ANALYSIS: A Church at the crossroads: reflections on the UOCC's Sobor (08/27/00)

ANALYSIS

A Church at the crossroads: reflections on the UOCC's Sobor

by Jars Balan

In the last decade, Orthodox Churches around the world have been subjected to a host of major challenges, some that are specific to Eastern Christendom and others that are common to many denominations in the mainstream of organized Christianity. This is especially true for Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the diaspora, which, at the same time as having to confront the serious problems posed by their aging and declining memberships, have experienced a series of upheavals stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant emergence of a movement that is vigorously championing a de-ethnicized, evangelically oriented, pan-Orthodoxy for the New World. These tumultuous developments have not only shaken the slow-to-change structures of Orthodox tradition, but will undoubtedly continue to give rise to instability within the Ukrainian Orthodox community for the foreseeable future.

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that as the July Sobor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada (UOCC) approached, there was genuine fear that the general Church council might provoke the kind of divisions that have recently fractured the unity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. In some congregations stern warnings were issued that "troublemakers" and "ultra-nationalists" were seeking to create a schism within the Church, while in other parishes the talk was of Church leaders having "betrayed" the cause of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and of quietly abandoning the founding principles and Constitution of the UOCC.

Although efforts were made to prevent open discussion of any issues regarded as controversial, these only succeeded in spawning a lively "samvydav" conducted by a cross-Canadian network of lay members and sympathetic priests by means of the Internet, mail, long-distance telephone calls, faxes and photocopied handouts. In the end, the threat of a "rozkol" (split) proved to be unfounded. Nevertheless, a palpable current of dissent rippled through the corridors and proceedings of the 20th Sobor, surfacing in several sessions over the four days that the assembly met in Winnipeg.

The unease sprang from three related sources: a ground swell of dissatisfaction with the UOCC's status under the omophorion of the Patriarch of Constantinople; mounting frustrations with the Church's policies vis-a-vis Orthodox affairs in Ukraine; and anxiety about the spread of pan-Orthodox sentiment among segments of the Canadian Church. A number of events were responsible for unleashing these rumblings of discontent, starting with the November 1997 meeting of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew with the Moscow Patriarch Aleksei in the Ukrainian city of Odesa.

Given the Moscow Patriarchate's contentious historical claims to ecclesiastical primacy in Ukraine, having Patriarch Bartholomew meet with Patriarch Aleksei (widely known to be a former KGB operative whose code name was "Drozdov") on Ukrainian rather than Russian soil was understandably viewed as a move intended to underscore the Russian Church's jurisdictional pretensions over Ukrainian lands. Indeed, the very fact that Constantinople and the rest of the Orthodox world recognize the Moscow Patriarchal Church as being "canonical" - notwithstanding its dubious legacy of violating canon laws from the inception of the Moscow Patriarchate, through the 20th century to the present day - is in itself a bitter pill to swallow for many Ukrainian Orthodox adherents. This seeming hypocrisy of inter-Orthodox relations was made even more galling by the Moscow Patriarchate's overt political support for hardline Communists bent on restoring the Soviet Union and Russian nationalists determined to revive the Russian Empire.

Another sore point was the refusal of UOCC hierarchs to officiate in an ecumenical prayer service with a bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) who was attending the seventh World Congress of Ukrainians held December 1998 in Toronto. This deliberate snub seemed especially petty, as the "moleben" - which included the participation of Ukrainian Catholic hierarchs - did not involve a celebration of the Eucharist. On the symbolic level, the gesture was interpreted by many to be yet another example of how the Canadian Church is undermining the efforts of the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine who are struggling to revive a Ukrainian expression of Orthodoxy in a country subjected to centuries of forced Russification.

Then, a November 1999 Kontakt television report on commemorations marking the 90th birthday of Metropolitan Wasyly had the unfortunate effect of further alarming those UOCC members who are worried about an apparent erosion of the Canadian Church's Ukrainian character. The spectacle of a bishop with the Moscow Patriarchal Church effusively praising Metropolitan Wasyly for promoting Orthodox "unity" certainly was difficult to watch in light of the Russian Orthodox Church's long-standing and resurgent ideology of Great Russian chauvinism, imperialism and xenophobia. At the very least, the rhetoric about fraternal relations rang hollow when at the same time in Ukraine the Moscow Patriarchal Church was using the refusal by diaspora Ukrainian Orthodox Churches to concelebrate with the UOC-KP and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church as part of an ongoing campaign to isolate and stigmatize those who reject Russian hegemony in Ukrainian Orthodox affairs.

Yet another red flag was raised by Patriarch Bartholomew's repeated use of the offensive term "Uniates" (instead of Ukrainian or Slovak Catholics) during his January trip to Poland. The tactless remarks struck tolerant-minded Ukrainian Orthodox as being deliberately antagonistic towards fellow Ukrainian Christians who had been ruthlessly persecuted for more than 40 years by Soviet Communist authorities with the complicity of Russian Orthodox churchmen.

All of the above events fomented the impression that the UOCC, in the process of accepting the omophorion of Constantinople, had surrendered much of its autonomy and its Canadian distinctiveness, and was turning its back on Ukraine, in exchange for obtaining "canonical recognition" by the major players within the international Orthodox arena. Was this not too high a price to pay for ostensibly receiving a "voice" in world Orthodoxy?

Underlying these tensions were much broader concerns about the ultimate fate of the UOCC on the North American continent, its identity as an ethnic Ukrainian and indigenously Canadian Church, and its cherished heritage as a democratically administered, autocephalous Orthodox formation. These issues are too complicated to summarize in this brief overview but in the long run may prove to be a bigger cause of unrest within the UOCC's ranks than the relationship with either Constantinople or Ukraine.

In the end, Sobor delegates took a cautious approach by voting to maintain their Church's current status under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, not wishing to jeopardize the sensitive negotiations on Orthodox unity that are scheduled to take place in Ukraine. However, the same resolution also called on the UOCC to assume a more "proactive" role in its interactions with Constantinople and other Orthodox Churches, and for the development of strategic policy objectives that are consistent with the Church's Canadian charter and by-laws. This and other Consistory-sponsored resolutions went a long way toward validating some of the criticisms that were raised prior to the Sobor about the ramifications of the UOCC's membership in the Ecumenical Orthodox Church.

Equally significant, delegates also voted in favor of a resolution from the floor calling for the creation of a special commission that would conduct a comprehensive review of the UOCC's policies toward Constantinople, other Orthodox Churches, and the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine - all of which are being affected by the numerous changes taking place throughout the Eastern Church. The commission is intended to provide the Canadian Church with an appropriate vehicle for continuing the discussion on how to best plot the UOCC's course at this unsettled time in the history of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in the diaspora as well as Ukraine.

While not without its problematic aspects and shortcomings, Sobor 2000 did positively demonstrate that constructive discussions between the laity and clergy provide a far more effective means of dealing with tensions within the Church than lawsuits, disciplinary actions, and attempts to impose conformity through heavy-handed edicts issued by Church officials. Be that as it may, it remains an open question whether or not the UOCC's unique tradition of "sobornopravnist" will survive the integration of the Canadian Church into the wider world of Orthodoxy, where rigidly hierarchical models of Church governance prevail and the laity has little influence on decisions made by synods dominated by the hierarchs and clergy.

Jars Balan was a delegate to the 20th Sobor from St. John's Cathedral in Edmonton.

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