One the eve of the Great Fast (Lent), Shrove Sunday, known as Forgiveness Sunday in Ukraine, as believers call, visit, or write each other, asking to be forgiven in Christ’s name, all wrongs they may have perpetrated against that person, Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, addressed a message to the faithful, urging them to “reconcile with each other, forgive all offenses, forget about enmity and mutual dislike. The time of the Great Lent is bestowed upon man for him to verify his life in the light of Christ’s Commandments.” The Patriarch noted that spite often gets the better of sympathy in modern society; people are hostile toward each other, whereas the Church calls for a tolerant attitude to, rather than condemnation of, human weaknesses. “We hear so many contemptuous and offensive words uttered around us, yet one will have to answer for one’s every word in the end. We often see a mote in our brother’s eye, but perceive not the beam in our own eye,” he recalled of the biblical truth and called on ask to ask each other’s forgiveness “from the bottom of your heart and not for the sake of formality,” and for sincerely forgiving in return.
Thus spoke Patriarch Alexis II to his flock: “Reconcile with each other, forgive all offenses, forget your enmity and dislike.” What did he actually mean? Who were the Eastern Orthodox people to forgive offenses, enmity, and dislike? He could not have possibly meant forgiving and being forgiven within one religion, one confession, one church. The Word says, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? D o not even the publicans so?
How is one to interpret this? Where does the head of the world’s largest Orthodox C hurch draw the line between forgiveness and magnanimity? This is no rhetorical question for us in Ukraine. If only once, on Shrove Sunday, all Orthodox believers, regardless of confession, forgave each other, they would probably begin to communicate and understand each other from then on.
Unfortunately, the situation is entirely different. The Orthodox media on the first week of Lent left one amazed at the number of political articles that surpassed that relating to purely church affairs. Below are only several headings from the Internet ITAR-TARS/Radonezh of the Moscow Patriarchate: “Pёtr Simonenko Meets with Russian President and Moscow Patriarchate,” “Natalia Vitrenko: Our Party and I Have Long Protested the Creation of Structures such as UOC-KP,” “The United Fatherland: Ukrainian Regime Demonstrates Support of Schismatics on the Eve of Elections”; ITAR-TARS/Radonezh: “Ukrainian Government Declares ‘Lawful’ Status of Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kiev Patriarchate.” Oleksandr Lavrynovych, state secretary of the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice, is quoted as saying that the conflict centered on its registration can be considered settled. He told journalists on March 18 that the board of the State Committee for Religious Affairs had overruled the prosecutor general’s protest demanding revision of the UOC-KP registration documents. More and the reader might tire. Consider but one more thing. The general tone of the said publications is militant and peremptory and by no means implies an atmosphere of reconciliation and forgiveness in quarters close to the Russian Church.
Statements by politicians and church journalists can be reduced to the same topic, the Ukrainian elections. Moscow is concerned about the turnout as much as official Kyiv is. Strange as it may seem, two apparently antagonistic forces are combining efforts here: a considerable part of the UOC Moscow Patriarchate clergy, on the one hand, and Ukraine’s Communist and Socialist parties, on the other. Could anyone have thought this possible a decade ago?
The Communist Party of Ukraine was the first to start flirting with the Moscow Orthodox Church before the previous election campaign, specifically its leader, Petro Symonenko. He was the one to propose perfectly illogical, even ridiculous formulas supposedly capable of reconciling the irreconcilable, the Communist and Church ideologies. Meaning not all of the churches, of course, just the Moscow one. The reason was easy to discern. The Moscow Church has the largest potential electorate. Losing old exponents, the Communist Party is feverishly looking for a way out, for new travel companions on the road to the radiant future of the recent past.
Finally, it found one. And it seemed such a good arrangement. On the one hand, the Communist Party promised full and exclusive support to the UOC-MP (contrary to the Ukrainian Constitution, incidentally), and declared its irreconcilable attitude toward no-called uncanonical Orthodoxy. A graphic example is found in the attempt, by 65 Communist people’s deputies to cancel the UOC-KP registration, thus putting an end to its legal existence. On the other hand, members of the UOC-MP hierarchy and priests urged their flock from television screens and in church to vote for the Communists. Precisely what the sage militant atheists needed: to turn all Ukraine’s Moscow Orthodox churches into campaign headquarters.
This alliance between the Communist and canonical (read: Moscow- Patriarchate) Orthodox believers was no marketplace show; it was approved (maybe even designed) at the highest level. On March 18 Comrade Symonenko visited “the capital of our Fatherland,” Moscow, meeting with the Russian President and Moscow Patriarch. According to ITAR-TARS/Radonezh, they discussed “intergovernmental Ukrainian-Russian relations, problems of economic cooperation, and integration. The meeting between the leader of Ukraine’s largest [political] party and His Holiness Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and All Rus’ was extremely interesting. His Holiness the Patriarch specifically noted the stand taken by the Communist Party of Ukraine with regard to civil peace and public accord. P. N. Simonenko informed His Holiness about the current confessional and social situation in Ukraine. In part, he said that the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, in response to an inquiry signed by 65 General Verkhovna Rada deputies and initiated by the members of the CPU faction, objected to the unlawful registration of the noncanonical group referring to itself as the ‘Kiev Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’ (which was certainly ever so helpful for social accord in Ukraine — Author). His Holiness the Patriarch approved of the stand taken by the Communist Party and its leader in support of the thousand-year-old canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine.”
Obviously, complete harmony of views (could Comrade Symonenko be considering joining the church?). Strange as it might appear, however, this alliance has its logic and is based on common political interests. Both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Communist Party of Ukraine crave revival of the Soviet Union, albeit in a different form (like Great Russia). In this sense they are true and dedicated allies, both longing for those good old days when both held exclusive status in society. We all remember that the Soviet political elite was formed from Communists at all levels and in all walks of life. The Orthodox Church, however devastated, ridiculed, downtrodden, and robbed, was the only recognized (maybe tolerated is the word) church in the land of the Soviets. In other words, it had no rivals and did not have to compete with any denominations, religions, or sects like it does now. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would now and then use the Orthodox Church as a political tool in the international arena. In fact, Stalin harbored an ambitious plan – setting up an Orthodox Vatican in Moscow, meaning placing ecumenical Orthodoxy under control of his Communist Central Committee. This could only make the ambitious hierarchs feel flattered (those surviving the purges, of course).
These facts are generally known, which makes one wonder at the short memories of the current “canonical” Orthodox clergy; they must have forgotten all about that desperately helpless and lawless condition of the Orthodox Church, lasting throughout the Soviet period. Before World War II, the Russian Orthodox Church had about 100 parishes in the Soviet Union and the handful of bishops in office had to cooperate ex officio with the “competent authorities” (official appellation of the secret police). What greater humiliation could a clergyman think of? Likewise, they do not seem to remember the purges, concentration camps of the Solovetskie Islands, houses of God converted into stables, the demolished Church of the Savior, discrimination against the children of priests; or that struggle against religion as the opiate of the people. The Small Soviet Encyclopedia (1959) has an entry titled “Orthodox Church,” reading that “The Orthodox religion, as all other religions, is a harmful leftover in the consciousness of the Soviet people. The Communist Party raises the Soviet people in the spirit of scientific world outlooks, in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, and conducts scientific atheistic propaganda and an ideological struggle against the religious ideology.”
Of course, the times are different, one might counter, and that the Communists have an altogether different program, pledging to respect and even protect the canonical Orthodox Church. But we all know what Communist pledges are really worth. Did Lenin not promise the land to the peasantry at a time being of strategic importance for the new regime? Did he not enter an alliance with other political parties, later, having reached his goal, to physically destroy his erstwhile allies? Did the Bolsheviks not use the hated market economy in their NEP stratagem to find a way out of economic and political deadlock? What would happen to those nepmen in a couple of years? Beware the Communists, gentlemen! Also, please bear in mind that the Communist Party of Ukraine has not as yet disowned the adage about religion being the opiate of the people, although it is using that very drug in its current election campaign.
The Socialists and Progressive Socialists are also keeping an eye on our canonical Orthodox believers. Natalia Vitrenko declared recently, “Our party and I, in particular, have long protested the creation of structures such as the UOC-KP. And government agencies, particularly the State Committee for Religious Affairs, have always taken an uncivil stand. Whoever wants to set up a sect or comes on an anti-Orthodox mission is made welcome and treated on equal terms here.” A very obvious, clumsy adjustment to antisectarian Orthodox sentiments, pouring fresh oil on the fire of church feuds, showing total disregard for the Ukrainian constitution that proclaims freedom for all religious beliefs. Some people are hard put to discard their old habits like giving and being given orders on what one can or cannot do. And this is in a society that has become one of many confessions, whether we like it or not (the most optimistic estimates point to a mere 60% Orthodox believers in Ukraine), a fact long since perceived by far-sighted politicians.
The lifestyle of most Ukrainians is far from well in the civilized sense of the word, lacking social protection and confidence in the future. In addition, we are little inclined to note what has actually been accomplished, the changes for the better. And there are such changes. Easter is one example. I remember the time when the holy occasion at the St. Volodymyr Cathedral was always accompanied by tight militia security, especially during the All-Night Vigil; how we students wanted to get inside and could not, as only old ladies were let through the cordon after careful examination. Today, everybody can celebrate Lent as he or she chooses, according to the Old or New Calendar. The believers go to church, each to his/her own, and the unbelievers enjoy the extra days off and Easter bread. It would be so good if all believers despite their denominations considered it their duty to greet each other on Easter or make a friendly gesture. Let us hope such a day will come.
