interconfessional Advisory Committee cochaired by Archbishop T. Kondrusiewicz and Metropolitan Kirill. We pinned great hopes on the work of this body, but now, after all that happened, its future is doubtful.

There is every reason to state that the Vatican’s decision on Catholic dioceses in Russia has become a true interconfessional disaster. This is a conflict not only between the Russian Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, but also between world Orthodoxy and world Catholicism. The attempt to present the conflict as generated by the “inflexibility” of the Russian Church has no prospects just as the desire to divide the Orthodox Churches into “bad” ones and “good” ones, those open to dialogue with the Catholics and those inclined to isolationism. Cardinal Kasper cites as a positive example the Orthodox Church of Antioch. But the Patriarchate of Antioch was the first to condemn the Vatican’s action in Russia! And the Patriarch of Alexandria even sent a letter to the Pope of Rome, supporting fully the stand of the Russian Orthodox Church on the establishment of Catholic dioceses in our country. Support for our Church has been also expressed by the Orthodox Patriarchs of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania and the head of the Polish Orthodox Church.

Therefore, it is not the “bad” Russian Church that stopped her dialogue with the Catholics, as Cardinal Kasper wrote, but it was the Vatican that initiated a conflict between the two great Christian traditions at a crucial time when the civilization faces a global crisis. The situation caused by the establishment of new Catholic structures in Russia has much in common with that of the early 13^th century when parallel Latin patriarchates were set up during crusades in the Orthodox East. What is consistent here is that repentance is made for the crusades of that time, while antiquated tricks and methods are reanimated to set our relations back. Naturally, no Local Orthodox Church will be able face it calmly.

It is not today though that this problem has arisen: the general development of relations between the Vatican and the Orthodox Churches has been far from smooth lately. Suffice it to remember the failure of the plenary session of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and the Roman-Catholic Churches which took place Baltimore, USA, in July 2000. The theme of that session was the status of the Uniate churches. Differences between the Orthodox and the Catholic sides were so great that a mutually acceptable resolution was never reached. Already at that time it was clear that a serious crisis broke out in relations between the Churches.

It is even more evident that this crisis is ruinous at a time when Christians in East and West should be united as never before in face of dangerous processes taking place in the world. These are the sway of the materialistic and consumerist spirit, the domination of total liberalism obliterating traditional values, the loss of a moral orientation, the growing threat of extremism, terrorism and other manifestations of interpersonal enmity, incredible bitterness and anger. We should also give a united Christian response to the new political realities – the globalization of world economy, the internationalization of law and decision-making mechanisms and the unification of Europe. The absence of any mention of religious values in the recently adopted European Union Charter of the Fundamental Rights is also our common failure.

In this situation, traditional Christians, first of all Orthodox and Catholic, should firmly urge humanity to return to the fundamental spiritual and moral values and reiterate Christ and the Gospel as the most reliable foundations for a just and harmonious social order. We also have to oppose resolutely the attempts to put religion on the margins of international and social life, to confine it to the framework of parish community, private home or ethnographical “ghetto”. To this end, the Church should have the resolution to change the world not hiding herself behind a fence of secular slogans and mental constructions alien to her, be it “pluralism”, “appropriate time” or “parting with Constantine’s era” referred to by Cardinal Kasper. The terminology of Holy Scriptures and Holy Fathers is extremely precise, and when it is substituted by fashionable and popular notions of “this age” the Church loses the sharpness of vision, becoming temporal and apathetic and ultimately fails her mission. It is regrettable that mentor inflexions are sometimes heard coming from Rome, especially when it teaches us the freedom of conscience and religious pluralism, forgetting that these can be sometimes destructive for both society and the individual if not restrained by one’s option for the truth and goodness – the option not accidental but cultivated by one’s spiritual tradition.

Do they in the Vatican realize that, using in an inter-church discussion arguments borrowed from doctrines that developed outside the Church tradition as a result of the philosophical development, which was inspired in many ways by the idea of getting free from religious influence, they voluntarily or involuntarily weaken their own position? Do they in the Vatican realize that the devastation of inter-church dialogue and anti-Orthodox actions are advantageous to the forces that seek to weaken, humiliate and marginalize Christianity? The way in which the work of the Catholic Church has been covered by many mass media is evidence to it. We follow it closely and have not noticed so far any special sympathy shown by the press towards the Vatican except for the only one case – its confrontation with the Russian Orthodox Church. Here their support is on the side of the Vatican. In all the rest, the Catholic Church is criticized and accused of various sins.

Unfortunately, Rome has yielded to the temptation of an easy expansion into the field of the Russian Orthodox Church. It has resulted in a collapse of our relations. It is a major mistake made by the Vatican, which already belongs to history. The beginning of the 21^st century will be thus always remembered as a time of tragedy in relations between our two Churches. This historical error is difficult to rectify through diplomatic steps, political activity or propagandistic rhetoric. The wound is serious, and the question arises: are those who inflicted this wound capable of healing it? But we are confident that the Lord will heal it by choosing people capable of realizing all the damage done to both Churches by what has happened.

Addressing His disciples Christ asks them whether they are ready to drink from the cup He Himself drinks. These words of the Saviour are addressed to us all, Orthodox and Catholic. If in obedience to the Lord we took that cup together today, then, I believe, the world would be different. I know that very many Catholics share this faith and are ready, together with Orthodox brothers and sisters, to act in the awareness of their responsibility before God, history and humanity. In these actions lies the guarantee of not only reconciliation, but also restoration of the unity of the Church for which the Saviour prayed in Gethsemane.