symphonia

Writing on the RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty Power Vertical blog, Brian Whitmore suggests that there may be a little too much symphonia in a recent move by Russian Patriarch Kirill to work closely with the United Russia political party. Whitmore:

What motivated United Russia and Patriarch Kirill I to reach an agreement giving the Russian Orthodox Church an unprecedented voice in the legislative work of the State Duma?

Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center tackles the issue in today’s issue of “Nezavisimaya Gazeta.”

He begins by asking why the ruling party would want to enter into such an arrangement:

Why? Because United Russia desperately lacks something despite its triumphs in elections throughout the country and the overwhelming majority in the lower house of the parliament. And what does it lack? It lacks society’s respect. It lacks recognition as a genuine political party and not just an organization founded and coddled by the Kremlin.

Because the crisis will inevitably require unpopular decisions that will be endorsed (blessed) by the Patriarch as a means to temper society’s discontent.

Because the crisis might foment social unrest and it will certainly benefit the ruling party to have such a formidable an ally.

And last but not the least, because United Russia would like to share responsibility for its actions and transform the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia into Vladimir Gundayev, supporter of the ruling party ever ready with religious authorization.

Vladimir Gundayev, it should be noted, is Patriarch Kirill’s birth name.

So what’s in the deal for the Kirill? Continue reading →

Many of the current jurisdictional controversies within the Orthodox Church involving the Ecumenical Patriarch, relations between Constantinople and Moscow, the status of the “autocephalies” — even the future of the American Orthodox Church — hinge on the question of primacy. While Orthodox Christians have rejected the Roman model of primacy as “supreme power” over the Bishop and local Church, the question of primacy within the Orthodox Church is a complete muddle. In “The Idea of Primacy in Orthodox Ecclesiology,” an essay written in 1960 and now available on the AOI main site, Fr. Alexander Schmemann examines various aspects of the primacy question, an issue he describes as “on the agenda for our time.” As he reminds us, the ecclesiological interpretation of primacy — regional, autocephalous, and “universal” — is “virtually absent” from from Orthodox theology. “We badly need a clarification of the nature and functions of all these primacies and, first of all, of the very concept of primacy,” Fr. Schmemann writes. “For both in theory and in practice there is a great deal of confusion concerning the definition of the ‘supreme power’ in the church, of its scope and the modes of its expression.”

Excerpts:

It would not be difficult to prove that the canonical and jurisdictional troubles and divisions, of which we have had too many in the last decades, have their roots in some way or other in this question of primacy, or, to be more exact, in the absence of a clearly defined doctrine of the nature and functions of primacy. And the same unsolved problem constitutes a major handicap for the unity and, therefore, the progress of Orthodoxy in countries like America where, paradoxically enough, the loyalty to a certain concept of “canonicity” leads to the most uncanonical situation that can be imagined: the coexistence on the same territory of a number of parallel jurisdictions, and dioceses…

[ … ]

In the early Church the canonical tradition was an integral part of ecclesiology — of the living experience of the Church. But little by little it became an autonomous sphere in which the visible ecclesiastical structures, the functions of power and authority, and the relations between Churches, ceased to be explained in terms of the Church-Body of Christ. Loosing its ties with ecclesiology, the canonical tradition became “canon law.” But in Canon Law there was no room for the notion of the Body of Christ because this notion has nothing to do with “law.” Continue reading →