Q. Your Holiness, as you know, Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija have recently appealed to President Medvedev to grant them Russian citizenship, and his answer is already known. The Serbs appealed to you as well, and their desire was dictated by despair and helplessness in the situation in which they have been caught. The recent initiatives of Serbs in Kosovo for Russian citizenship have given a powerful signal that should be heard not only in Russia but throughout Europe.

Your words have always been a great moral support for our people and country. What message could you convey to all the Serbian citizens, especially Orthodox faithful, and encourage them in this grave period of history?

A. The Serbs who live in Kosovo and Metohija have become hostages in a major political game. Given the indifferent attitude of many states, they are forced to stay in closed enclaves, experiencing everyday anxiety because of the hostile people around who are aware of their impunity. Our brothers in faith have a great courage not to abandon their much-suffering land and holy places and have to live like concentration camp inmates who are denied even the basic right to life. Here we see a glaring injustice, double standards and lies of the policy declaring commitment to the ideal of humanism and human rights protection while shutting its eye to the hell created by extremists with support from their foreign sponsors.

The Lord says to St. Paul, ‘My power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor. 12:9). When all the human resources are exhausted, when there seem to be no hope, then we see the help of God about which the Lord told to his apostle. In Russian history we see many examples when the country was on the verge of enslavement and destruction – in the Time of Trouble in 1612, and during the Polish intervention, in 1812 when Napoleon’s army invaded the country, and in 1941 when the Hitler’s armadas advanced with lightning speed in the territory of the Soviet Union. Not once the enemy was close to his aim but contrary to the logical development, Russia hurled back those invasions and rose from ruins and ashes. In this the believer sees God’s providence and His help.

I have no right to give any political advice to the Kosovo Serbs but will offer a counsel relevant in all times: turn to the Lord God with sincere prayer for help. And your brothers and sisters in faith in Russia will lift up their prayers together with you, and I believe the whole Universal Church will do the same. In the Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ repeats these words: ‘Do not be afraid!’ The fear of dangers and threats is a natural human feeling. But the Lord is always with us and He says to the Serbs in Kosovo today: ‘Do not be afraid!’

I am deeply thankful to the Kosovo Serbs for their letter to me and to the Russian state leaders, to ‘the Russian people and brothers’. Scores of thousands of people put their signatures under this letter. It has left no one of those who read it indifferent. Our hearts are deeply moved by the trust and love for Russia manifested in this letter. In response I would like to say: the Russian Church, the Orthodox Russian people will never turn away from you. No earthly gains, no changes in the current political situation will make us forget about our ages-old spiritual kinship.

Q. Russia, within her diplomatic and political resources, has given support to the Kosovo Serbs who have been caught in a difficult situation in all respects, socio-economic, legal, psychological. What support can the Serbs from Kosovo expect from the Russian Orthodox Church?

A. The Russian Federation has really given a considerable support to the Kosovo Serbs. For instance, by the decision of the Russian authorities, funds have been allocated through UNESCO for the restoration of ruined churches in Kosovo. This initiative deserves every encouragement. Other actions are taken as well to relieve the situation of our Serbian brothers who live in Kosovo, including the supply of humanitarian aid.

The Moscow Patriarchate has invariably supported the position taken by the Serbian Church with regard of the status of Kosovo. On the international arena, much was done for the protection of the Serbian population of the region by my predecessor, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II. In particular, he devoted to this problem a considerable part of his address to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly in 2007. I, too, will never stop making efforts for defending the Serbian brothers in their struggle to live in the land of their fathers.

It is very important that the holy places in Kosovo should not be abandoned. It would be a real spiritual catastrophe and would do a serious damage to Europe’s Orthodox heritage. Priceless are the monuments created by the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, and they are alive as long as prayers are lifted up in churches and the feat of monasticism is performed in monastery cells. I have approved the action program which will be implemented in 2012.

I have been to Kosovo several times and talked with local people and could see their difficult situation with my own eyes. What I saw made a strong impression on me. The Russian Orthodox Church was and will be in solidarity with the Kosovo Serbs. Our compatriots empathize with them and lift up ardent prayers for a speedy regulation of life in the Kosovo region. There is my voice too among these numerous voices of prayer.

Q. How do you assess the new calls of some Montenegro politicians to divide the Serbian Orthodox Church? The former prime minister of Montenegro, Milo Jukanovic, has recently stated the history will show the validity of his call to divide the Serbian Church.

A. History shows that attempts of particular political forces to put pressure on the Church in order to change her canonical order lead to nothing good.

Fortunately, in Montenegro there are many reasonable political leaders who share this point of view. In February 2009, I met with Montenegrin President Philip Vujanovic. I remember that during that meeting Mr. Vujanovic said that for him the Metropolia of Montenegro and Primorje was the only Orthodox canonical institution in Montenegro and pointed to the importance of the Metropolia’s taking pastoral care of the Serbs and Montenegrins.

All the Local Orthodox Churches consider Montenegro to be part of the canonical territory of the Serbian Patriarchate and this generally-shared Orthodox conviction should be respected.

Q. We know that representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in their talks with representatives of the Vatican paid attention to the fact that it would be good for the Pope to voice and openly demand the protection of monuments and Christians themselves in Kosovo. The then Pope did not listen to the wise advice from Moscow. Is the situation changing in this respect with the coming of a new Pope?

A. When the discussion on the Kosovo problem began, the Pope Benedict XVI of Rome, as is known, took a well-considered stand on this problem. The Holy See still refrains from an official recognition of this part of Serbia as an independent state. Moreover, on the eve of the declaration of the independence of Kosovo, the Pope called the international community not to hurry to make the final decision on the status of that territory, emphasizing that the Orthodox monasteries there have a special historical and spiritual significance for the Serbs.

Exactly four days after the declaration of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008, Benedict XVI received in audience the Serbian ambassador to the Holy See. In the course of the meeting, the Pope underscored that the Serbs suffered much in the conflicts of the last decades and expressed concern for their situation in Kosovo. Since then he has repeatedly spoken for the protection of the rights of the Serbian minority.

Q. How will you explain the fact that Western Christians, that is, Catholics, did not show desire to defend old Orthodox, that is Christian, churches in Kosovo? These churches were burnt down and destroyed exactly at the time when Western peace-makers came in Kosovo?

A. Regrettably, the Western world, during the intervention of the NATO troops in the territory of former Yugoslavia, was subjected to a massive information attack and, to a considerable extent, was mislead. For long months, the Western mass media played up deliberately distorted information about ‘the atrocity of Milosevic’s regime’ committed against Kosovo Serbs, grossly exaggerating the number of victims of ‘ethnic cleansings’ carried out by the Serbian police in the region.

However, the hostilities themselves in Kosovo provoked in the Western Christian world a reaction far from unequivocal. Many Christians in the West were outraged by the inscription ‘Happy Easter!’ on bombs made by the American military.

Nevertheless, a number of Catholic bishops did come out in support of Kosovo’s automony, motivated by hopes for an improvement in the life of the Catholic community in the region, which were not to become true.

Other representatives of Western Christian churches and communities have repeatedly expressed concern for the vandalism of NATO’s military and for Albanian militants with their extremist attitude to the old shrines in Kosovo. Therefore, I believe, the Western Christians as a whole should not be blamed for the actions of the military. These actions were not dictated by religious beliefs.

Q. Many newspapers have recently reported on your possible meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. Do you still insist that all the disputed questions should be resolved first, because otherwise this meeting is meaningless?

A. Yes, I still believe that for this meeting to be a success it is necessary, if not settle the conflict problems in full, but at least to try to settle them more energetically.

The mass media have stressed only the sensational aspect of a possible meeting, but I do not like it at all to be reduced to sensational. To make it really beneficial for the further development of relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church it is necessary to radically improve the atmosphere of these relations through joint efforts for settling the problems existing in our relations.

Q. Under the former Pope, representatives of the Vatican often said they could not influence the Greek Catholics in Ukraine who captured Orthodox churches. Has the situation changed now or things have remained the same?

A. While stressing their loyalty to the see of Rome, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics have insisted on their own autonomy. When in 1990 a quadruple commission was set up including the Vatican, Moscow Patriarchate, Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in order to settle the situation in western Ukraine, the Greek Catholics actually wrecked its work. We have recently suggested that this commission be resumed but the Catholic side has been perfectly indifferent to our proposal.

In the course of regular contacts with leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, we have continually raised the question concerning the need to resolve the situation with regard to Orthodox churches in western Ukraine. Both the Pope of Rome and heads of respective Vatican congregations have expressed appreciation of our concern but the problem remains unresolved.

Q. The Russian Patriarch and the Pope were supposed to meet in 1997 in Graz, Austria. Ten days before the meeting, they in the Vatican deleted the part of the document to be signed concerning the harm of proselytism and conflict between the Orthodox and the Uniates in Ukraine. Since the 90s, Catholic churches have been opened in more than 200 Russian cities. Have the positions of Moscow and the Vatican become closer when proselytism is discussed now, or everything has remained the same?

A. It should be noted that the situation in the Orthodox-Catholic relations in Russia have noticeably improved in the last 10 years. The problem of proselytism is not as acute now as it was in the 90s when Catholic missionaries came to Russia to carry out their active work here. A positive role has been played by the Joint Group for Considering Problems in Relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, which was set up in 2004. It has become a good platform for an open and honest discussion between representatives of the two Churches on concrete complicated problems and for a joint work to make recommendations for their solution.

It is necessary to develop cooperation between the Orthodox and the Catholics who have been guardians of the Christian tradition and who have similar views of personal and social ethics, scientific and technological progress, bioethics and other issues of today. Among the problems which have become increasingly relevant is Christianophobia, the persecution of Christians for their faith. In the area of the protection of the rights of Christians, I believe close Orthodox-Catholic cooperation to be promising, important and timely.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Archbishop Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) often speaks of the need for dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church and a possible meeting with Patriarch Kirill. Who is the initiator of this dialogue? Under what conditions is it possible and what would be its aims?

Immediately after the election of Archbishop Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) as the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church I sent a letter of congratulations to him and expressed the hope that relations between the Orthodox of the Moscow Patriarchate and Greek Catholics in Ukraine would improve. We were uplifted by certain optimism when Archbishop Sviatoslav responded with the desire to solve jointly the problems which exist between the Moscow Patriarchate and the UGCC.
At the same time we cannot but be concerned by the declaration of the new head of the UGCC that believers belonging to the ‘Kievan Patriarchate’ are the ‘main Orthodox brothers’ of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics. The close contacts and even concelebration of Archbishop Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) with representatives of this schismatic structure, not recognized by any of the other Orthodox Churches, unfortunately demonstrates a willingness to ignore the official position of the Moscow Patriarchate and disrespect for the canonical rules of the Orthodox Church.

I am deeply convinced that genuine mutual understanding and reconciliation between our Churches is impossible to achieve without mutual respect, including respect in the field of canonical order.

We have recently received alarming reports of instances of proselytism by Greek Catholics among the Orthodox on the territories of Central and Eastern Ukraine. This type of thing can only make worse the problems that already exist in inter-church relations, while at the same time we would prefer words about the desire for dialogue to be in accord with real deeds.

The appearance of a representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the enthronement of the new head of the UGCC has been regarded as symbolic. In one of his comments His Holiness Patriarch Kirill noted a ‘recent improvement in relations between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Ukraine.’ What did he have in mind?

After the election of the new archbishop of the UGCC official contacts were instituted between the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox of the Moscow Patriarchate for practically the first time. You mentioned the presence of a representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the enthronement of Archbishop Sviatoslav (Shevchuk). There was then a meeting between His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine and the head of the UGCC. This meeting took place in an atmosphere of good will, and during it agreement was reached on co-operation between places of learning of the two Churches. It is these positive events that His Holiness had in mind when he spoke of an ‘improvement in relations between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Ukraine’.
The Patriarch’s words, however, do not mean that all the problems in relations between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church have now been regulated. There still remain unresolved questions concerning the building of Orthodox churches in Western Ukraine, and representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church express concern with regard to the mission of Greek Catholics in Eastern Ukraine.

The UGCC has a strategic goal in Ukraine – to obtain from the Vatican recognition of Patriarchal status for its organizational structure. In November and December of this year the UGCC created in Ukraine three new metropolias: Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk and Ternopil and Zboriv. Now the UGCC has seven metropolias, including the metropolia of Przemyśl and Warsaw in Poland, the metropolia of Philadelphia in the USA and the metropolia of Winnipeg in Canada. Does the strengthening of the position of the UGCC on the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate influence the development of relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the UGCC?

The transformation of the Greek Catholic dioceses in Western Europe into metropolias is primarily the internal business of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. At the same time this administrative reform has been made with the aim of obtaining form the Vatican recognition for the UGCC the status of patriarchate, as the Greek Catholic bishops themselves openly admit. It is well known that not only the Moscow Patriarchate, but also the other Local Orthodox Churches view negatively the possibility that the UGCC may be recognized as a patriarchate. Such recognition would be an indirect affirmation of Archbishop Sviatoslav’s declaration that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the sole legitimate heir of the ancient Kievan Metropolia.

Moreover, the status of patriarchate would give to the UGCC the character of an all-Ukrainian Church. However, Central and Eastern Ukraine has always traditionally been Orthodox territory where there never have been any Greek Catholic structures. Of course, the Orthodox are alarmed at the UGCC’s aim to spread its mission to the East by creating new dioceses and exarchates there.

At the beginning of November in Kazan there was a joint procession of the cross between believers of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Educated Orthodox youth are attracted by Catholicism in other countries, while Catholic ecumenists come here. For example, to mark the New Year there will be a youth meeting of Taizé in Berlin attended by a large inter-confessional delegation from Ukraine. Is there not a danger for Orthodox Christians in this type of communion? What sort of communion is permitted and what is not?

Orthodox youth, including that of the Russian Church, for many years now has participated in youth meetings organized by the monastic community of Taizé in various European cities. I am glad that young Christians have the chance to meet and share their experience of life and ministry in the Church as this type of communion can lay the foundations for the building of a more just and human society.

Although between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church there is no unity in the faith and communion in the sacraments, nevertheless the Orthodox and Catholics hold positions close to each other on many questions of contemporary life, primarily in the social sphere and sphere of ethics. Orthodox-Catholic co-operation is developing today in various forms. This may be joint cultural projects, public acts, and active mutual engagement at the level of international organizations. Positive examples of such co-operation already exist, and youth meetings are one of them.

The Primates and hierarchs of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and the Church of Cyprus met in Istanbul on 1-3 September 2011. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR) commented on the meeting results in his interview to ‘Izvestia’ newspaper. The interview was published on 7 September 2011.

Q. –Does the meeting of the Primates of some Churches without invitation of others, for instance, the Russian Orthodox Church, mean that there are the leading and subordinate Churches?

A. – There are fifteen Local Orthodox Churches, and none of them takes the lead. There are no first-rate or second-rate Churches; and no Church can dictate anything to the other. This reminds of a principle of confederation: each autocephalous Church is independent in its administration, but stays in prayerful and canonical communion with all other Orthodox Churches.

The Orthodox Church differs from the Catholic Church. We have neither Pope, nor first bishop who could take decisions for all. The Patriarch of Constantinople has a title of Ecumenical Patriarch, but is the first among the equals. The meeting in Istanbul on 1-3 September was not a Pan-Orthodox, but a regional meeting discussed at which was a very complicated situation in the Middle East: Christians are discriminated and persecuted in certain countries of the region.

Q. – Should one expect an invitation of the Moscow Patriarchate to such meetings?

A. – I believe that the Moscow Patriarchate’s presence at all Pan-Orthodox meetings is obligatory, but any group of Churches can meet at their discretion to solve regional problems. As the Patriarch of Jerusalem told me in our talk, they are entitled to discuss any matters of interest. Yet, decisions and recommendations on Pan-Orthodox topics made at such meetings cannot be binding for other Churches.

Q. – Is the holding of the Pan-Orthodox Council real? Reports appear that the Moscow Patriarchate blocks decisions of pre-Council conferences, thus demonstrating its exclusive right to determine the development of the world Orthodoxy. Are these reports valid?

A. – The process of preparing the Holy and Great Council lasts for over fifty years. The time of its holding depends of when we get ready. Reports that the Moscow Patriarchate blocks many decisions of pre-Council conferences are absolutely groundless, as the Russian Orthodox Church comes out in favour of the Council. However, we have always insisted on the necessity of strict adherence to the principle of consensus both during the process of preparation and at the Council. Position of one or several Churches should not be disregarded at voting.

Q. –Yet, a communiqué issued on the results of the meeting on September 1-3 contains a proposal to reconsider procedural rules for the pre-Council conferences in order to recede from the principle of consensus…

A. – I was surprised at this proposal. In this case, the mechanisms created during fifty years could be wrecked, and the unity of world Orthodoxy could be jeopardized. We have obtained the adherence to this principle in the World Council of Churches that includes not only the Orthodox, but also the Protestant Churches. The more so, we must keep it within our own family, and the Council will not become the cause of a new schism, which many our believers fear, but will be a factor of unity, consolidating positions of the Orthodox Church in the contemporary world. We have already reached agreement on eight topics that can be put on the Council’s agenda.

Q. – What kind of topics?

A. – For instance, there are topics of church calendar, the unification of church decrees, fasting, impediments to marriage, the attitude of Orthodoxy to the rest of Christian world and ecumenism. There is also a topic of the procedure of granting church autonomy and the question of the Orthodox Churches’ attitude to political and social realities in the contemporary world.

As to the other questions, for instance, the procedure of granting autocephaly (complete independence), I am confident that given good will, the Churches will come to an agreement before long. This can be done even after the Council.

In an interview in the Serbian newspaper

How do you envisage the resolution of problems in relations between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the government of Montenegro?

The role of Orthodoxy in the life of Montenegrin society has always been great. Today Montenegro is an independent state; eighty percent of its inhabitants confess Orthodoxy.

Montenegrin Orthodoxy has close spiritual ties to the historical Patriarchate of Peć, within which it was represented by the Zeta metropolia. Now it comprises an important part of the Patriarchate of Serbia, the canonical territory of which covers several independent countries. We may say the same of the majority of the Patriarchates: Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Moscow. The Patriarchate of Alexandria, in particular, covers the entire continent of Africa.

It is clear that the problems which have accumulated in church-state relations in the country ought to be resolved in the course of a tolerant, attentive and respectful dialogue of the authorities of the Montenegrin state with representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The resolution of these problems is unthinkable without serious attention being paid to the canonical foundations of the Orthodox Church which go back many centuries and reflect her spiritual nature and correspond to her lofty vocation. At the same time, the canonical order of the Orthodox Church has sufficient flexibility and allows us, where good will permits, to find compromise solutions to these most acute problems.

During recent meetings with representatives of the state authorities of Montenegro I heard more than once that the decision to create a single Montenegrin Orthodox Church does not presuppose interference into canonical questions. However, we ought to realize that genuine success in realizing this type of reform can be attained only by taking into account the opinion of the Patriarchate of Serbia, in whose competence there are historically to be found the questions of the church life of Orthodox Christians on the territory of Montenegro.

After your visit to Serbia at the beginning of April of this year the Serbian press wrote that during the meetings that took place you expressed the negative attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to the possible invitation of the Pope to Serbia in 2013. Did you discuss this question with representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church?

During meetings with the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church this topic was deliberately not discussed. It is the internal affair of the Patriarchate of Serbia. As far as I know from the media, among the bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church there isn’t a unanimous opinion regarding the invitation of the Pope.

So far the nature of the forthcoming celebrations of the 1700^th anniversary of the Edict of Milan is not yet clear – whether they are intended to be testimony to the significance of this historical jubilee for representatives of various Christian confessions or as a way of expressing the fraternal unity of the Local Orthodox Churches.

The danger that Europe is losing its Christian character has been repeatedly emphasized by both Orthodox and Catholic Church representatives. You have emphasized that the Orthodox together with the Catholics ought to come to the defense of traditional Christian values in Europe. In what way can the two Christian Churches fulfill this task jointly and do you believe that this co-operation can have damaging effects for one of the two Churches, as it is feared in certain church circles which perceive this dialogue as a means of Unia?

Recently, it has become ever more evident that Orthodox and Catholics must co-operate in the cause of defending traditional Christian values in modern secular society. The position of our Churches is close on the many topics with which the world today challenges Christianity – these are the processes of liberal secularization, globalization, the blurring of family values and the undermining of traditional morality. Our Churches together speak out against abortion, euthanasia, and medico-biological experiments incompatible with the moral principle of respect for the human person, and so on.

The problem of Christianophobia – the denigration of Christians’ human rights because of their religious adherence – is becoming ever more relevant. Unfortunately, we can see the manifestation of an openly antireligious position in contemporary Europe where certain political forces are trying to push religion from public life into the sphere of individual life. Here the agreed position of the two Churches can have important meaning.

Orthodox-Catholic co-operation may develop in various forms. This may be joint cultural projects, public undertakings, action at the level of representations at international organizations. There are already positive examples of such co-operation. Thanks to the agreed and consistent actions of Orthodox and Catholics we have, for example, managed to obtain a positive decision in the European Court of Human Rights in the Lautsi v. Italy case regarding crucifixes in Italian state schools.

At the same time, fears that this type of co-operation can lead to Unia are completely unfounded. Unia is union on the basis of compromise in questions of faith. However, the co-operation of which I speak does not concern the realm of doctrine. The Orthodox and Catholic Churches, which are not in complete doctrinal and canonical unity, can interact in the sphere of social problems, in which the two Churches are close.

The fight for the survival of the Serbian Church in Kosovo has not come to a halt and its mission as before remains under threat. You mentioned the idea of sending monks from the Russian Orthodox Church to the monasteries of Kosovo and Metohija to strengthen the Orthodox presence in the region. What was the outcome of this idea?

This question is at the stage of being studied and its final resolution will be determined by the wishes and needs of our Serbian brethren. With the blessing of the Hierarchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church we are discussing possible aid to His Grace Bishop Theodosius of Raška and Prizren. We also positively evaluate the fact that Russia in the framework of participation in a UNESCO programme has given substantial financial aid for the restoration of Orthodox holy sites in the Kosovo region.

On 5 May 203 you were appointed by decision of the Holy Synod to be representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to European International Institutions in Brussels and occupied this position until 2009. How important is it for the Orthodox to have their representatives at these institutions and is this advantageous to the Russian Orthodox Church?

By the decision of the Holy Synod my work as representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to European International Institutions began as far back as July 2002 and continued right up until 2009 when I became head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. During this period the Representation worked actively with the institutions of the European Union on a wide spectrum of questions, participating in the discussion of problems that are of interest for European Christians. It was then that there came about the tradition of annual meetings of European religious leaders with EU leaders. These meetings became a productive form of dialogue of religious communities with the integration body allowing the interests of the faithful to be heard at a high political level. Dialogue with the EU is one of the proofs of the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church’s functioning abroad.

Regarding the content of church diplomatic work today, as it was centuries ago, its foundation is witness to the eternal Truth of Christ. The expression of this recognition in our day is the concern for the preservation of moral direction in international co-operation. This is especially important for dialogue with international organizations which are concerned with problems of human rights and inter-cultural dialogue. The Church, in offering ways towards resolving social problems, is rooted in the centuries-old tradition of mankind and the spiritual heritage of Europe which give to the human person and society on the whole convincing motivation for a virtuous life. For the majority of the peoples of Europe such motivation is unthinkable without the Christian faith, the ideal of which we bear witness to in out external church mission.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, made a journey to the Middle East in the end of August. He visited three ancient Local Churches and met with their Primates. Upon returning to Moscow, he spoke about his visit to “Interfax-Religion.”

Q. – You have completed your journey to the Middles East countries and Turkey and visited three Patriarchates. What was the purpose of this trip?

A. – The trip was undertaken with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. His Holiness and the Holy Synod blessed me to visit the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches on a regular basis and to hold consultations on the matters of inter-Orthodox relations and topical problems of the life of the Orthodox Church at present. It was necessary to meet with the Primates of the three ancient Patriarchates – of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Current political events in the Middle East can seriously complicate the life of Christians in the region. It is not fortuitous that the problems of Christians there have been scrutinized by the heads of the Churches in the Middle East. On August 1, the Primates of the Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Cyprus and a representative of the Patriarchate of Alexandria met in Jordan. On August 23, a similar meeting took place in Cyprus. Another meeting on the Middle East problems will be chaired by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in Istanbul on September 1.

The Russian Orthodox Church has never been indifferent to the problems of our Orthodox brothers in the Middle East and has expressed its concern for the situation of Christians in the Middle East and in other regions of the world in the Statement of the Holy Synod of May 30.

Q. – How did the Primates with whom you met receive this Statement?

A. – I gave the text of the Statement translated into different languages, including the Greek and the Arabic, to the three Primates. They received it with gratitude, and the Patriarch of Antioch said that it would be published in the Orthodox media in Syria and Lebanon.

Q. – What is the attitude to the situation of Christians in the Middle East of the leader of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas with whom you met last Sunday?

A. – As a leader in the region with the predominant Arab population where Muslims and Christians live side by side, Mahmoud Abbas knows these problems very well and hopes that events, like the recent ones in Iraq and Egypt, will not take place in other countries of the region. It is known that the situation of Christians has deteriorated considerably after the regimes in these countries have been overthrown with outside help. For instance, a million and a half Christians lived in Iraq earlier; there are less than a half of them there at present. The life of Christians is under constant threat, and many are forced to leave cities and towns where their fellow believers used to live for many centuries.

Q. – Are more frequent meetings of the Primates linked with current political circumstances in the region? Will they discuss at the forthcoming meeting in Istanbul only regional problems or also general Orthodox problems?

A. – I have put this question to the three Patriarchs. His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew answered that the meeting will be dedicated to the Middle East problems in the first instance. Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch and Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem confirmed these words. Patriarch Theophilos added that as the Primates meet they can discuss any issues of interest.

It is hard to say at present whether the Pan-Orthodox Council will be discussed at their meeting. I believe, however, that questions of an inter-Orthodox nature should be discussed by all Local Orthodox Churches in order to avoid giving an impression that a group of Churches tries to make decisions on behalf of all Local Churches in their absence.

Q. – Did you cover the Pan-Orthodox Council at the meetings with the Patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem?

A. Yes.  It was important to discuss the possible configuration of the Council, its topics, representation of the Churches, and a method of decision-making. At present, the only method of decision-making in the inter-Orthodox cooperation is consensus. It is on consensus that a possibility of cooperation among the Local Orthodox Churches is based. It is this method that helps resolve emerging issues in the spirit of brotherly love and reach agreement on the matters that raise controversy.

Certain voices have been raised recently for giving up this method and replacing it with decision-making by simple majority. However, this drastic change in the work of inter-Orthodox bodies could entail grave consequences: if even one Church opposes a decision and her opinion is disregarded at voting, this would inevitably cause division in the family of Orthodox Churches. If this division is not overcome at the preparatory stage, it will surface at the Pan-Orthodox Council. Therefore, it is impossible to offer any other method today except consensus.

Q. – Your Eminence, what do you think of the norms of representation at the Pan-Orthodox Council? How many hierarchs will gather – hundreds or dozens of them?

A. – I believe that this issue must be discussed by the Pan-Orthodox Preparatory Commission. As we want to convene a true Pan-Orthodox Council, I think that all diocesan hierarchs should be invited so that each local Church is represented by its bishop at the Council as it was in the epoch of Ecumenical Councils. The total number of diocesan bishops of all Local Orthodox Churches is some five hundred, and it seems to me realistic to bring five hundred persons together. However, in case it turns out impossible for whatever reason to convene such a representative forum, then the representation of the Church should be proportional to its size.

There are mechanisms of inter-Orthodox cooperation at present at which each Church has one or two representatives. But if we talk of the Russian Orthodox Church, it should be understood that the number of its faithful is larger than that of all other Local Orthodox Churches combined. The size of the Church should be taken into account when a quota of representation at the Pan-Orthodox Council is set up.

Q. – What do you think of the venue and date of the Council?

A. – His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew expressed his wish to hold the Council in Istanbul, in the Agia Eirene church at which the Second Ecumenical Council took place in 381. I think that the Council can be held in the foreseeable future if the matters of representation, protocol, and agenda are thoroughly discussed and settled.

Q. – Is it possible to say that the Moscow Patriarchate supports the convening of the Council provided the agreement on all the problems is reached?

A. – We come out for the convening of the Council because it is necessary to present the single and agreed voice of Orthodoxy in the face of the challenges the Orthodox Church is encountering. Therefore, it is very important to surmount all differences at the preparatory stage so that the Council becomes a factor of unity rather than a factor of division. It is absolutely necessary to have consensus as the only method of decision-making as is common in inter-Orthodox cooperation.

Q. – Certain representatives of church public circles would say that the Eighth Ecumenical Council will revoke decisions of the Seven Councils…

A. – These fears are ungrounded as the Council will not take any decision that has not been made public by the Preparatory Commission during the last fifty years. Its decisions are known and are not subject to secrecy.  The documents and minutes of the Commission’s meetings are available to all who wish to see them. Many documents were published in “The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” in the 1970-89s.

Moreover, if the decision of convening the Pan-Orthodox Council is taken – and I would like to underscore that this decision can only be made by all Local Orthodox Churches – the topics discussed at the pre-council conferences during these fifty years will be scrutinized once again. Necessary corrections will be made with the changed circumstances taken into account. The decisions to be taken will be known in advance. There are no grounds to expect the Council to run into surprises.

Q. – Can one say that the adherence to the principle of consensus excludes decisions that would run counter to the church tradition as certain believers fear?

A. – Yes, it excludes such a decision, as the principle of consensus presupposes the agreement of all Churches with the taken decision. If one Local Orthodox Church does not agree, it has grounds for disagreement, and these grounds are found in its tradition.

I should say that there are no doctrinal differences or disagreement in canon law among the Local Orthodox Churches. All the difficulties we encounter concern political issues that can be resolved either in dialogue between the two Local Churches or on the inter-Orthodox level. As to the ten topics included in the agenda of the Pan-Orthodox Council fifty years ago, agreement has been reached on eight topics, while the remaining two are of a kind of technical nature. They are the signing of a Tomos on autocephaly in case it is granted to this or that Church, and the order of the Churches in official lists, that is, the diptychs. I would like to emphasize that these issues are not of doctrinal nature and can be settled even after the Pan-Orthodox Council.

Q. – Representatives of non-canonical groups in Ukraine not in communion with any of the Local Orthodox Churches expect that the Council and even the meeting of the five heads of the Middle East Churches will recognize their autocephaly and include their names in the diptyches.

A. – The problem of schism is a very painful problem. Schism is a wound on the body of the Church. Certainly, the Church should always exert efforts to heal schisms. The Church calls people who consciously or unconsciously have lapsed into schism to return to her bosom and always awaits them with open arms.

I believe that the Pan-Orthodox Council will be able to discuss these problems and take decisions that would help our brothers and sisters who have lapsed into schism to return to the bosom of the Church. However, I do not think that the meeting of the Primates of the Middles East Churches, which will be of consultative nature and dedicated to the problems of the region, can take any decision on the Ukrainian problems. Ukraine is not the Middle East. The meeting will be regional and dedicated to the regional problems.

Q. – You have officiated at the divine service on the Feast of the Dormition at the Convent of St. Mary Magdalene that belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). How were you welcomed and what can you say about cooperation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the ROCOR in the Holy Land?

A. – Mother Hegumeness Elizabeth and the sisters of the Convent of St. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane welcomed me very warmly, and I celebrated the Divine Liturgy there. On the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God I prayed with a special feeling there where the Mother of God was buried and where our Lord Jesus Christ prayed to His Heavenly Father before His suffering on the Cross and death.

Cooperation between the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate is developing properly. There are parallel structures of the Moscow Patriarchate and the ROCOR in some places, including the Holy Land. From the canonical point of view, it can be seen as an anomaly, but this situation has emerged from the tragic events of the post-revolutionary period, while the process of healing the inflicted wounds can take a long time.

A working group has been set up at the request of the ROCOR and by the decision of the Holy Synod. The group will deal with the questions of further cooperation between the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate. I believe that cooperation in the Holy Land can be also discussed if desired.

Q. Recently, reports have spread all over the world about the events in Egypt’s Giza where radical Muslim groups killed people and set on fire two Christians churches. Are there real threats to Christianity in the Middle East?

A. The Middle East is the cradle of Christianity. The history of Orthodoxy is inseparably linked with this region. There are four old Orthodox Patriarchates there, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and the old Archdioceses of Cyprus and Sinai. In history, the eastern Mediterranean repeatedly became an arena of political and religious wars, and Christians were often victims of those conflicts.

Christians and non-Christians managed to achieve peaceful coexistence in some countries of the region, and Egypt was considered one of the examples of such coexistence between the Muslim majority and the Christian minority. However, the tragedy of the last months, beginning from the terrorist attack committed at the Coptic church in Alexandria during the night of January 1, 2011, to the recent arsons in Giza, have stirred up anxiety and pain among millions of believers around the world.

Today’s developments in Egypt are only a part of the more global process affecting the life of Christians in a number of countries. If the authorities in the Middle East states do not take special measures to protect Christians we will soon see another wave of their emigration.

The escalation of Christianophobia in some countries of the Middle East is fraught with very serious consequences for Orthodoxy since it threatens the life of the oldest Local Churches and dooms them to a life without any rights. There is great anxiety about the preservation of common Christian shrines concentrated in those primordially Christian territories. But the greatest pain is over people’s ruined life, over those who have had to flee from oppression or to suffer from persecution and sometimes even death at the hands of extremists.

I would like to underscore that by no means radical Islamism and extremism under Islamic slogans should be identified with Islam which preach tolerance between people of different religions. I had an occasion to see it a few days ago when I met with the president, professors and students of Al-Azhar, the world largest Islamic university. This university sets as its principal tasks to educate young Muslims in the spirit of tolerance.

I was also deeply moved by a letter sent by Farid Salman, chairman of the Council of Ulemas under All Russia’s Muftiate, to the president of Al-Azhar, expressing sincere concern over the forced exodus of Christians from Muslim lands. This letter states in particular, ‘The continued exodus of Christians from the Middle East countries, attacks on churches and monasteries, the killing of clergy and the hostage-taking of Christians is the best present that could be given to overt and covert enemies of Islam’.

Radicalism, fundamentalism and extremism are common enemies for both Christianity and Islam. And the priority task of the leaders of traditional religions today is to educate their flock for not just tolerance towards people of different views and different faith but for love of them. It is only through common efforts that we can stop the wave of extremism which has engulfed the Middle East posing a threat to the very survival of Christianity in some countries in that region.

Q. Recently it has become known that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople intends to invite the primates of the five old Churches to a special conference on the situation of Orthodoxy in the Middle East. What does the Russian Orthodox Church expect from this gathering?

A. As far as we know, the proposed meeting will have as its subject the situation of Orthodoxy in the Middle East – the place of four old Patriarchates and the Archdiocese of Cyprus which traces back to the apostolic times. In this regard, the meeting in Constantinople will be another one, similar to the meeting which took place last year in Cyprus on the initiative of Archbishop Chrysostom of Cyprus. That meeting was attended by the Primates of the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Cyprus.

In the recent months the political situation in the Middle East has become more tense and the problem concerning the situation and prospects of Orthodoxy in the region has become more acute. The urgency of such a meeting in face of so serious a threat is quite understandable.

At the same time, there are reports that the agenda of the proposed gathering has also included pan-Orthodox issues arising in the course of preparations for the forthcoming Great Council of the Orthodox Church. And the inclusion of pan-Orthodox issues has been motivated by a special role played by the Churches whose autocephaly is confirmed by Ecumenical Councils and who constitute, as it were, ‘the pillar’ of the world Orthodoxy.

We hold the authority of the old Patriarchates in special respect. But if the matter is common affairs then it is necessary to deliberate all together in accordance with the commonly accepted principles of pan-Orthodox cooperation. Indeed, our common goal is to consolidate the efforts of all Local Churches, regardless of the history of their emergence, in the face of various challenges of our time.

And we certainly cannot agree that a particular group of Churches is regarded as ‘the pillar’ of world Orthodoxy on the grounds that their autocephaly is older than that of other Churches, for in this case there is a threat of dividing Orthodoxy into first-rate Churches and second-rate Churches. If the Pan-Orthodox Council is to be prepared and conducted properly we should be guided by the ecclesiological concepts which unite Orthodox Churches rather than create new concepts capable of bringing in division and trouble.

Q. In this connection, how would you comment on the recent claims of Archbishop Chrysostom of Cyprus to the fifth place in the order of Orthodox Primates?

A. In the pre-Council process, the representatives of the Church of Cyprus have advocated the principles of ancience for many years now and proposed that it be put in the basis of the diptych. It is clear however that a consistent use of these principles would result in a radical review of the order of the Primates. In this case, the first place would have to be given to the Patriarch of Jerusalem as head of ‘the Mother Church’ to be followed by the Primates of Antioch and Cyprus since the apostles’ preaching in these Churches is recorded in the New Testament. The next one would be the Pope of Alexandria whose throne came into prominence in the first three centuries of Christianity. The next one would be the Patriarch of Constantinople and the rest.

The canonical tradition of the Church knows of other principles of ordering the diptych, whereby Archbishop of Constantinople, considering the ecclesio-political significance of the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was placed in the 4^th century above the heads of the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch, apostolic as they were in there origin. In the same century Jerusalem, restored on the ruins of the ravaged Jewish capital, was given the fifth place to become the fourth after the rupture with Rome in 1054.

Should we today subject to a radical review the legacy of the holy fathers of the Ecumenical Councils? As a reminder, the same patristic principles guided the fathers of the Constantinople Councils of 1590 and 1593, which not only granted the title of Patriarch to the head of the Russian Church but also confirmed his fifth place in the diptych for all the centuries to come.

Relying on the words of St. Paul, who said, ‘No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval’ (1 Cor. 11:19), I am convinced that the matter of ordering the diptych cannot in any way influence our traditionally friendly relations with the Archdiocese of Cyprus and its Primate. This is precisely the reason for the existence of councils in the Church so that all arising perplexities may be resolved in the spirit of peace and fraternal love and preferences may be given to those who have God’s approval.

At the same time, it would be the most important thing for the people of God to manifest our unity and to show to the world that the Orthodox have not lost the Spirit of Christ and are still capable of living up to the commandments of the One Who said, ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (Jn. 13:35) and ‘It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant’ (Mt. 20:26).

That is why I believe that any review of the diptych whatsoever should not be initiated now. Any further discussion on this theme can only put off the convening of a Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, while this Council is what our flock expect from us. And the people of God not at all expect from us a decision as to the order in which Primates of our Church should be placed in the diptych. They rather expect from us a powerful and inspired witness to the truth of Christ; they expect answers to the questions of how the Orthodox Christian should live in the modern world. Let us hold the Council and show to the whole world that we are united and unanimous and that we are capable of responding to the challenges of our time ‘with one mind and one voice’. And let us leave the question of which of the Primates should take which place for the post-Council time.

Q. Beside the problem of order, are there any differences in the number of primates included in the diptych of various Local Churches? And what are the reasons for these differences?

A. The reason is recognition or non-recognition of the autocephalous status of the Orthodox Church in America. Along with the Russian Orthodox Church, the one who granted autocephaly to the former American Metropolia in 1970, this status of the Church in America is recognized by some other Local Churches.

Nevertheless, regardless of recognition or non-recognition of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America, nobody challenges the canonicity of her archpastors and clergy. It enables her to be a full-fledged participant in the common life of the Church by sending her representatives to numerous inter-Orthodox meetings. The more bishops and priests of this Church participate in common church events, the sooner, I believe, this matter of the pan-Orthodox recognition of her status will be settled.

And it is very important that the Primate of this Church, equally with Primates of other Local Orthodox Churches, should participate in inter-Orthodox events every time when invited. Indeed, the presence of the Primate of the American Church in inter-Orthodox events will be the most eloquent testimony that this Church is serious about her autocephaly and makes efforts to have this autocephaly recognized by other Local Orthodox Churches as well.

2. The Russian Orthodox Church attaches great importance to her relations with the authorities of the United States of America. The Department for External Church Relations has maintained contacts with the US Embassy in Moscow and especially with the head of the US diplomatic mission, Mr. John Beyrly. This February I visited the USA where I had several meetings with state officials. The focus of these meetings was an account of the inner life of our Church, her external activity and experience of service in today’s world.

We highly appreciate the fact that your organization stands for the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment which was adopted at the height of the cold war and which hampers the development of American-Russian relations today. We also give a high value to the concern of your organization for broadening relations in the triangle Russia-Israel-USA. It is my conviction that the time has come to overcome the artificially-erected dividing walls in relations between our nations.

3. The Russian Church has a long history of constructive dialogue with the Jewish community in the USA. For over thirty years we have been in close cooperation with the Appeal of Conscience Foundation founded and led by Rabbi Arthur Schneier. During my recent visit to the United States I had a talk with him which has left good impressions. We work together to promote initiatives for developing interreligious cooperation, including on the platforms of international organizations. At present we are working out a mechanism of high-level dialogue between traditional world religious communities in partnership with UNESCO.

4. For Orthodox Christians the Holy Land is a special magnetic place, where the Lord Jesus Christ lived, died and was risen from the dead. After the lifting up of visa system between Russia and Israel in September 2008, the number of our citizens coming to Israel has grown considerably. Among them are Orthodox pilgrims from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and other countries under the pastoral responsibility of the Moscow Patriarchate.

As is known, there are many of our expatriates living in Israel – which is an additional favourable factor in relations between our countries. This factor is often underestimated. The Russian Orthodox Church gives a special importance to the efforts to preserve unity in the multinational diaspora of our expatriates throughout the world.

5. We are aware of the efforts undertaken by your organization to foster peace in the Middle East and to promote the negotiation process between the Israeli Government and the leaders of the Palestinian Autonomy. The Russian Church is interested in good neighbourly relations between peoples living in the Holy Land and consistently advocates a peace settlement of the long-standing conflict. The confrontation has lasted for many years now and cost many innocent people life and health. The conscience of any believer rebels against the situation of permanent bloodshed in places held so dear. Precisely for this reason a resolution of the Middle East problem is unthinkable without an appeal of all peoples in the region to their religious traditions which can keep people from violence.

The Russian Church is convinced that the Holy Land should be made a place where the faithful of all world religions could freely profess their beliefs and have access to holy places.

Unfortunately, the peacemaking contribution of religions in the Middle East settlement remains to a large extent unclaimed. The work of international mechanisms is closed in fact for the participation of religious leaders. The expressly secular nature of international organizations makes believers not subjects of peace settlement but rather objects of all kinds of programs and actions elaborated without their involvement. As a result the situation becomes even more aggravated. The Russian Orthodox Church is ready to act as mediator in the peace process, offering her assistance to the sides of the conflict.

6. Israel claims to be a secular state, but unfortunately this claim has often led to disregard for the feelings of believers, not only those of Judaism but also other religions. In the Russian Church, we felt regret at the reports about holding the so-called ‘pride parades’ of homosexual minorities in the Holy City. We are convinced that only traditional morality can be a solid support for the life of society and relations between people. This is why it is so necessary to have dialogue between religious communities, the state and all the public forces so that its results could be lived up in the order of the socium.

7. I would like to share with you my concern over the recent social and political developments in North Africa and the Middle East. A change of political regimes and clash of interests between various public forces lead to a situation of uncertainty, an outburst of violence and lawlessness. There is a threat today that power in these countries will be seized by radical Islamists notorious for their calls for reprisal against both Jews and Christians. We can see growing Christianophobia which results in pogroms of Christian churches and killing of Christians. All this happens with the still persistent anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the background. The world community should rise in defence of the right of everyone to confess one’s faith freely and to live in accordance with religious norms and principles.

In this connection, I highly value the fact that the European Parliament adopted on January 20, 2011, a Resolution on the Situation of Christians in the Context of Freedom of Religion. It is for the first time that the European parliamentarians stated in full voice their opinion on the problem they have preferred to keep silent about so far. Thus, a major political body of the European Union has recognized the persecution of Christians in the world. Earlier, only certain politicians have confined themselves to talks about certain violations of the rights of Christians in a particular country. Now they are talking openly of the strategy of some terrorist organizations and fundamentalist movements aimed at the destruction or ousting of Christians living in the Moslem countries as “the fifth column” of the West.

Besides, a thorough attention was paid for the first time to the work of people gathering objective information about persecution of Christians in the world. For instance, it was for the first time that information contained in the annual report prepared by a non-governmental organization, “The Aid to the Churches in Need”, was made public officially. According to it, there were seventy-five Christians out of every one hundred killed as a result of religious intolerance in recent years. This statistics is stunning.

The European Parliament addressed the EU bodies and proposed concrete methods of influencing the situation. The principle is simple: money and business in exchange for the observance of human rights. Economic agreements between the EU countries and the states with the recorded violation of religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities should be concluded only when the situation of religious groups infringed in their rights is improved.

We are witnessing cases of not only gross violence against Christians, but also of their physical destruction. The blood of Christians is again being poured on the land of Biblical history, the site of glorious heroic deeds of the martyrs and confessors of the Church.

Not only world Christian communities, but also Muslims, Jews, and representatives of other traditional religions do not stay indifferent to the recent acts of violence. It is a paradox that news of the oppression of Christians come sometimes from those regions of the world where representatives of different religions have peacefully coexisted for centuries, and any manifestation of Christianphobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism has always been implicitly denounced by the leaders of traditional religious communities.

8. In conclusion, I would like to cite the Prophet Isaiah: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet” (Is. 62:1). Let these words of Holy Scriptures inspire us in our desire to bring well-being to the Biblical land.

- What is your opinion of the European Parliament’s resolution on the violation of the rights of Christians? How and why at all did it appear?

- The European Parliament has adopted the Resolution on the Situation of Christians in the Context of Freedom of Religion, and the EU Committee of Foreign Ministers in its statement on February 22 expressed concern for ‘the increasing number of acts of religious intolerance and discrimination, as epitomised by recent violence and acts of terrorism, in various countries, against Christians’. These two decisions were to a considerable extent a result of the intensive efforts of Christian Churches. I should also mention the New Year message of Pope Benedict XVI who called Christians ‘the religious group who suffer most from persecution on account of their faith’. The protection of the rights of Christians is an urgent task today. The reason for the European Parliament’s resolution was the terrorist attack made at one of the Coptic churches in Alexandria on January the 1^st this year.

A week after, the foreign ministers of several European states appealed to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to react to this act of terrorism. The reaction followed in the form of this document of the European Parliament, which can be called revolutionary since the European parliamentarians finally spoke up on a problem which they preferred previously to hush up.

According to the non-governmental organization ‘Aid to the Church in Need’, out of every 100 victims killed in the manifestations of religious intolerance in recent years, 75 are Christians.

The enemy image

- What has caused the violation of the rights of Christians in the countries mentioned in the resolution?

- Every country has a specific character of interreligious relations. Christians used to live in most of these states for ages, even at times when local political regimes claimed to be much more radical than they are today. But in our days, when all the states are committed to the protection of human rights, the exodus of Christians from some states has only increased. In my view, this suggests a failure of today’s world policy in the area of religious freedom and a lack of interest in religious education. As a result, many draw their religious identity from setting off their own beliefs against those of others. Religious ignorance becomes a ground for cultivating hatred towards adherents to a different faith and even for calling for physical destruction. In addition, Christians have become victims of political miscalculations made by Western states. The situation is bad in Iraq. According to some estimates, a half of its 1, 4 million-strong Christian population has already left the country since 2003. Without assessing the internal political situation in Iraq as it was before the NATO interference, we can state that the affairs there had never come to the physical destruction of Christians. The foreign military invasion has made local Christians hostages to the ill-considered actions of NATO countries.

There is a grave situation in India, too. Since 2001, there have been some 130 attacks against Christian annually, and there were 149 attacks in 2010. In Pakistan, Christians often become victims of the so-called law on blasphemy which provides for capital punishment. On March 2, the Pakistani Minister for Religious Minorities, Mr. Shakhbaz Bhatti, a Catholic, was assassinated. He managed to do much for relieving the religious tension in the country, and he was not afraid of speaking in public against the initiatives of religious extremists.

- Can this wave of violence be stopped?

- Historically, many states including Russia claimed to protect Christian communities which lived in a minority situation. In our time, such external guarantees of the rights of minorities are impossible since they are viewed as interference in the internal affairs of a country. However, it does not give cause for refusal to support Christian communities in different ways such as raising this problem at international organizations or developing cooperation programs to foster interreligious peace in whole regions. The European Parliament’s resolution proposes a concrete action plan. It can be boiled down to the following fundamental principle: economic and financial support in exchange for ensuring human rights in the countries to which this support is given. This principle should become one of the factors in the foreign policy of Western states. The rights of Christians can be ensured only through dialogue between traditional religions both within states and on international level. That is why the Russian Orthodox Church participates in the work of the Interreligious Council in Russia and the CIS and advocates the establishment of a mechanism of dialogue between religious communities and UNESCO.

Uniting of confessions

- Are violations of the rights of Christians happen only outside Europe?

- Certainly, Europe does not allow of direct violence against people of any religion. However, the tendency towards secularization of the societal life has led to the emergence of political and legislative realities unacceptable to Christians. Religion is sought to be simply ousted from public domain. Let us remember the ruling of the European Court in the case of Lautsi versus Italy, which banned the presence of Christian symbols in schools. Discouraging are also attempts made by some EU states to introduce the so-call sexual education of children. Christians in Europe also see the violation of their rights in sexual minorities’ parades in Paris, Berlin and other once Christian cities. Therefore, it is difficult to speak of absolute respect with regard to the rights of Christians in Europe. So, it is a universal problem. For this reason, the Russian Orthodox Church keeps calling for an open, interested and equitable discussion on this issue.

Nobody should be lured away

- What are the prospects for the joint efforts of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians in protecting the rights of Christian minorities?

- Unfortunately, even some states in Western Europe today increasingly seek to restrict the expressions of Christian religiosity in public life, arguing that the rights of people of other religions and those of atheists should be respected. For this reason, Christians of various confessions need to engage in joint actions to protect Europe’s Christian identity and to defend the Christian tradition of European culture.

In case of the Lautsi versus Italy proceedings, this solidarity has led to concrete results. The Moscow Patriarchate supported the protest of the Roman Catholic Church against the court decision and contributed to Russia’s support for the appeal lodged by the Government of Italy with the Grand Chamber of the European Court. The appeal was supported by some other European states as well.

And quite recently, on March 18, this position was supported by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which ruled that crucifixes can hang in classrooms in European schools.

- What is the role played by proselytism?

- Proselytism, that is, luring believers away from one Christian confession to another, has long proved to be harmful for the development of dialogue between Christian Churches. In a situation where Christian have to face manifestations of Islamic extremism, solidarity of Christian, whatever Church or community they may belong to, become a vital task. Christians in the Middle East have long realized it and seek to give each other all possible help. The Middle East is the cradle of Christianity and it is very important that Christian presence should be preserved there. This can be achieved only with the help of the international community.

The Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission is a working body which prepares the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. It elaborates items included in the Council’s agenda. The catalogue of the items was compiled in 1976 and includes ten topics demanding the elaboration of common position of the Orthodox Church. According to the regulation, proposals made by the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission are to be approved by the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference.

The major part of the mentioned catalogue has been elaborated in the last decades, while in 2009 the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference approved the decisions on the ordering of cooperation among the Churches in Orthodox diaspora. That same year the Commission formulated the unanimous opinion on the method of granting the autonomy (self-governing) to a church province within a Local Church and considered in part a method of promulgating a new autocephalous (completely independent) Church.

This time the Commission had to complete consideration of the issue of church autocephaly and discuss the topic of the holy diptychs – the lists, according to which the Primates of the Local Churches are commemorated during divine services.

The Commission’ meetings, chaired by Metropolitan John of Pergamon from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, took place on 21-27 February 2011. With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church was represented by myself, by Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia), and by my deputy, archpriest Nikolai Balashov.

Was an agreed decision on the mentioned questions taken?

The Commission’s work has shown that both mentioned questions need serious complementary exploration. The discussion in Chambesy was not an easy one and disclosed different positions, while the decision must be taken only by consensus in accordance with regulations.

The major debate developed on the method of signing a document on the promulgation of autocephaly called “Tomos.”  Some participants, including those of the Russian Church, made the following proposal: In keeping with the practice of the former Ecumenical and Pan-Orthodox Councils, common decision of all the heads of the Churches sign their common decision without any distinction, beginning, certainly, with the first among them – the Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the end it was recognized that this topic needs further exploration.

As to the topic of diptychs, the Commission has thoroughly studied all its aspects and analyzed the criteria used for the inclusion of the name of a Primate of a Church into diptychs. Having compared the differences in the present diptychs, the Commission considered it useful to reach a uniform opinion on this matter.

Also considered were opinions on the place of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches of Georgia, Cyprus, Poland and Albania and the variant reading in the diptychs that exist because of the lack of common opinion on the number of Churches recognized as autocephalous. This refers to the Orthodox Church in America, which is recognized as autocephalous by five Local Churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church, while other Churches do not have the name of its Primate in their diptychs. Unfortunately, mutual consent has not been obtained on all these questions.

Is it really true that convocation of the Holy and Great Council is postponed for an indefinite period? What should be done to reach the unity of sentiment on disputed questions?

The situation should not be excessively dramatized. It is true that we have encountered certain difficulties in the process of obtaining consensus on certain questions. However, it only means that we all should seriously ponder over the overcoming of these difficulties. After all, it was difficult to obtain consensus in the past.

Participants in the discussion in Chambesy are aware of their responsibility for the destiny of inter-Orthodox dialogue. They understand the necessity to continue in a constructive way the preparation for the Holy and Great Council. They understand the importance of thorough elaboration of all questions included in the agenda. We should seek to hear those points of view that do not concur with ours and try to comprehend them. In the process of seeking other solutions the voice of each participant in the dialogue should be heard and the opinion of each Local Church should be taken into account. This principle is reflected in the regulations of the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission and the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference.

Our common aim is not to convene the Council as soon as possible, but to do all we can to make its decisions show the majesty of the Orthodox faith to the world, to bring witness of the intransient meaning of the Holy Tradition of the Church, and to confirm the unity of the Church.

I am confident that preparations for the Pan-Orthodox Council will continue in the near future.

HAVE SALT AMONG YOURSELVES

Lecture at Dallas Seminary

February 12, 2011

The subject of traditional values and their connection with Christian faith has acquired paramount importance in current discourse on social ethics. It is remarkable that this precise matter is being widely examined both by ecclesial and secular bodies. Now for some time, societies living according to the laws of liberal democracy and the forces of the market economy have felt themselves trapped in an ethical vacuum principally because commonly accepted norms are continually undergoing questionable scrutiny.

It is not difficult to divine what is behind this.  The notion of ‘personal freedom’, which now dominates modern society, has enjoyed an observable, sustained tendency to expand, winning over more and more space at the expense of the narrowing sphere known as ‘public ethics.’ What remains is a pluralistic society run by a state stripped of any institution that pronounces and fixes norms of moral behaviour. Furthermore, in that liberal democracy has enthusiastically ostracized churches and religious organizations from the realm of private life, ensuing standards of neutrality on ethical issues are the inevitable and only possible platform for public debate. This debate, however, leads nowhere since neutrality in this sense inescapably yields an emptiness, and the affirmation that ethics, like religion, is ‘the private affair of each person’.

Our society, from time to time described as ‘post-Christian,’ is nonetheless founded on the rudiments of Christian ethics.  Its current bearers are the families and individuals who resist the growing aggressive milieu which seeks maximal, though falsely understood, freedom. The norms of ethics, which continue to be the concern of the state, cannot be trusted as permanent since they can so easily be changed and ‘liberalized’ by the democratic introduction of appropriate amendments to unsatisfactory legislation.

From the Christian point of view, moral commandments are eternal and unchangeable.  Man, created in the image and likeness of God, has from generation to generation preserved a moral intuition that has been forged in him by God. Pluralistic secular society, however, ignoring the Legislator Who stands over it, seeks to appropriate the power that defines and interprets the norms of moral social behaviour. In so doing, ‘normality’ is swayed by the fluctuations of ‘public opinion,’ fluctuations that owe their existence to the technological manipulation of public consciousness, artificially created by interested circles, volatile, and fully dependent on ideals approved by an omnipotent mass media.

It is, therefore, secular society itself that establishes the criteria of moral behaviour, criteria which have no underlying foundation because they are not rooted in the eternally just law of God.  As such, standards can a priori be changed.

Let us recall a recent public debate in the United States on the abortion issue. It turned out that pro-choice adherents were supported by wealthy companies – producers and sellers of contraceptives and ecbolics – that desired to expand their ‘business’ under the rhetoric of  “defending babies’ right to be wanted”. In spite of the blatant aberration and bloody, nightmarish act of killing unborn babies, a great number of states, allegedly responding to their citizens’ wishes, legalized abortion during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.

Another vivid example of this line of thinking is the widespread contention in Western Europe and America about the right of same-sex couples to adopt children. Even such fundamental notions as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are now being challenged in order to please secular ethics. Instead of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ we hear the impersonal ‘parent number one’ and ‘parent number two’. First we witnessed the efforts being made to attest that same-sex unions are as ethically justifiable as the natural union of a man and a woman; then this appendage surfaces tagged with laws, terms, and a novel nomenclature.

Last year, the erosion of yet another moral standard, one that had hitherto been considered irreversible, surfaced in the US Army. Before 2010, American officers and privates had been prohibited from openly demonstrating any unconventional sexual orientation. Those who did so were discharged. The resulting discourse in American society once again demonstrated the defining role of the mass media in shaping public opinion through targeted propaganda. Existing legislation can easily be changed, and moral standards can be redefined and reinterpreted. Pluralistic society has for a long time appropriated the right to decide what is moral and what is amoral by using as benchmark the purely legal imperative: ‘what is not forbidden is permitted.’ It is altogether astonishing that a principle of criminal law has suddenly become a defining paradigm in the moral field of social living!

The entire issue of morality, especially social morality, is not that it has lost its enormous importance, but that in our times it is valued essentially from a different standpoint. Moreover, in recent decades, the very notion of ‘values’ has fallen under suspicion. While until recently it was seen as something indisputable, an objective given, today we are told that the concept of values is artificial, having been created at a certain time for specific purposes. The perception of values is equated to ideology, the product of a social contract which, accordingly, has a purely temporary and conditional nature.

In liberal Protestant theology of the last quarter of the 20^th century, there was a stable tendency to reject a whole number of fundamental values, including those of moral order. Protestant critics spoke of the material rather than the spiritual nature of ethical values categorizing the latter as ‘materialized ethics,’ deprived of any connection with religion.

The implication here is that not only the very idea of moral values but also their possible existence is challenged. Moral values can indeed be used for ideological purposes; this was evident, for example, in totalitarian states –Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. To be sure a particular set of values was used in raising an Arian – a citizen of the Third Reich, or a builder of communism.

Though not all values can be called Christian, some have been borrowed from Christian ethics. In the case of Christian-based principles, the reliance of a state on values had as its central aim to show its concern for what was traditionally known as the ‘common good’. Regrettably, the view of what is ‘common good’ in a pluralistic society has collapsed, since what is good for some is not necessarily good for others. And we once again find ourselves in a vicious circle: nothing is objective: there are only your subjective feelings or mine.

But objectivity and impartiality require of a responsible enquirer that he reject the media approach to the problem and instead study it in its entire retro- and prospective totality. If, when investigating the meaning of moral value, we focus solely on the ‘value’ component (thereby severing morality from the holistic context of its historical evolution), we destroy the sense of continuity of its natural evolution over the millennia by isolating it at particular developmental stages and then classifying it as universally fundamental. Actually, our task is much more difficult. In stripping away the dogmas of pluralistic ideology, we should embrace mentally all of the stages within a single contextual process and then appreciate its organic and integral nature.

In making our detailed investigation, we must first revoke the very notion of ‘moral value’ as identified by modern ethics. What is it that lies on the other side of that which is defined by axiology as ‘moral value’? Is it the family as a ‘type’ of the common life of a man and a woman? Or the sanctioned product of a social contract? Or the fulfilment of the reproductive instinct? Or does something bigger stand behind it, such as the actualization of the enormous creative potential of love? Turning now to our search of what constitutes goodness: is it or is it not motivated psychologically? Does it stem from the sphere of human affects, or is it a natural, inborn requirement of a human being?

Clearly, a positive answer can be given to each of these questions. But our interest here centres more on the phenomenon of ‘unconscious intentional acts’, as Husserl called them. By way of clarification, let us consider our actions at the pre-reflective stage, before they became objects of speculative analysis. For example, what motivating force engenders the impartial act of giving aid to the needy? What compels a person to do good; what power or ability? How did the general distinction between evil and good develop in our cultures? It is precisely this intention to do good, that personal inspired impulse, which is the creative point of departure not only for an individual but also for a family, a community and ultimately for the life of society in its totality.

Moving on to the level of inter-personal relations, this intention for good acts can now be defined as ‘values’, the meaning of which lies in its macroscopic application for society. And from this perspective, the very notion of values, even if originally borrowed by ethics from economics, is altogether positive, void of selfish abuse. Moral values create the person, family, community, and society as a whole. They are instrumental in establishing a healthy and harmonious atmosphere, allowing us the opportunity to live long and to communicate with one another in peace and love.

Clearly, no human intention is purposeless. Earlier, we defined moral values as human desire for harmony – a classical notion which originated in Greek philosophy with the idea of καλοκαγαθία, according to which a human being should be καλòς καì α̉γαθός – beauty in body and kindness in the soul. The essence of harmony was viewed at that time as conformity with the Cosmos – a universal ordering. This in turn gave rise to the conception of man as a microcosm who, writ small, embodies the whole Universe.

The Enlightenment continued to uphold the concept of human calling but it soon mingled this with a critical element which, over time, diverted the course of European history and culture. Now it was no longer the Cosmos with its order and laws that constituted the focus of attention and the source of edification, but man himself: isolated, an abstract unit. For its part, the Renaissance actualized the aphorism of the sophist, Protagoras: ‘Man is the measure of all things’. It is noteworthy that the sophists’ sensualism was criticized by Socrates and Plato, whose philosophical contributions were decisive for our culture. The path towards deifying man led our culture to an impasse, a void from which, to this day, we are unable to free ourselves. Indeed, no two minds think alike and as such, how can a just society, a state, be formed where all of the citizens feel free and happy?

Socrates and Plato progressed in their visions of harmony and happiness. They tried to explain how man should live, what he should live for and what should be his life’s goal. But our modern culture in its attempts to deify man ignores these questions. Why? What do we have instead? Contemporary opinion is that man’s happiness is defined by his being a consumer and a seeker of specific pleasures!

Accordingly, our civilization finds itself in yet another vacuum, this one characterized by the absence of positive notions, goals and desires. In the words of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, an American theologian of Russian origin, modern culture is distinguished by its negativity. One only has to switch on the TV and listen to news reports: mostly about disasters, murders and crimes! Media technologists have admitted that negative news stories sell for a higher price and are purchased more willingly than stories with positive content. And look at modern movies? Most address human passion and rarely develop anything good or worthy for people’s lives.

Curiosity, pleasure and entertainment have become the artificial substitutes of goodness and happiness.  They have captured the riveted attention of the average man.  When heated in the flames of mass media and pop culture the result is an impersonal ethos that exploits commercially human passion and vice.  Most lamentably there is simply not a single modern pluralistic society that cares for the spiritual well being of its inhabitants.

Standing in contradistinction to this situation are the unambiguously positive and creative moral values that at one time had been espoused by a traditional Christian culture.  These include goodness, joy, forgiveness, patience, love, mercy, and self-sacrifice. They were the bases upon which the harmonious life both of individuals and of all society were built. They directed a person not to momentary pleasures but to true happiness which can be found in this life when one devotes time and effort to others. These virtues are not the product of a social contract; they grew organically from Christian teaching and were practiced by people who created their culture and determined their history. In other words, moral values were primarily the categories required for the education and self-education of a healthy personality, just the opposite of the instruction in social behaviour taught to schoolchildren. Our civilization’s loss of positive guidelines is most luridly evidenced in the erosion of the concept of the common good and in the rejection of traditional values both of which had been instilled by Christianity.

Moral values, which are grounded in Holy Scripture, are of a personal nature and are realized in the life of each one of us. They stem first of all from the biblical teaching of the creation of man in the image and after the likeness of God (Gen. 1:26). If man is in the image of God it follows that he is called to resemble his Prototype. The Lord Jesus Christ, the New Adam, the Perfect Man, restored the likeness of man to God after its loss at the Fall.  He opened to everyone the way to inner renewal: In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul asserts: Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (Col. 3:8-10). Again in his letter to the Philippians this same idea is expressed: In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5).

It is precisely this ‘same mindset as Christ Jesus’ that gave birth to the notion of moral values. With the passing of the centuries this notion entered the thesaurus of traditional guiding principles. With the rise of secularism and individualism, together with new elaborate theories of liberation, the Church lost contact with the broad masses.  People’s attention was deflected to concerns that were remote from such positive ideals as happiness, love and harmony. Instead, the prevailing aspirations were agitated by perfectionism, rationality and logic. Ethical conduct was transmuted into a science, an aspect of philosophy and law.  Eventually it shifted from an aggregate of personal qualities to a set of prescriptions observable by one’s behaviour in society.

Development of this kind did not at all belittle the importance of moral values in their own right. Indeed, moral values are of absolute necessity in today’s explosion of human personality crises.  First of all they act as guidelines for one’s harmonious growth and self-fulfilment. While contemporary mass culture and its offspring, modern civilization, impose on us a veneration of endless pleasure (known as ‘lust’ in biblical language [cf. 1 Pet. 4:3]), moral values serve as guidelines not only for one’s pathway way to God but also to union with Him, in His likeness. This likeness does not mean blind imitation but a conscious choice made by the free personality.  It implies mastering ‘the same mindset as Christ Jesus’. In Orthodox theology, this pathway is called deification.

Christian communities today should denounce the imposition of ‘civil society institutions.’ These are a form of ghetto into which secular civilization has driven them and into which they themselves have agreed to enter. Bearing witness to traditional Christian moral values will promote strong opposition to those who conspire to remove them permanently from social life. Following Christ may incur conflict with social forces whose aim is to corrupt and degrade. But if Christians are simply content to exist as honest tax-payers, indifferent to the growth of corruption in society and reliant on the separation of church and state, then they betray Christ and cease to be the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savour, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot (Mt. 5:13).

As never before, today’s society needs to be reminded of traditional, absolute moral values that are based on divine law. It is necessary to educate people, not through complex theological reasoning, but rather with very simple ‘conventional’ truths.  Here are some examples: marriage is the union of a man and a woman; every child has the right to have a father and a mother – not parent number one, two or three; human life is precious; it is inadmissible, at any time between conception and natural death, to terminate life artificially. These and other similar moral axioms, constantly being challenged by modern secular society, should be restored in public consciousness.

Our Saviour says, Have salt among yourselves (Mt. 9:50), which means, be that which does not exist in the world. And in our time it is this salt that constitutes the inner moral content of a unique Christian personality raised on experience and communion with God. It is this personality who serves as a moral guideline for those near us; it communicates to them the life in Christ, so that people will come to appreciate the fruit of this experience and its value for themselves. In these ways, moral values move from the category of individualism to that of collective personhood; they contribute to the common good and to the establishment of peace and harmony in society. Briefly put, sound moral qualities in society breed healthy inter-personal relations, stability, benevolence, joy and happiness to all.

For the first part of my address, after which we could share opinions, I will identify three distinctive features which form the bases of Russian spirituality. These are beauty, concern for the creation and the sense of community. I shall then try to show how these features, as expressions of Christian faith, have influenced Russian culture as a whole.

To begin with I would like to emphasize that Russian spirituality is not a museum piece, not a dead heritage, but the basis for the life of the nations in the pastoral care of the Moscow Patriarchate. It includes the spiritual, historical and cultural legacy of our nations. Russian spirituality is a particular genotype cultivated by the Russian world.

Beauty

The sense of beauty is inseparable from spiritual life in Christ and a feeling for the beautiful is an organic part of Russian spirituality. Through beauty when closely connected to art, man comes to know God. In The Story of the Passing Years, we read that it was the beauty of the Byzantine liturgy that led the holy Prince Vladimir to choose the Orthodox faith. ‘We did not know where we were – in heaven or on earth’.  This is how his envoys to Constantinople described the beauty and sublimity of the Orthodox liturgy. Some writers go so far as to say that art is a sacred mission because true art is in some way the Word of God, or to be more precise, divine revelation given to human dwellers in this created world.

Sacred beauty, not simply religious aesthetics, finds its expression in Russian iconographic art, which thrived in many centres – Novgorod, Tver and, of course, Moscow. Correspondingly, beauty in church singing lies in its ability to reflect the celestial liturgies. Hence, the sense of beauty in Russian spirituality, expressed primarily in liturgy, is of no small significance.

The creation

The second distinctive feature of Russian spirituality is its intimacy with nature, with the creation. The beauty of the universe directs us to a knowledge of the living God. Accordingly, knowledge of God helps us to discover the beauty of the world, which is itself a revelation. In his master work, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, through the lips of Starets Zosima, stresses this intimacy: ‘Love the whole creation of God, each and every grain of sand. Love every tiny leaf, every ray from God. Love animals, love plants, love every thing. If you love every thing you will perceive the mystery of God in things’.

But communication with the created world is not limited to mere private contemplation. On the contrary spiritual experience has been known to culminate in reconciliation with nature, equivalent to a mysterious restoration of humanity’s paradisal state. Sts Sergius of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov both of whom lived in close contact with wild animals, testify to this solidarity with nature. St. Silouan, on the other hand, asserted that while all creation is at the service of man, he is obliged to care for every creature.  In this understanding, any harm inflicted upon nature by man is contrary to the law of grace. The experience of holy fathers, such as these three, tells that we can change the world around us only by changing our own inner world. St. Maximus the Confessor affirmed that man could turn the earth into a paradise if only he held paradise within him. Because mankind’s sinfulness was catastrophic for humanity and for all creation, the entire creation, not only man, must be transformed. Through spiritual effort humans can contribute to the transfiguration of the material world and of the cosmos as a whole. Thus, in Russian theological thought, the salvation of persons is inseparable from the salvation of the entire created order. The philosopher Berdyaev expressed this eloquently when he wrote: ‘The way of my salvation includes the love of animals and plants, of every blade of grass, of rivers and seas, mountains and fields. Through it I and the whole world are saved’.

Community

The third element of Russian spirituality is concern for the community.  Over the centuries, foreign travellers to Russia have been singularly impressed by the nation’s sense of community. In Russian villages, the one often very remote from the other, this spirit of community was nurtured. Accounting for this special feature, Russian sages did not see it in terms of Aristotle’s principle of the polis, that is to say, the social aspect of human individuality, but from the fact that we are ‘persons’ created in the image of God, the Holy Trinity.  And we can only express or bear witness to our personhood when we are in communion with other persons.

This sense of community is integral to Russian spirituality.  Dostoyevsky, again in The Brothers Karamazov, declares, ‘Everyone is responsible for all’. Even the sacred art on Russian iconostases reflect community with their images of the fellowship of saints. In the Deisis tier, Christ is depicted together with the Mother of God and John the Baptist, while other panels depict Old and New Testament figures grouped together.

The social aspect of human perfection is developed in the works of the Slavophile philosophers who introduced the notion of sobornost. Sobor means council but the idea of sobornost is much broader. In its most general sense, Khomyakov describes sobornost as ‘unity in diversity’, a perception that has both ecclesiological and anthropological implications. Indeed, for the Slavophiles, human nature created in the image of the Triune God is essentially conciliar.

The apprehension of community as unity in diversity finds expression in the church’s earnest attempts at transforming society at large. Eastern Christianity is sometimes accused of having little interest in social issues. But on the contrary, Russian devotion is characterised by the considerable attention it gives to charitable and social work. Even monastic communities in Russia, notwithstanding their orientation towards inner contemplation, never preclude but indeed presume social service. Evidence for this is the tangible activity undertaken by many monastics.  One prominent example was the saintly abbot Joseph of Volokolamsk, whose monastery provided asylum for thousands of destitute and ill people. Social care, therefore, remained an uninterrupted leitmotif in Russian religious consciousness, especially in the 19^th century. The adoption in 2000 of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Social Concepts lies in the mainstream of the Russian theological tradition.

The special relationship between Christianity and culture

Beauty, concern for the creation and community spirit are distinctive features not only of Russian spiritual traditions but also of Russian culture in its wider sense. Taken as a whole, one may aptly speak of the phenomenon known as ‘Holy Russia’.

Up until the time of Emperor Peter I, secular culture was virtually absent in Russia: any popular cultural life was concentrated around the Church. But after the Petrine era, secular literature, poetry, art and music were cultivated, culminating to a high point during in the 19^th century. Despite its severance from the Church, Russian culture nevertheless preserved a powerful religio-spiritual dimension that, until the 1917 Revolution, retained a living contact with church tradition. After the debacle, when access to the treasures of Orthodox spiritually was closed, the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and other great writers, poets and composers became the sole source of knowledge about faith, God, the Gospel, theology and prayer. Throughout the seventy years of unmitigated Godless atheism, Russian culture held fast to Orthodox tradition, sustaining it in the minds and hearts of the people. It remained the good news for millions of people whose roots had perversely been torn from their roots by the Soviet regime.

Allow me to provide a few examples of how Russian culture was influenced by Orthodoxy, with special reference to literature, music and painting.

Nineteenth century Russian writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, is rightly considered to be a priceless treasure of world literature. Unlike the West at that time, Russian culture was closely allied to Christian tradition. Berdyaev wrote that all 19^th century literature ‘was possessed’ by Christian themes. This affiliation is especially noticeable in the writings of the great Russian poets: Pushkin and Lermontov; and the authors Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Leskov, and Chekhov, all of whose names have been inscribed in gold lettering not only in the annals of world literature but also in those of the Orthodox Church. These masters wrote in an age when a growing number of the intelligentsia were turning away from the Church. Pushkin, following a period of doubt and even rejection of the faith, penned beautiful words about Christianity, as in his Prophet verses.  These initiated a correspondence on the subject of poetry with Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. Poems of Michael Lermontov given the rubric ‘Prayer’ reveal a profound spiritual.

Musical compositions by Glinka, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rachmaninov are equally imbued with religious conviction. Many of them composed sacred choral music, such as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, whose Liturgies were intended for the ecclesial use.

We also find the influence of Orthodox spirituality in 19^th century Russian painting, particularly in canvases by Vasnetsov, Nesterov, and Kramskoy.

This picture would not be complete without mentioning the celebrated 19^th century philosophers of Russia, who, regardless of their attitude to the Church, were inspired by a discerning religious interest. I call to mind the works of Khomyakov, the Trubetskoy brothers, Solovyev, and Berdyaev, who reflected on such matters as freedom of faith, conciliarity, the cosmos, aesthetics, history, eschatology, and social justice.

This overriding religious outlook and search for God was reflected abundantly in Russian culture which also had mastered and availed itself of the Orthodox heritage of Greek Fathers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that beauty, concern for the creation, community spirit, conciliarity, and the bond between spirituality and culture are characteristics of ‘Holy Russia’.  They have not lost their relevance even in our times.

Anton Kartashev wrote that ‘the old literature, rich also in church-patriotic works, did not know of the term “Holy Russia” until the 19^th century. It is a fruit of the grass-root creativity. It was born and preserved in the unwritten folk tradition’.

The term ‘Holy Russia,’ therefore, is a calling of the Russian people, their civil self-identification, which forms the basis for mutually enriching dialogue with other cultures and peoples.

The chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations made the following comments:

On 19 and 20 January 2011, the European Parliament discussed many cases of violence against Christians in different parts of the world. In the evening of January 19, the EP members lit candles to commemorate Christian victims of the recent terrorist attacks. On January 20, resolution on the situation of Christians in the context of freedom of religion was adopted. It condemns killing or discrimination of Christians in various countries, particularly in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and the Philippines. The EP deputies made public the information showing atrocious persecution of Christians in these countries. The resolution addressed to their governments and leaders was adopted by the majority. Representatives of all political parties present in the EP voted in the affirmative.

The deputies expressed their wish to set up a permanent body at the Union for Foreign Affairs to monitor the situation of religious freedom in the world and annually inform the EU bodies and general public on the cases of infringing freedom of conscience by authorities or public forces in various countries.

A direct occasion for the resolution was a terrorist attack against worshipers in a Coptic church in Alexandria on 1 January 2011, killing 21 and leaving 97 wounded. A week later, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of France, Italy, Hungary, and Poland sent a letter to Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and demanded a reaction of the European community.

The EP resolution is a revolutionary one due to several moments. It is for the first time that the European parliamentarians stated in full voice their opinion on the problem they have preferred to keep silent about so far. Thus, a major political body of the European Union has recognized the persecution of Christians in the world. Earlier, only certain politicians have confined themselves to talks about certain violations of the rights of Christians in a particular country. Now they are talking openly of the strategy of some terrorist organizations and fundamentalist movements aimed at the destruction or ousting of Christians living in the Moslem countries as “the fifth column” of the West.

Besides, a thorough attention was paid for the first time to the work of people gathering objective information about persecution of Christians in the world. For instance, it was for the first time that information contained in the annual report prepared by a non-governmental organization, “Kirche-in-Not,” was made public officially. According to it, there were seventy-five Christians out of each one hundred killed as a result of religious intolerance in recent years. This statistics is stunning.

The European Parliament addressed the EU bodies and proposed concrete methods of influencing the situation. The principle is simple: money and business in exchange for the observance of human rights. Economic agreements between the EU countries and the states with the recorded violation of religious freedom of Christians and other religious minorities should be concluded only when the situation of the infringed in their rights religious groups is improved.

It is necessary today, as never before, for the European countries to stand up for the rights of Christians persecuted for their faith in various corners of the globe. Representatives of the authorities and pubic movements demand to resolutely condemn resolutely violence against Christians and state the necessity to put pressure upon those countries in which the rights of religious minorities are violated.

We are witnessing cases of not only gross violence against Christians, but also of their physical destruction. The blood of Christians is again being poured on the land of Biblical history, the site of glorious heroic deeds of the martyrs and confessors of the Church. The 2^nd-century Christian writer Tertullian wrote that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity.” The nature of Christian faith is such that any violence against conscience or religious feeling of a Christian does not harm the faith, but makes it even stronger. However, this does not mean that we could look calmly at lawlessness perpetrated against Christians. Any case should be thoroughly investigated, publicly discussed, and leaders of traditional religions should pay attention to it.

Not only world Christian communities, but also Muslims, Jews, and representatives of other traditional religions do not stay indifferent to the recent acts of violence. It is a paradox that news of the oppression of Christians come sometimes from those regions of the world where representatives of different religions have peacefully coexisted for centuries, and any manifestation of Christianphobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have always been implicitly denounced by the leaders of traditional religious communities.

Much attention is paid in the EP Resolution to the necessity of observing religious freedom enshrined in fundamental international and European documents. Also, monitoring instruments are proposed. However, these important and timely appeals would bring the sought-for results only in case they are followed by setting up an effective and regular mechanism of dialogue between religious communities and the national and international structures. The European Parliament urged all EU institutions to maintain dialogue in compliance with Art. 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Yet one should remember that monitoring of religious freedom in Europe and in the world should be supplemented by and connected with a dialogue between international structures and religious communities.

In recent decades, the Russian Church has focused it attention on the setting up such a mechanism. To promote this idea, representations of the Moscow Patriarchate have been established at the major international organizations in New York, Geneva, Brussels, and Strasbourg. The protection of Christian heritage and the rights of Christians is a priority issue in the work of our church structures. The same subjects are the main ones for cooperation between the Russian Church and inter-Christian organizations.

- Your Eminence, some participants in the Joint Commission for Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue in Vienna have stated a promising progress made on the way to unity. How far does the Russian Orthodox Church share this assessment?

- In the headings of publications in some mass media concerning the Vienna meeting of the Orthodox-Catholic Theological Commission, the word ‘breakthrough’ flickered, but the participants in the talks themselves sum up the work in more moderate terms. On a proposal of the Orthodox side, the Commission agreed not to give an official status to the draft document prepared earlier. It was deemed reasonable to use this document as a working material for drafting a new document on the theological problems existing in relations between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church concerning primacy and conciliarity in the life of the Church.

- What problems remain the most important in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue at this stage?

- In the 1990s, the Joint Commission adopted important statements on Unia, which, as everybody hoped at that time, would finish the long-standing disputes. However, the Greek Catholics refused to accept them as a guide for action. And today we can see a continuation of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church’s expansion into the territory of eastern Ukraine, where Uniatism has never played any significant role whatever. The transfer of the center of the Greek-Catholic Archdiocese from Lvov to Kiev and insistent attempts to obtain the never-existent status of patriarchate for it are eloquent evidence of their desire to replenish their ranks at the expense of Orthodox believers.

We still believe that only the Greek Catholics’ conscious rejection of the expansion policy will make it possible to settle problems which darken the Orthodox-Catholic relations today.

- The Russian Orthodox Church has repeatedly stated that Unia remains a major barrier for Orthodox-Catholic dialogue. What do you think of the UGCC’s intention to build a church for itself in Odessa?

- It is surprising to see the response of the Greek Catholics who have made such a fuss over the situation in Odessa. Don’t they know that the real problems and real violations of the rights of believers take place not in Odessa but, for instance, in Lvov? After the forcible capture of Orthodox churches by the Uniates in the 90s, the then Lvov local authorities did not give a single church to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the city, nor a plot of land for building it. We hope very much that soon the situation will change, but all these years our diocese of Lvov has had no cathedral. Meanwhile, the number of Ukrainian Orthodox parishioners is incommensurable with the number of Uniates in Odessa. And one should have protested against religious discrimination first of all in those cases where it really takes place, violating the right of a large group of believers at that.

- Your Eminence, you have recently returned from Ukraine, where you attended a meeting of the Inter-Council Presence’s commission for opposing and overcoming church schisms. What are the results of its work?

- The Commission has drafted two documents on its work and will submit them to the Inter-Council Presence. One document concerns some measures for overcoming the consequences of the 17^th century church division. The second one is about the acceptance of those who come back from schisms to the fold of the Church. Both documents, according to the procedure of the Inter-Council Presence, are closed ones. For this reason I cannot publicize them until they are considered by the presidium and plenary of the Inter-Council Presence and then by a Bishops’ Council or the Holy Synod.

- Did you discuss the recognition of ‘sacraments’ administered by schismatics? What is your attitude to this issue?

- This issue has been repeatedly discussed both in private talks of the Commission members and at the meeting. The Church does not recognize and cannot recognize as grace-giving and salvific any ‘sacraments’ including Baptism administered in a schism. This is a common point of view confirmed by many testimonies of the church Tradition. ‘Recognition of schismatics’ sacraments’ is an altogether improper expression which can be only misleading. The point here is not a diplomatic manifestation of politeness but attempts to impose on the Orthodox the recognition of a real presence of saving grace outside the Church. For the Church, the authenticity of Sacraments is a matter of salvation. It is impossible and senseless to speak of ‘recognition of sacraments’ administered by schismatics who stay outside the Church and have no communion with her.

However, as His Beatitude Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine, has stressed, ‘the schismatics’ return to the saving fold of the Church can put life into their graceless actions’. When schismatics come back to the Church, it is a normal practice to embrace holy Baptism. But if the Church deems it necessary and if it is helpful for healing a schism, she can in some cases provide a different procedure, as was the case on repeated occasions in history.

The Church will never recognize schismatics’ ordinations, and all the clergy who come back from a schism should be ordained, though it is not at all necessary to make it in public. As far as the Sacrament of Baptism is concerned, it is impossible to administer it to all the laity coming back from a schism. Indeed, some of them do not even remember in which church they were baptized, canonical or schismatic.

Besides, there are situation where, for instance, a schismatic priest comes back to the Church together with his parishioners. The subsequent ‘re-baptism’ of the parishioners he had baptized earlier cannot be stipulated for his return, just as a ‘re-marriage’ of those whom he had married earlier or ‘re-funeral’ of all the dead over whom the burial service had been said before. It is impossible to force a priest who was now ordained in a canonical Church to return to their parishioners and say to them: ‘Everything I have done here for ten (or twenty) years was a deception, and only now I will begin doing everything in the real way’. People will not understand it and will not believe him. For all I know, they can think he decided to get the money for the second time for the sacraments he had already administered.

It is about such situations that it is stated that the Church can breathe a grace-giving power into the graceless actions of the schismatics and to inform with grace what had been only an empty and graceless form. In other words, the question of recognizing schistatics’ sacraments is not posed at all out of context of their return from the schism. But the question of a procedure of acceptance form a schism can and must be posed. And here, depending on the situation, various approaches can be applied.

- We hear sometimes the voices of the so-called ‘zealots of the purity of Orthodoxy’, whose favourite theme is criticism of ‘ecumenism’ based on conjecture. What does inter-Christian cooperation consist in today?

- The Supreme Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church has repeatedly explained what is understood as inter-Christian cooperation, what aims this cooperation pursues, what results it has brought and can bring to our Church in the future. I believe there is no sense in repeating all that has been said about it, for instance, in the Russian Orthodox Basic Principles of Attitude to Non-Orthodoxy, an official document of the 2000 Bishops’ Council.

I would like to mention a different thing. Today, millions of the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church including Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Moldovans, have gone to live outside their historical Motherland. It is a sad development in many ways as it involves assimilation, brain drain, etc. But it is a reality existing regardless of its emotional assessment. One can grieve over it as much as one wants but the Church is obliged to help her children to remain Orthodox in an alien milieu.

I wonder whether anyone of the ‘zealots’ has ever been concerned for the problems of pastoral care of the Russia diaspora? Do the critics of our cooperation with the Catholic Church know who actually provides our compatriots abroad with facilities necessary for services, Sunday schools and for creating an Orthodox environment for fellowship? Many newly-established Orthodox communities abroad use church buildings which have been provided by the non-Orthodox, in the first place, Catholics. When Catholics give the Orthodox an opportunity to pray in the churches which belong to them and do it often gratis, what does it show?

And how many of former Catholics and Protestants have become Orthodox Christians and members of our communities abroad, among other things, as a result of mixed marriages? Do the authors who claim to be the voice of ‘conservative church public’ know how difficult it is in Western Europe, for instance, to obtain permission for building a church and to negotiate its design with local authorities? And what assistance do Catholic parishes and sometimes even Protestant communities give to our new parishes? And how many of our compatriots who have found themselves in the West in a situation of illegal migrants have managed to obtain the necessary papers and jobs with the help of Catholic and Protestant charities on the request of Russian Orthodox parishes?

- What tasks does our Church face today in the dialogue with Christian Churches in Europe, with other religious communities and socio-political organizations?

- At present, Western Europe is turning into a citadel of aggressive secularism. Our participation in inter-Christian organizations is aimed at fulfilling the concrete practical task to oppose further secularization and to protect by all legitimate means the interest and rights of our flock.

The same can be said about the entrance of Russia and a number of other countries in the post-Soviet space in ‘the common European house’. Whether we want it or not, the process is underway, and we cannot pretend we do not see it. Pay attention, active efforts have made recently to adjust our legislation to the European one, in which there are its own advantages and disadvantage. If the Church does not participate in the public discussion on this matter the legislation may prove to acquire more disadvantages than advantages. And the experience of Christian churches in Europe can render us a considerable assistance in this concern.

Metropolitan Hilarion answered questions of the correspondents of “Estonian Radio-4″, “Viru Prospect”, “Narva”, “Narvskaya Gazeta”, and “Gorod” newspapers, “Opinion” portal, and “TV Narva” and TBN-Baltia channels.
Taking part in press conference were protodeacon Andrei Kilin of the Cathedral of the Resurrection and Bishop Lazar of Narva, a vicar of the Estonian Metropolia.
Answering the question about the themes to be discussed at his meeting with the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, the DECR chairman said:

“The major theme of discussion with the authorities of the Republic of Estonia, the authorities of Tallinn and other cities is the situation of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. This Church can develop freely and bring witness about Orthodox on the land of Estonia.

“At the same time, there are problems that the Church inherited from the recent past, for instance, its property. The EOC (Moscow Patriarchate) disposes of property that it takes on a long-term lease. This lease could last fifty years, but the state or municipal authorities, rather than the Church, have the right of ownership. I have discussed this problem with Tallinn Mayor Edgar Savisaar and will discuss it during other forthcoming meetings.”

As to his visit to Narva, Metropolitan Hilarion said:

“Today, Bishop Merkury, chairman of the Department for Religious Education and Catechization, Bishop Lazar, and myself celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the majestic Cathedral of the Resurrection in Narva to mark the 120^th anniversary of its foundation by the Russian Emperor Alexander II and the German Emperor Wilhelm. This historical church has seen a lot, and I was happy to celebrate it, to meet with the worshippers, to learn how Orthodox Christians live here, to talk with Bishop Lazar and to meet with the city authorities.

A correspondent of the “News of Orthodoxy” programme of TBN TV channel asked Metropolitan Hilarion to comment on his remark made at the concert on September 12, namely, that “The Russian and Estonian people are doomed to friendship.”

“I believe that a task of the Church is to reconcile people, Metropolitan Hilarion answered. – Certainly, the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has a special mission to fulfill, as it cares for the ethnic Russians and Estonians. Divine services are celebrated in different parishes either in the Church Slavonic, or the Estonian, or in both languages. The sermons are delivered in Russian and Estonian. Indeed, this multinational Church is capable of reconciling people.

“We know about difficult relations between Russia and Estonia in the recent twenty years. Political difficulties that we still encounter are related to the certain events happened in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and independent states were established on its territory, Russia and Estonia among them. A difficult period of the re-division of property and the spheres of influence began. The enormous geopolitical changes of those years have affected not only politics, but also people’s destinies. WE know that many families are divided by political frontier: the parents olive in one state, while their children in another.

“Under the circumstances the Church is playing the most important part of reconciliation and consolidation. I believe that any move to the rapprochement between Estonia and Russia would be timely and necessary. I am confident that Russia and Estonia are doomed to friendship as they are neighbouring countries. Enmity and confrontation would bring only evil to them, while good and constructive relations will be for their benefit.

The next question was asked about the rebuilding of the lost church in Narva and construction of the new ones. The journalist was interested in the opportunities of the Russian Orthodox Church for material support of such initiatives. The DECR chairman answered:

“The Russian Orthodox Church has resources, though, as a rule, the Church does not have money of her own and invites sponsors. There are many generous people at present, and many businessmen understand the necessity and importance of the rebuilding and construction of churches. I believe it very important to have as many churches in Narva as the Orthodox Christians need. I give my full support to Bishop Lazar’s efforts in this regard, for instance, to build a new church.”

Bishop Lazar explained that the point in rebuilding the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Narva. As the most part of the old Narva, it was razed to the ground during World War II. He added that it had been the oldest building of our city. It was built as a Catholic church, then became a Lutheran church, and later – an Orthodox church. A new Cathedral of the Transfiguration could have marked the beginning of restoration of the entire old city. We do not have at present, and we cannot resign ourselves to the thought of this city, once a most beautiful in Europe, remaining obliterated.

Metropolitan Hilarion was asked of his opinion of the ways for bridging a gap between the Church and society in certain countries, for instance, in Russia after the tragic events happened in the 20^th century. The DECR chairman answered:

“It is very important for people to know their history. However, Orthodoxy is not only a part of history, or a historical relic of the past. Orthodoxy is a way of life, to which the Church is calling all people today and will do it tomorrow.

“I believe that atheism has no future. Atheism is an ideology that can be imposed upon people for a certain period of time and kept up by repressions. When a repressive regime disappears, atheism remains without any strength of its own for reproduction. Human soul is religious by its nature. People search for the meaning of life and for justification of that what happens to them. It is impossible to an atheist to find this meaning.

“Therefore Orthodoxy, Christianity, and religion as such still play an important part in human life, while atheism will die out little by little. I believe this process to be irreversible.

“If people want to become believers, efforts are required of both sides. On the one hand, people should get interested in religious issues and ask themselves about the meaning of life, and about the Church: what is the purpose of its existence and what does it give to people? On the other hand, representatives of the Church, including clergymen and laymen, should be able to explain to the outsiders what is, why it is needed, and what it gives to people.

“Many people think they need the Church only when a baby is born to baptize it, or to marry the newly-weds in the church, or to have a burial service for their dead. Yet we can see on many examples that the Church can become a spiritual home for people and fill their lives with spiritual contents that non-religious people usually lack.

“Often enough, people see the meaning of life in success and money. Those having good intentions say they live for their families. None of these values alone can make people happy and justify their life on the earth. If people do not see the higher meaning of their lives and do not believe that eternity awaits them, their life lack meaning and, being comfortably off and successful, healthy and young, they are lost in this life as they do not understand its meaning.

“The Church can give answers to these questions. Yet, these are not questions that could be answered by turning the pages of a book. The Church gives answers to concrete people, as one answer does not fit all. Each human person comes to the Church in his own way and gets an answer he needs to understand the meaning of his life.

At the outset, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to His Grace Archbishop Rowan Williams for inviting me to address the members of the Nicean Club. Your Grace, we highly value your personal contribution to inter-Christian dialogue and your commitment to keep the Anglican Communion unified. We know your love of the Russian Orthodox Church, of its saints and great theologians, of its spiritual tradition. We assure you of our continual support and prayers.

We also highly appreciate the work of the Nicean Club which aims to strengthen relations and to stimulate beneficial co-operation between the churches of the Anglican Communion and other Christian confessions.

The name of the Club – Nicean – takes us back to that blessed era when Christians throughout the world, both in the East and in the West, were united. At the same time, however, that was a period of bitter struggle with heresies and many church schisms. Thanks to the unanimity both of the Western and Eastern Fathers in understanding Church teaching and in standing together with steadfast faith, the Universal Church at its Council in 325 renounced and condemned a heresy that undermined the very foundations of Christian doctrine. At the same time the Church was able to formulate that faith in the Holy Trinity which has survived throughout subsequent centuries. Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his Arius: Heresy and Tradition, has provided us with a profound analysis of Arianism from historical, theological and philosophical perspectives. He describes Arianism as an ‘archetypal Christian deviation’, which tends to rise again and again under various names.

In 325, the Christian Church, which had latterly emerged from a three-century-long period of persecution, proved itself to be strong and mature enough to discern in Arianism a dangerous digression from Orthodox doctrine. By adopting the Nicean Creed the Church did not introduce anything new to her teaching but rather formulated with clarity what she had believed in from the very beginning of her existence.  Subsequent Ecumenical Councils continued to clarify church truth without introducing anything fundamentally new to that confession of faith which sprouted from Christ himself and from his apostles.

Why do the Churches, both East and West, still remember the Fathers of the Nicean and later Ecumenical Councils with such gratitude? Why are the great theologians of the past, the opponents of heresy, revered in the East as ‘great universal teachers and saints’ and in the West as ‘Doctors of the Church’?  Because throughout the ages the Church believed it to be her principal task to safeguard the truth. Her foremost heroes were those confessors of the faith who asserted Orthodox doctrine and countered heresies in the face of new trends and theological and political innovations.

Almost 1700 years have elapsed since the Council of Nicaea, but the criteria that were used by the Church to distinguish truth from heresy have not changed. And the notion of church truth remains as relevant today as it did seventeen centuries ago. Today the notion of heresy, while present in church vocabulary, is manifestly absent from the vocabulary of contemporary politically-correct theology – a theology that prefers to refer to “pluralism” and to speak of admissible and legitimate differences.

Indeed, St Paul himself wrote that ‘there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval’ (1 Cor. 11:19). But what kind of differences was he referring to? Certainly not those which concerned the essence of faith, church order or Christian morals. For, in these matters, there is only one truth and any deviation from it is none other than heresy.

At the time of the Council of Nicaea, the Church was united in East and West. But at the present time, there is a multitude of communities each of which claims to be a church even though approaches to doctrinal, ecclesiological and ethical issues among them often differ radically.

Nowadays it is increasingly difficult to speak of ‘Christianity’ as a unified scale of spiritual and moral values, universally adopted by all Christians. It is more appropriate, rather, to speak of ‘Christianities’, that is, different versions of Christianity espoused by diverse communities.

All current versions of Christianity can be very conditionally divided into two major groups – traditional and liberal.  The abyss that exists today divides not so much the Orthodox from the Catholics or the Catholics from the Protestants as it does the ‘traditionalists’ from the ‘liberals’. Some Christian leaders, for example, tell us that marriage between a man and a woman is no longer the only way of building a Christian family: there are other models and the Church should become appropriately ‘inclusive’ to recognize alternative behavioural standards and give them official blessing. Some try to persuade us that human life is no longer an absolute value; that it can be terminated in a mother’s womb or that one can terminate one’s life at will. Christian ‘traditionalists’ are being asked to reconsider their views under the slogan of keeping abreast with modernity.

Regrettably, it has to be admitted that the Orthodox Church and many in the Anglican Church have today found themselves on the opposite sides of the abyss that divides traditional Christians from Christians of liberal trend. Certainly, inside the Anglican Community there remain many “traditionalists”, especially in the South and the East, but the liberal trend is also quite noticeable, especially in the West and in the North. Protests against liberalism continue to be heard among Anglicans, as at the 2nd All African Bishops’ Conference held in late August. The Conference’s final document stated in particular, ‘We affirm the Biblical standard of the family as having marriage between a man and a woman as its foundation. One of the purposes of marriage is procreation of children some of whom grow to become the leaders of tomorrow’.

Among the vivid indications of disagreement within the Anglican Community (I am reluctant to say ‘schism’) is the fact that almost 200 Anglican bishops refused to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference. I was there as an observer from the Russian Orthodox Church and could see various manifestations of deep and painful differences among the Anglicans.

Today the Orthodox-Anglican Dialogue itself has come under threat. It is especially lamentable because this dialogue has had a long and rich history, beginning with the numerous talks at various levels held between Orthodox and Anglicans from the 17^th century. In the 19^th century, after the Anglicans founded the bishoprics of Jerusalem in 1841 and Gibraltar in 1842, meetings took place and relations were established between representatives of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America and the Orthodox Church. The first official message came in a letter of Archbishop Howley of Canterbury (1828-1848) to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1840, assuring Orthodox hierarchs that the Anglicans would never engage themselves in proselytism and calling for co-operation in a spirit of Christian love.

In 1868, the first Lambeth Conference was held. Acting on behalf of Archbishop Tait of Canterbury, this Conference sent a message, written in a spirit of Christian love and friendship, to the patriarchs and bishops of the Orthodox Church. That same year, at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Patriarch Gregory VI of Constantinople permitted the Orthodox clergy to administer the rite of burial to Anglicans if a priest of the Church of England were not available.

The second such agreement was made in 1874 when Patriarch Joachim II of Constantinople gave permission to the Orthodox clergy to baptize and marry Anglicans. These agreements were exceptional developments in the history of relations between the Churches of East and West.

Between 1874 and 1875, representatives of the Orthodox Church, Anglicans and Old Catholics met for the first time at the Bonn Conferences to discuss issues such as the Filioque, the authority of the Ecumenical Councils and the validity of Anglican priesthood. In 1898, Bishop Wordsworth of Salisbury, in pursuance of a resolution of the 4^th Lambeth Conference in 1887 on the need to intensify relations with the Orthodox Church and to set up a special committee for it, visited Patriarch Constantine V of Constantinople and other hierarchs. Patriarch Constantine appointed a special commission for studying the Anglican confession. In the years that followed, Frederick Temple and Constantine V initiated regular correspondence.

At the 1930 Lambeth Conference, after the Anglicans essentially agreed to the Orthodox affirmation that communion in the Sacraments should be preceded by unity in doctrine, it was decided to set up an Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission, which included representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Church of England. The commission began working in 1931. The 1948 Lambeth Conference gave unanimous support to the further development of relations with the Orthodox.

After World War II, dialogue between our Churches was resumed in 1965. The modern stage in the Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue was opened by a visit of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to Patriarch Athenagoras (Spirou) of Constantinople in 1962. The heads of the two Churches came to an agreement on the need to restore the Joint Theological Commission for studying the doctrinal differences which blocked progress towards unity that had begun in the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th centuries.

In November 1964, the 3rd Pan-Orthodox Conference on Rhodes discussed, among other things, relations with Western Churches. The question of establishing relations with Canterbury did not raise any difficulties. It was unanimously agreed that ‘an inter-Orthodox theological commission be established immediately, consisting of theological experts from each Orthodox Church’. After preliminary meetings and talks, a dialogue began in 1976. A regular session of the dialogue completed its work only a few days ago.

We are concerned about the fate of this dialogue. We appreciate the proposal Archbishop Rowan Williams made this year to exclude from the dialogue those Anglican churches which failed to observe the moratorium on the ordination of open homosexuals. But we regard this proposal as not quite sufficient to save the dialogue from an approaching collapse. The dialogue is doomed to closure if the unrestrained liberalization of Christian values continues in many communities of the Anglican world.

We are equally concerned about the fate of bilateral relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of England. Contacts between the Russian Church and the Anglican Church began as far back as the 19^th century. In 1912, the Sacred Governing Synod adopted the statute of a Society of Zealots of Unity between the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglican Churches. In 1914, a Synodal Commission was established for considering interrelations with the Anglican Church. In May 1922, when Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned, Archbishop Randall Davidson of Canterbury protested to the Soviet government against the persecution of the Church. The archbishop raised this matter twice in the parliament and urged the British government to apply pressure on the Soviet authorities (Kerson’s Note).

The relations between the Russian Church and the Church of England were strengthened by the visit of the Archbishop Cyril Garbett of York to Moscow in 1943. After the end of World War II relations between our Churches intensified and contacts became regular.

The first difficulties in relation to the Church of England emerged in 1992 when its General Synod agreed to ordain women to the priesthood. The Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church came out with an official statement expressing regret and concern over this decision as contradicting the tradition of the Early Church.

One might ask why our Church should have concerned itself at all with this matter? By the early 90s the Protestant world had already ordained many women pastors and even women bishops. But the unique point here was that the Anglican Community had long sought rapprochement with the Orthodox Church. Many Orthodox Christians recognized the existence of apostolic continuity in Anglicanism. From the 19^th century, Anglican members of the Association of Eastern Churches sought ‘mutual recognition’ with the Orthodox Church and its members believed that ‘both Churches preserved the apostolic continuity and true faith in the Saviour and should accept each other in the full communion of prayers and sacraments’.

Much has changed since. The introduction of the female priesthood in the Church of England was followed by discussions on the female episcopate. In response to the positive decision made by the Church of England’s General Synod on this issue, the Department for External Church Relations published a new statement saying that this decision ‘has considerably complicated dialogue with the Anglicans for Orthodox Christians’ and ‘has taken Anglicanism farther away from the Orthodox Church and contributed to further division in Christendom as a whole’.

We have studied the preparatory documents for the decision on female episcopate and were struck by the conviction expressed in them that even if the female episcopate were introduced, ecumenical contacts with the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches would not come to an end. What made the authors of these documents so certain? There was a second controversial statement. The same document argued that despite a possible cooling down in relations with Catholics and Orthodox, the Church of England would strengthen and broaden its relations with the Methodist Church and the Lutheran Churches in Norway and Sweden. In other words, the introduction of the female episcopate ‘will bring both gains and losses’. The question arises: Is not the cost of these losses too high? I can say with certainty that the introduction of the female episcopate excludes even a theoretical possibility for the Orthodox to recognize the apostolic continuity of the Anglican hierarchy.

We are also extremely concerned and disappointed by other processes that are manifesting themselves in churches of the Anglican Communion. Some Protestant and Anglican churches have repudiated basic Christian moral values by giving a public blessing to same-sex unions and ordaining homosexuals as priests and bishops. Many Protestant and Anglican communities refuse to preach Christian moral values in secular society and prefer to adjust to worldly standards.

Our Church must sever its relations with those churches and communities that trample on the principles of Christian ethics and traditional morals. Here we uphold a firm stand based on Holy Scripture.

In 2003, the Russian Orthodox Church had to suspend contact with the Episcopal Church in the USA due to the fact that this Church consecrated a self-acclaimed homosexual, Jim Robertson, as bishop. The Department for External Church Relations made a special statement deploring this fact as anti-Christian and blasphemous. Moreover, the Holy Synod of our Church decided to suspend the work of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Episcopal Church in the USA, which had worked very successfully for many years. The situation was aggravated when a woman bishop was installed as head of the Episcopal Church in the USA in 2006 and a lesbian was placed on the bishop’s chair of Los Angeles in 2010.

Similar reasons were behind the rupture of our relations with the Church of Sweden in 2005 when this Church made a decision to bless same-sex “marriages”.  And recently the lesbian Eva Brunne has become the “bishop” of Stockholm.

What can these churches say to their faithful and to secular society? What kind of light do they shine upon the world (cf. Mt. 5:14)? What is their ‘salt’? I am afraid the words of Christ can be applied to them: If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men (Mt. 5:13).

We are aware of the arguments used by proponents of the above-mentioned liberal innovations. Tradition is no authority for them. They believe that to make the words of Holy Scripture applicable to modernity they have to be ‘actualized’, that is, reviewed and interpreted in an appropriate, ‘modern’ spirit. Holy Tradition is understood as an opportunity for the Church to be continually reformed and renewed and to think critically.

The Orthodox, however, have a different understanding of Holy Tradition.  It is aptly expressed in the words of Vladimir Lossky: ‘Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church – the life giving to every member of the Body of Christ the ability to hear, accept and know the Truth in its inherent shining, not in the natural light of human reason’.

It is impossible to pass silently by the liberalism and relativism which have become so characteristic of today’s Anglican theology. From the time of Archbishop Michael Ramsay of Canterbury, the Church of England saw the emergence of so-called modernism which rejected the very foundations of Christianity as a God-revealed religion. Among its most eloquent representatives was the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. I. A. T. Robinson, the author of the sensational book Honest to God. The Bishop of Woolwich’s worldview can be described as ‘Christian atheism’. Indeed, he rejected the existence of a personal God, of the Creator of the world and of Providence. He also denied the existence of the spiritual world in general and of the future life in particular. It should be admitted that these views provoked protests on the part of some Anglican bishops, led by Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury.

It is appropriate to recall here the words of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia at the Bishops’ Conference in February 2010. Concerning the liberal novelties introduced by some Protestant communities, he stated: ‘What has happened reveals only too clearly a fundamental difference between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The principal problem lying at the basis of this difference is that Orthodoxy safeguards the norm of apostolic faith and order as fixed in the Holy Tradition of the Church and sees as its task to actualize this norm continually for the fulfilment of pastoral and missionary tasks.  On the other hand, in Protestantism the same task allows for a theological development that can remodel this same norm. Clearly, the search for doctrinal consensus, as was the case with regard to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in the multilateral dialogue initiated by the World Council of Churches, has lost its meaning precisely because any consensus may come under threat or may be destroyed by innovation or interpretation that will challenge the very meaning of these agreements’.

Regrettably, what His Holiness the Patriarch says about Protestantism can be applied equally to many Anglican communities. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Orthodox communities discussed seriously the recognition of Anglican priesthood based on its recognized apostolic continuity. Now we are very far from this. And the gap between the liberal Anglicans and the Orthodox keeps growing.

One of the priorities in the work of the Russian Church today is to bear witness to the eternal significance of Christian spiritual and moral values in the life of modern society. In 2000 our Church already made a considerable contribution to the systematization of Orthodox tradition in this area by adopting a Basic Social Concept and, in 2008, a Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights. Today the Church is engaged in major work to compile a Catechesis which will give a clear exposition of Christian doctrine, on the one hand, and will respond to the burning problems of today on the other.

We are not alone in our concern for the preservation of Christian values. Liberal tendencies in Protestant and Anglican communities present a challenge to those Christians and churches that have remained faithful to Gospel principles in doctrine, church order and morality. Certainly, we seek and find allies in opposing the destruction of the very essence of Christianity. One of the major tasks in our inter-Christian work today is to unite the efforts of Christians for building a system of solidarity on the basis of Gospel morality in Europe and throughout the world. Our positions are shared by the Roman Catholic Church, with which we have held numerous meetings and conferences. Together we are considering the possibility of establishing an Orthodox-Catholic alliance in Europe for defending the traditional values of Christianity. The primary aim of this alliance would be to restore a Christian soul to Europe. We should be engaged in common defence of Christian values against secularism and relativism.

Today, European countries as never before need to reinforce moral education, since its absence leads to dire consequences such as accelerating extremism, a decline in the birth rate, environmental pollution and violence. The principles of moral responsibility and of freedom should be consistently implemented in all spheres of human life – politics, economics, education, science, culture and the mass media.

We should not remain silent and look with indifference at a world that is gradually deteriorating. Rather, we should proclaim Christian morality and teach it openly not only in our churches, but also in public spaces including secular schools, universities and in the arena of the mass media. We do not presume to impose our views on anybody but we wish that our voice be heard by those who want to hear it. Unfortunately, we cannot convert the whole world to God, but we should at least make people think about the meaning of life and the existence of absolute spiritual and moral values. We are obliged to bear witness to the true faith always and everywhere so that at least some may be saved (1 Cor. 9:22).

Summing up, I wish to assert that today we have new divisions in Christendom, not only theological but also ethical. Regrettably, many Christian communities, which once maintained fraternal relations with the Orthodox Church for many years and were in dialogue with it, have shown themselves to be incapable or unwilling to assume obligations stemming from our dialogue. We accompany our reactions to these developments with assurances of respect for the right of all churches and communities to make decisions which they deem to be necessary. Yet, at the same time, we state with sadness that neither the official dialogue nor the most valuable relations and contacts in the past have kept some of our Anglican brothers and sisters from steps which have taken them even farther away from our common Christian Church Tradition.

On behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church I would like to stress that we continue to be fully committed to the dialogue with the Anglican Church and will do our utmost to keep this dialogue going. We do not betray our commitment to the dialogue. However, we feel that many of our Anglican brothers and sisters betray our common witness by departing from traditional Christian values and replacing them by contemporary secular standards. I very much hope that the official position of the Anglican Church on theological, ecclesiological and moral issues will be in tune with the tradition of the Ancient Undivided Church and that the Anglican leadership will not surrender to the pressure coming from liberals.

Our faithful cherish the memory of the visit made by the Church of England’s delegation led by Archbishop Cyril Garbett to Moscow in 1943. Then Patriarch Sergiy, who had been enthroned a few days earlier, remarked, ‘The English have come defying the dangers of travelling at a time of war and the entire insidiousness of the enemy’. Addressing himself to Archbishop Garbett, he said, ‘The old archbishop teaches us by his example to forget one’s own interests and conveniences and one’s own life when the truth of Christ and the welfare of our neighbours… call us to serve higher values’.

Today, too, we do not abandon Christian love for our Anglican brothers and sisters. We do not abandon the hope that they, who once defied every danger during the hard years of war, will share with us that trust in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which rests on the solid foundation of the faith of holy apostles, the Fathers of the Nicean Council and the tradition of the Undivided Church.

The activity of Patriarch Kirill expressed in his speeches and trips to dioceses has sometimes provoked a mixed and strange reaction mainly in the mass media. They say, what does the Patriarch travel for, what does he make speeches for, and on themes far from ‘pure spirituality’ at that? Sometimes the critics do not conceal their attitude: they wish the Primate of the Russian Church limited his activity to celebrations and church sermons, saying it is exactly his primary task and the rest is the work of the evil one. (this attitude put frankly and simply is this: ‘your task is to wave a censer and that’s all). Certainly, to celebrate and preach are the main tasks of a pastor. But does a sermon cease to be such if it is given not within but outside a church?

A small ‘sensation’ for starters: escorting His Holiness the Patriarch on all his trips, I have never heard him speak on purely economic or political topics, entering the field that belongs to functionaries, politicians or economists. For instance, speaking about the economic crisis, His Holiness has always underscored that the reasons should be sought for in the crisis of personality, in the blurring of clear moral guidelines. Aren’t these a Pastor’s words? Or, speaking recently in the National Academy of Law in Odessa, the Patriarch devoted his speech to the phenomenon of morality. In the presence of venerable professors and lawyers, the Primate of the Church said that ‘if people’s conscience does not work no laws would work’. I do not rule out it was for the first time that such words were heard in an educational institution. But for some reason it all often looks different in the mass media: journalists are looking for political or economic terms in Patriarch Kirill’s speeches and take them out of the context. It results in an image of such an ‘effective manager’, who is inevitably subjected to criticism. And this criticism could be even acceptable but for one ‘but’: the image created by the mass media has nothing to do with the real Patriarch Kirill, and the pictures of ‘church life’ have as little to do with reality as Leo Taxil’s ‘bible’ with Holy Scriptures. As one metropolitan said to his atheistic opponent, ‘I do not believe in the god you are talking about either. He has nothing to do with Christ’. So, let us agree on the terms.

Any public speech made by the Patriarch is a talk about moral foundations, about the feeling of God, about human relations. Whatever issue it may concern, it is always held within the spiritual and moral field. For some reason this seemingly common-book maxim is lost within modern journalism. I would like to hope that there is no malice here. Simply, the requirements (instructions?) are such that with us politics should be put above problems of one’s own soul and should have priority. As a result, journalists, volens nolens, carefully eliminate the spiritual context of the Patriarchal words, leaving only that which appears to be politics. Some just juggle with facts, while other even invent them.

By virtue of office His Holiness the Patriarch has to have many meetings with functionaries, politicians, businessmen. It is equally natural that in internal church life the Patriarch remains, along with other duties (to be more precise, along with the main duty to stand for the Church before God) the key administrator. To be at the same time an intercessor and manager is the destiny of not only any Primate of the Russian Church but also each of her hierarchs. Such were St. Alexis the Metropolitan of Moscow, St. Philaret (Drozdov) and many others. Therefore it is strange to see a surprise at Patriarch’s instruction to begin collect aid to victims of wildfires. Some see in it nearly an interference in the affairs of a secular state (You see? The Orthodox are prying again. They had better sit in their churches, but no, they would not, they attempt to help). The others, on the contrary, are in a hurry to suggest that without His Holiness nobody would begin collecting anything, while modestly passing  over in silence the large-scale collection of donations (over 12 million roubles for homeless victims of fire as of August 11) which has begun in many places even before the Patriarchal appeal. I think it is worthwhile to clarify the words of the ROC Primate to avoid new questions. By his instruction the Patriarch has activated a unified system of relief to make the efforts of volunteers and donors more effective. This is by way of deciphering what has been ciphered by some journalists.

Of course, in the midst of our fellow-journalists there are regular critics of the Church and Patriarch Kirill. They would condemn all and always. If the Patriarch goes to Ukraine, it is a political visit, an interference in the affairs of the other state. Had he not gone there, there would have been even more noise alleging that he neglected his Ukrainian flock. If the Church collects money, clothes and medicines for the victims of fire they say she had rather pray more strongly for rain. If she did not collect donations she would come under tough criticism for passivity. And so on any occasion.

One can continue ‘ciphering’ by calling the Primate of the Church just a manager and the like. In doing so, we will in no way influence the life of the Church, the less so God who judges us according to our deeds. But we will confuse ourselves. Fortunately, there is a difference view of the personality of the present Patriarch. It can be told by hundreds of people who the Patriarch of the ROC deals with. In recent times among them were the mother of little Olga from Odessa, patients in a hospital in Dnepropetrovsk, schoolchildren in the town of Staritsa… These people however are approached by journalists on much rarer occasions, unfortunately. They are more interested in revealing non-existent problems and exposing absent designs. A pity.

- Vladimir Romanovich, the most recent statement of the non-recognized ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’, begins with an affirmation that this religious organization does not at all constitute a schism but as ‘a local Ukrainian Orthodox Church it represents an integral part of the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in spite of the fact that the ROC and some like-minded Churches have not recognized it as such as yet’. Can you comment on this text?

- Let us begin with the fact that ‘some like-minded Churches’ are neither more nor less than all the autocephalous Orthodox Churches – the entire world Orthodox family! In seeking to justify the schism its leaders defy the elementary common sense; for can a church be part of the Catholic and Apostolic Church if the Church itself does not recognize this ‘part’ and has no communion whatsoever with it?

We know that Kiev has been a center of pan-Orthodox celebrations on many occasions, and the hierarchs of all or most of the Local Orthodox Churches assembled in the Ukrainian capital for various celebrations time and again. But they were guests of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its lawful Primate, His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine, not those of the self-proclaimed ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’. A delegation of the ‘Orthodox Church of Montenegro’ led by ‘Metropolitan Michael’ was reported to have prayed with the leaders of this organization on July 28. But such reports can mislead only those who do not know that this ‘Church’ is a similar schismatic organization which does not enjoy any support from the devout people of Montenegro whose spiritual pastor is Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and Primorje, who is known to the entire Orthodox world. The one who came to Kiev as ‘Metropolitan of Montenegro’ was a former cleric of the Patriarchate of Constantinople who had been defrocked and anathemized long ago.

Those who have put themselves in this disastrous isolation from the Universal Church of Christ should think about a return and the salvation of their souls rather than about some obscure ‘divisions according to the principle of jurisdiction’.

- But it is affirmed in the same statement that those who separated themselves ‘do not differ in any way from the fullness of the Orthodox Church either in doctrine or in celebration of the sacraments or in other divine services or in the implementation of the norms of canon law…

- How come they do not differ? One of the basic canonical norms in the Orthodox Church is a canon whereby no sustained or the more so defrocked priest can celebrate either the Divine Liturgy or any other religious rite. And here a man not only defrocked but altogether anathemized celebrates ‘liturgies’ and ‘ordinations’. Isn’t it a violation of all the norms of canon law? Does the doctrine of the Orthodox Church really state that any man who puts on the ‘right’ vestments and utters correct words can celebrate Sacraments?

The authors of this statement, in an attempt to prove that they are not schismatics, refer to the words of St. Basil the Great that a schism is ‘a division in opinions on some church subjects’, while ‘the Patriarchate of Kiev’ is alleged to have no division in opinions with the Church. I believe it is sufficient to pay attention to the question of who can celebrate and who cannot. As we can see, this question has been answered by our separated brothers in downright defiance of the canons established in the Orthodox Church.

I order to become a schismatic it is not all necessary to invent a special rite of one’s own and to introduce a new doctrine (in the latter case it would be a heresy). According to John Zonara’s definition, schismatics are those who are in the right mind with regard to the faith and dogmata, but who for some reasons have separated themselves to arrange separate assemblies of their own. This authoritative Byzantine canonist does not believe it necessary to specify these reasons, and it is not accidental. A schism is essentially formed by the very fact of ruptured communion with the Universal Church through an arbitrary separation from one’s lawful supreme ecclesiastical authority. It is certainly condemned by the canons: ‘If any presbyter or bishop or metropolitan dares to secede from communion with his own patriarch and does not mention his name… in the divine mystagogy, but before a synodical arraignment and his [the patriarch's] full condemnation, he creates a schism, the Holy Synod has decreed that this person be alienated from every priestly function (Double Council Canon 15). Summing up the above, the notion of schism can be formulated as follows: a schism is developed when certain hierarchs and clerics depart from the lawful supreme ecclesiastical authority and violate sacred canons and for this, on the basis of these canons and in accordance with a due procedure, they are excommunicated by the lawful church authority from communion with the Church. The rest of Orthodox Churches, too, recognize this excommunication and sustain communion with the schismatics. This is exactly what happened to the so-called ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’.

- And what can be said about the arguments from the history of granting autocephaly in the 19th and 20th centuries? Indeed, sometimes there were canonical bans at that time as well, and the autocephalous status of new Local Churches was not recognized immediately… Sometimes the schism is cited between the Bulgarian Church and the Throne of Constantinople which lasted till 1945. And it all ended in the recognition of autocephaly. As proponents of ‘the Patriarchate of Kiev’ maintain, anathemas were simply forgotten with time.

- Indeed, the granting of autocephaly in the 19th-20th centuries was often associated with mutual misunderstanding of the sides, temporary interruption of communion and even church bans. However, these cases are radically different from the situation of ‘the Patriarchate of Kiev’, and not only because autocephaly was an agreed desire of all the faithful and their archpastors and pastors in the respective countries – something not detectable in the attitude of the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine.

In case of the so-called Bulgarian schism, this internal problem of the Church of Constantinople was brought up on its initiative for a pan-Orthodox discussion in 1872. As a result, the condemnation of the schism was not approved by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Synod of the Antiochian Church, the Synod of the Russian Church and the Churches of Romania and Serbia which were absent from the 1872 Council. As we can see, there was no consensus between all the Orthodox Churches. Therefore, throughout the period of the Bulgarian schism, partial communion between those departed and the Church remained, and there is a great deal of evidence to it. Whereas legitimate bans with regard to the initiators of the schism in Ukrainian Orthodoxy are recognized by the whole Orthodox world. They have had no communion with any of the Orthodox Churches.

Besides, the history of the Bulgarian division ended not in a simple and, so to say, automatic ‘oblivion’ of the anathemas and bans, but in a petition sent to the Patriarch of Constantinople by Metropolitan Stephan of Sophia asking him on behalf of his Synod to lift up church bans ‘from the Bulgarian clergy and people’. From this it follows that the Bulgarian hierarchy recognized the bans as valid. Alas, no petitions of this kind have come to the canonical Church as yet. Incidentally, the Bulgarian schismatic leaders did not live to see the lawful autocephaly.

- Sometimes the Russian Orthodox Church is cited as one whose autocephaly was not recognized by Constantinople for over a hundred years…

- The refusal to recognize an autocephaly and a rupture of church communion are different things. It has been long proved on the basis of historical facts that from 1448 to 1589 the Russian Church retained full Eucharistic communion with the Church of Constantinople and Eastern Churches. In spite of the fact that the Patriarchate of Constantinople did not approve the autocephaly of the Russian Church immediately, it continued communion with her in prayer and sacraments. No church bans were imposed on the Russian Church’s bishops, clergy or laity at that time.

- To look at more recent examples, the Patriarchate of Kiev leaders have often compared themselves with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, as ‘the schism’ and later the overcoming of the tragic division were talked about for years.

- A more lame comparison is difficult to find. The Russian Church Outside Russia was brought about by well-known grave historical circumstances, a civil war and mass emigration. It was formed as a temporary structure, as its statute underscores. Its bishops, pastors and lay people have always considered themselves to be part of one Russian Church, self-governed until the godless power is abolished in the native land. None of the ROCOR hierarchs was defrocked or anathemized. The Russian Church Outside Russia was never completely isolated from Universal Orthodoxy. Therefore, the restoration of unity was a matter of time, though became possible only after the situation was radically changed in Russia, Ukraine and other countries under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

- Could you comment on the affirmation that the supreme ecclesiastical authority of the Russian Orthodox Church is not capable of ‘being an authoritative and impartial interpreter of canons and statutes of the Church’?

- Apparently, you mean the so-called ‘recognition of the sacraments’ sought by the schismatics and the First Canon of St. Basil the Great cited by the Russian Orthodox Church Holy Synod in its appeal to the schismatics. But first of all, the Canon of Basil the Great speaks of the rite of accepting back in the Church for those who have fallen away from it, not about the ‘recognition’ of sacraments administered by those who continue to stay away from the Church. According to the schismatic leaders’ statements, they are confident of their righteousness and need no repentance. Nevertheless, they seem to be distressed by the fact of non-recognition of their sacraments! A strange attitude, isn’t it?

As for how appropriate it was for the ROC Holy Synod to refer to this canon, I can give this explanation: with reference to ‘the old’ St. Basil cites various practices of accepting schismatics through re-baptism (with reference to Cyprian and Firmillian) and without re-baptism (with reference to some of the Asians). For St. Basil it was decisive that those fallen away did not bear the grace of the Holy Spirit after their separation from the Church. The giving of grace ceased because the legitimate succession was interrupted. Those who were the first to fall away were consecrated by the fathers and had a spiritual gift through the laying of their hands. But those who alienated themselves became laymen who had no power either to administer baptism or ordination and could not give others the grace of the Holy Spirit from which they themselves fell away. Therefore, the practice of re-baptizing schismatics, in Basil’s view, was quite justified, and he did not deplore it in any way. But at the same time, he approved of another practice existing at that time, namely, acceptance of schismatics through repentance for the sake of edification of others. That is to say, for the sake of help to numerous repentants to come back to the Church.

The Holy Synod underscored St. Basil’s principal idea that grace becomes scarce in a community which stays outside the Church. This grace can be replenished only in the Church, outside which it is meaningless to discuss norms of canon law. In other words, the recognition of the sacraments’ administered by schismatics can be granted only if they come back to the Church with repentance. This is what St. Basil says. He does not at all discuss ‘the recognition of sacraments’ administered by schismatics who do not make repentance and who do not restore unity with the Church.

- As is known, the efforts of the present Ukrainian government are directed towards good-neigbourly relations with Russia. As the political situation in Ukraine has changed, is it appropriate to say that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will use it to suppress the schism with the help of the government?

- There are no grounds for such statements. None of the officials authorized to speak for the Church have ever asked the government to use repressive measures against the schism. On the contrary, the appeal of the Russian Orthodox Church Synod and statements His Holiness Patriarch Kirill made in Ukraine are imbued with the spirit of love and compassion to those fallen away. As for the government, its function is to maintain law and remove legal violations in case there are such.

- The ‘Synod of the Kievan Patriarchate’ has addressed special warnings to all those who try to come back to the canonical Church. They are threatened with God’s judgment. The canonical consecration of those who had been ordained by the Patriarchate of Kiev earlier is described in the statement as ‘renunciation of Christ Himself’ and ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’. References are made to canons.

- These statements show that schismatics are very far from a desire for dialogue in spite of the fact that they have declared this desire on many occasions. In fact, they have openly adopted an attitude of opposition to repentance and return to the Church. What dialogue do they speak about?

A reference to Apostolic Canon 68 is utterly irrelevant here. It states that a second ordination is inadmissible except for cases where the first one was administered by heretics. It means that a heretical ‘ordination’ is not recognized.

But does it mean that an ordination is invalid only if it was administered by those who sinned against the doctrines of the faith? Nothing of the kind. If, say, two or three Christian laymen, who confess the Creed without any changes, come together and make up their minds to ‘ordain’, say, a bishop, would such an ordination be recognized as valid? For one to have the power to celebrate one has to be empowered by the Church.

Speaking about heretics, the authors of canons often do not make any clear distinction between heretics and schismatics. According to Canon 6 of the Second Ecumenical Council, those are called heretics whom the Church declared as such from old times and those who were anathemized after that, as well as those who, pretending to confess the sound faith, separate themselves and gather congregations in opposition to canonical bishops. That is, the fathers of the Council believed it impossible to confess the sound faith outside the Church; it is only possible to pretend. Therefore, in the canon they rank those who have separated themselves from the Church among heretics and even use the same designation for them.

On the other hand, St. John Chrysostom says that creating divisions in the Church is evil no lesser then heresy. The saving confession of faith is possible only in the Church and becomes meaningful only in the Church.

Coming back to Apostolic Canon 68, I have to admit that it speaks about the prohibition of a second valid ordination. But ordinations administered in the ‘Patriarchate of Kiev’ can by no means be called valid: they were administered by those who are deprived of the right to ordain.

It is interesting that ‘the Kievan Patriarchate’ leaders themselves have administered re-ordinations to the ‘bishops’ accepted from another schism, the so-called ‘Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church’. The point was not that the latter confessed a distorted doctrine. The point is simply that its founders received ‘consecrations’ from a man who was not only deprived of the right to celebrate but has never been a bishop at all, namely, Deacon Vikenty Chekalin. Even the leaders of the schism took it as ‘extremely’ anti-canonical. Interestingly, one of these ‘bishops’ was re-consecrated in secret not immediately but only half a year after he moved to the ranks of proponents of ‘the Patriarchate of Kiev’.

So, ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’ is not at all a desire to settle one’s canonical status, whose defectiveness is clear to many of the spiritual pastors of the schism, but an attempt to prevent them from doing it by threatening them with the Last Judgment. How can a return to the Church be a ‘renunciation of Christ Himself’? Indeed, communion with Christ is possible only in the Church.

Actually, it is the renunciation of Christ and His Church that constitutes a schism. God grant that those who have departed from church communion come to realize it. We will be sincerely happy to see them returning and are always ready to accept them in love and humbleness. For, as Gregory the Theologian said, so aptly cited by the Holy Synod, we seek not the defeat but the return of our brothers because our separation grieves us.

L. Suschenko: Your Eminence, we are talking at a time when His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia continues his visit to Odessa. In spite of the fact that journalists, historians and theologians will probably keep analyzing the visit for days ahead, I would like to ask you to make already now a preliminary conclusion outlining the most important result of this visit.

Metropolitan Hilarion: I would not outline the main result of the visit now, but would rather indicate its main theme. It is this: it is a pastoral visitation of His Holiness the Patriarch. As soon as he set foot on the Ukrainian land, he was asked about the purpose of the visit. And the Patriarch answered: ‘No purpose’ because it is his work. He is a Patriarch, and Ukraine is a part of the canonical territory of the great Russian Orthodox Church. The Patriarch is the first pastor of the Ukrainian people, and he comes to visit his own flock. There is no special purpose here. The Patriarch has to come to his flock and he will.

As for the main theme, the leitmotif of what has been voiced here in His Holiness the Patriarch’s speeches and in greetings and good wishes, including toasts during various repasts, is the overcoming of the schism. The schism is a wound on the body of the Church. The task is to overcome it and to help those who have separated themselves from the Church to realize the harmfulness of being in a schism and to come back to the Church’s fold.

L. S.: Your Eminence, when you gave a press conference during you visit to Dniepropetrovsk in the spring, asked about the schism, you made I believe a very precise statement that ‘schism is no longer in fashion’. Does it mean that now it is the time not to scatter but to ‘gather stones’,

M. H.: It is the time to ‘gather stones’ and to consolidate people. Certainly, it should have been done earlier but you remember the early 90s when the great country fell apart to give rise to independent states – a process important in itself but it is a political process which should not affect church life. The Church lives now under different laws; it has different borders, which have never been defined by political new entities. If Local Orthodox Churches were to be divided in accordance with the number of countries which belong to their canonical territory, there would have been not fifteen Local Orthodox Churches but one hundred fifty, and they would not have been powerful and consolidated but weak and scattered. Suffice it to say that the Patriarchate of Alexandria incorporates some fifty countries in Africa, while the Patriarchate of Jerusalem three states and the Patriarchate of Antioch two states.

The Russian Orthodox Church was forming for over ten centuries. It was born in the baptismal font of St. Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostils not in Moscow but in Kiev. Kiev is the cradle of our Church. Therefore, you cannot divide what has been built for over ten centuries, the more so for purely political and opportunistic considerations. The schism is a purely political project. It was a project of the then Ukrainian government aiming to give a great legitimacy to the emergence of an independent Ukrainian state. An utterly ridiculous slogan was invented that ‘an independent country should have an independent Church’ and promoted. Regrettably the state connived at the schism because without this attitude the schism would have never developed so much as it did in the 90s. This political project was consonant with the political situation but, fortunately, this conjuncture is now in the past. Today many of those in the schism including those who serve it as priests and bishops are aware that they are not members of a canonical Church, that their ‘sacraments’ are not valid. Now the understanding is growing in the schism that the time has come to put an end to it and to come back to the canonical Church and engage themselves in creation rather than destruction.

L. S.: Your Eminence, recently the mass media has often used the term ‘secularization’. Secular in Latin means ‘temporal’. The forces working in this direction seek to declare that religion cannot and should not influence the life of society. We know the consequences from the experience of Stalin’s time of militant atheism. Is it possible to conduct dialogue with those who seek secularization?

M. H.: This dialogue is not only possible but also necessary except for cases where these people themselves refuse to enter into dialogue and adopt an aggressive and militant attitude. I believe church representatives should be in dialogue with the entire surrounding world. If we think of the apostolic times and the apostolic feat we will see that this feat consisted in their going out to a world alien to them and often even hostile in order to preach Christ not at all in a place where they were expected. Very often this preaching ended in martyrdom.

Today we should not be euphoric about the fact that the Church is reviving, churches are being built and many people a joining the Church. At hierarchal or patriarchal services we see thousands of people attending, and an impression can be created that the Christianization of our countries have been completed and that our people are already enlightened with the light of Christian faith. But if this seemingly great number of church-goers is compared with the whole population, if you compare the number of nominal Orthodox believers with the real number of parishioners who are fully aware of their faith, the difference will be very great. Therefore, the Church today faces an enormous educational and missionary task, of which the Patriarch keeps reminding us. It is necessary to conduct dialogue with the external world including representatives of the secular worldview – a dialogue which is not theological but philosophical, devoted to the question of the future of humanity.

This is an anthropological dispute, if you like. We should not discuss the existence or non-existence of God, though it is an important issue as well, but speak about what future awaits our people and on what values they will build their life, and this has a direct bearing on the question of the existence of God. Are there absolute spiritual and moral values or they do not exist? Can a person define for oneself the scale of spiritual and moral values to live up, or should one be guided by the divine commandments? Everything depends on this choice. For instance, it determines a person’s understanding of the family, the importance of bearing children, whether a woman will have abortion or not. In the final analysis, this choice will determine whether our population will increase or decrease. The population growth is a sign of the spiritual health of a nation, while a decrease in the population a sign of a spiritual disease. It is a very simple law. If the statistics show that the population is decreasing it means that something is wrong with our morals; it means that our value guidelines have changed; it means that something has to be done. This is what we should discuss with representatives of the secular worldview.

L. S.: In one of your interviews I noticed the way in which you defined the difference of religious and secular worldviews. You compared the notion of ‘sin’ in them and said that the word ‘sin’ cannot be translated into the secular language as ‘guilt’ because it is a psychological definition. I believe the Orthodox perception of the world simply cannot be translated into the secular language and put on a secular platform.

M. H.: Yes, but we should translate our terminology into a language understandable for secular people. Take, for instance, the notion of sin. Indeed, it cannot be translated into a secular language in a simple way. In the secular language there is a notion of crime as a violation of law which entails a due punishment. The notion of guilt really belongs to psychology, but a person, having committed an offense, may or may not experience the feeling of guilt. The notion of sin is meaningful only in a certain absolute scale of spiritual and moral values. This absolute scale is not defined by a person for himself. It is a scale defined by the divine commandments and the spiritual and moral paradigm. In this case, the term ‘sin’ acquired a very important meaning making a person understand whether what he has done is a sin or not, whether he should repent or not.

L. S.:  A few words about education, if I may. You have visited all the continents of our planet, over 70 countries. You are a graduate of Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary, Moscow Conservatoire, Oxford University and University of Freiburg in Switzerland. You speak many languages… Such is your fortune thanks to your talent and diligence, or any young man can take such a course?

M. H.: I think it is important that every young man should take care of his own spiritual and intellectual development. Unfortunately, very many people today live as if by inertia, on an ‘autopilot’. He finishes school, graduates from university and that terminates his development. He lives further on as life treats him, without taking each day and each hour of his life as a certain lesson. It seems to me that a person who has a creative approach to reality around him still continues his education after graduation from university or even two or three universities, because life presents daily a great deal of very diverse lessons. If a person has a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for learning something new all the time, he will continue developing and perfecting himself. If he does not have such a thirst he should concern himself with developing it.

L. S.: Do you think the theological schools need a perestroika today?

M. H.: Such perestroika is already underway. It is really required because many of our schools continue to live according to old patterns which existed in the Soviet and even pre-Revolution time. Today the educational process in the West is based first of all on an approach seeking to develop a student’s ability to carry out independent research. Our educational process is reduced to making a student listen to lectures and then reproduce at an exam what he heard as exactly as possible. This is a passive and non-creative process. At Oxford University, where I studied, there is no such notion as discipline at all but the notion of module on which the so-called Bologna System is based. A module is a certain discipline or a topic studied not through lectures but mostly through a student’s reading a great number of books and writing a thesis. These methods taken together comprise a module for which you receive a mark. It teaches one to think independently and organize one’s time. In Oxford you are not obliged to attend lectures. Truancy is not punishable, but students are keen to attend lectures because they understand that otherwise they would not be able to pass an exam.

L. S.: Continuing the theme of youth, I would like to recall your press conference in Lipetsk last March. Asked about a possibility to predict the end of the world, you answered, ‘I believe it is to no one’s advantage to predict the end of the world. If you predict the end of the world and it does not come, you will be called a deceiver. And if you predict that there will be no end of the world and it does happen then nobody will have time for you’. Thank you for this ironic answer. Do you think our clergy today should show more wit?

M. H.: A person either has a sense of humour or he does not have it. A priest should never act as a jester. He should not put upon a mask of wit. Humour is a natural component of human life; it is like a spice for a dish. Some dishes need pepper or salt while others do not. Therefore, if a priest in an appropriate situation recalls something witty he can say it, and there will be no sin in it, since it is a natural manifestation of human thinking. But one should not try to intersperse one’s speech with pepper or salt if the speech does not need them.

L. S.: Some people of letters say that the best examples of the Odessa humour are not based on the fact that people in Odessa like to be witty but because it is a special form of thinking.

M. H.: The Odessa humour is unique. Suffice it to read ‘12 Chairs’ by Ilf and Petrov – a work imbued with the Odessa humour from beginning to end and with the Odessa perception of the world to appreciate its humour. For people in Odessa, humour is natural. It is one of the manifestations of their love of life and, if you like, creative approach to life and even cosmopolitism, in a good sense of this word, which has always been characteristic of this city.

L. S.: You are author of 700 publications and books on theology and history. You have written ‘The Life and Teaching of St. Gregory the Theologian’… Can our today’s life give birth to saints?

M. H.: It can and it does. Among us are people who will be someday included by the Church in the assembly of saints. A saint is a one who aims his entire life at fulfilling the divine commandments. There have always been and will always be such people. The question of their recognition by the Church is a secondary one in a certain sense. We know that in the 20^th century there were a great number of Russia’s new martyrs and confessors, who suffered for Christ in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other republics of the former Soviet Union. The names and life stories of some of them are well known but very many of them will never become known because they died in obscurity; there are no surviving records of their interrogations or only false records have survived. But the Lord knows of every one’s feat and sanctity. Both in times of persecution and in times favourable for the Church, there have always been and will be saints. Moreover, the emergence of such theologians as Sts Gregory the Theologian or Ignaty Brianchaninov is not limited to a particular century. Our century needs the emergence of such people. I believe they already exist and the Church will canonize them some day.

L. S.: In the lifetime of our saints including Ignaty Brianchaninov, the notion of ecumenism was considered in a humanitarian context as a desire of Christians of various confessions to unite around eternal values. Today it is given the status of heresy or apostasy. And you, how will you describe this term today?

M. H.: The very notion of ecumenism was born in the 20^th century. For a long time it was used to describe the desire of various Christian confessions to converge. But there is also a different understanding of ecumenism. The Protestant understanding is that all the existing confessions are actually branches of one tree, that the Church in itself is not visible, representing the totality of various confessions (‘the theory of branches’). The task in this case is seen in attempts to gradually unite them all to make the invisible Church visible. It is a heretical understanding, and the Orthodox Christians by no means share it.

We believe the Church exists and has visible boundaries, and the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, which we confess in the Creed, is the Orthodox Church, and we are its members. In dialogue with other Christian confessions we set ourselves first of all the missionary task. We bear witness before the Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics to the Tradition of the early undivided Church and say that the way to unity lies through the return to this Tradition, and there is no other way. All the novelties that have appeared in history, all the heresies that have emerged in the second millennium should be overcome. Our non-Orthodox brothers should reject them so that they may be united with the one undivided and ever canonical Church. In this lies the meaning of our dialogue with non-Orthodox Churches.

L. S.: The oratorio ‘Passions According to St. Matthews’ that you have composed was played in many cities of the world including our city’s Philharmonic Society. Tell me please, what is the primary difference between the attitude of an Orthodox musician to the theme of the Passions of Christ and that of the West?

M. H.: In the Orthodox understanding, the Passions of Christ are always linked with the Resurrection of Christ. If you read the liturgical texts for the Passion Week, you will see that these two themes always intertwine in them. Even in the crucifix, Christ in the Orthodox tradition is always depicted as already dead. His suffering is left in the background, as we see Christ in His divine glory. This glory reveals the One Who died and suffered for our sins to rise from the dead and open the way to resurrection for the whole human race.

In the Western tradition, especially since the Renaissance, the theme of Christ’s suffering was given a very sensual and anthropocentric meaning. Christ was depicted with his eyes open, suffering and with drops of blood… A certain modern quintessence of this understanding was expressed in Mal Gibson’s film ‘The Passions’, in which this naturalistic point was shown very vividly. The Orthodox tradition avoids such naturalism. It calls the faithful first of all not to empathize with the Saviour emotionally and sensually but to ascend mentally to the divine providence which first led to the creation of man and then to the incarnation of God Himself so that His suffering may atone the sins of humanity and give us all eternal life.

The Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, has given an interview to the DECR official website concerning the establishment of a Commission on Schisms:

- A Commission on Schism has been set up within the Inter-Council Presence, of which you are chairman. What are the tasks of the Commission? Are there any results of its work?

- First of all, the Commission has addressed the historical precedents of schisms and ways of overcoming them. It is a foundation on which the development and systematization of criteria for making judgments on schisms are to be built. Finally, these criteria are used to prepare proposals on overcoming schisms and a procedure for coming back to the Church for those who have fallen away from it.

The first meeting of the Commission took place on March 25 at the Dormition Laura of the Caves in Kiev. It was chaired by His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine. The working groups are holding their meetings. We have formulated the priority themes for us to study and elaborate. The Commission members have actively communicated through e-mail and worked on draft documents.

- When you speak of general criteria of making judgments on schism, what do you mean?

- Church divisions are not the same everywhere and not any of them is a schism. For instance, history has repeatedly seen it happened so that parts of a particular Local Church interrupted communion with each other for a long time for historical or political reasons. Take for example, the Ignatians and the Photians in the Church of Constantinople in the 9^th century. The confrontation between them was supported and exacerbated to no small extent by changes in the policy and coups-d’état. In the early 10^th century, Patriarch Nicholas refused to recognize Emperor Leo VI’s fourth marriage and was deposed and replaced by Patriarch Euphemius for it to produce a church division for some time. In the 13^th century, supporters of Patriarch Arsenius formed another division in the Church by refusing to recognize the deposition of the Lascaris Family and the rise of a new dynasty of the Paleologues.

There were also church divisions in the hard situation of persecution against the Church in the Soviet Russia. In post-Revolution years, some bishops together with their supporters among the clergy and laity ruptured communion with Patriarchal Locum Tenens deputy, Metropolitan Sergiy.

In such cases, the guilty and the innocent ought not to be sought, because these divisions normally become things of the past together with the historical reasons that generated them. The Church has canonized both Patriarch Ignatius and Patriarch Photius, and the Russian Church has canonized as new martyrs and confessors the bishops and priests who belonged to different ‘parties’. It happened so, for instance, in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and those of her faithful who had to leave Russia after the political upheavals of the early 20^th century. In the final analysis, the same confession of faith, our common roots and intact apostolic Tradition and the common prayer of the faithful for unification have led to the restoration of unity.

A schism, on the contrary, is first of all a product of the hardening of the heart, when a person places his interests and personal convictions above the unshakable foundations on which the Church’s being stands as a depository of grace. In this case, a typical manifestation is a neglect of the principle of apostolic continuity, which since the Pentecost has underlain the unity of the Church as one of the historical guarantees of the authentic church Tradition.

- What is your assessment of prospects for overcoming the schism in Ukraine?

- The present situation is favourable to overcoming the schism. Widely spread schisms in Ukraine have been in many ways conditioned by the political state of affairs, which is becoming a thing of the past right before our eyes. The popularity of a schism lies in its political engagement, which is also a guarantee of its short life. It is not surprising that many believers in Ukraine, having found themselves in tight limits of a schismatic community, seek to return to the full communion with the Church.

Every human soul is precious in itself, be it in the full communion with the Church or in a drift in a distant country. And the Church as a loving mother is always glad to accept back her lost children with invariable love and gentleness. Therefore I said earlier and will repeat it now that there must be nothing humiliating in the procedure of coming back from a schism. There is no humiliation in repentance as repentance is a person’s recovery of his authentic eternal dignity and essence. This should be remembered both by those who are coming back to the church fold and those who accept them back. The latter need to be especially sensible and without rancor so that on the human level the process of people’s return from a schism and their integration in the life of our Church may not humiliate their feelings.

- As DECR Chairman what can you say about the problem of opposing schism on the pan-Orthodox scale?

- Certainly, it is very important that bishops of all the local Churches, in their desire to help heal schisms in full measure, should show solidarity, being aware of our common belonging to one Church. Schismatics should not receive a false impression that they can be granted the Eucharistic communion and church recognition by any other way (Jn. 10:1), that is, without repentance of the sin of schism, without asking the Mother Church, from which they separated themselves, for a resolving prayer. The fact that the church schisms I mentioned earlier do not enjoy the Eucharistic communion with any of the Local Orthodox Church in the world is a direct testimony to our unanimity in the Holy Spirit: it is the voice of the Church’s conciliar mind.

First of all I would like to thank all those who participated in the preparation of the Polish version of the book by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russian entitled Freedom and Responsibility: In a Search for Harmony. Human Rights and Dignity. I see in this publication an interest of the Polish intelligentsia in the Russian theological, historiosophic and political thought as an essential part of the Russian culture as a whole. The ideas underlying the works by Patriarch Kirill can be a subject for intellectual communication between Russian and Polish theologians, philosophers, public and political leaders and ordinary believers.

The topicality of the theme of human rights and freedoms

The triumph of the technological thought and advanced technologies in our days sometimes obscures the importance of the spiritual dimension of human life. However, eternal questions asked by humankind the answers to which have been sought by people in religious traditions are no less relevant today than they were centuries ago.

Among the most important questions of this kind is human freedom. Freedom of the human being, which is different from that of other God’s creatures, requires a profound reflection by each human generation. The realization of personal freedom is intimately bound up with virtue and presupposes continued spiritual efforts. Unfortunately, the modern consumerist awareness is often incapable of grasping this simple truth. Indeed, it is easier for one to seek pleasure and entertainment and indulge in one’s passions. One’s freedom, as they often say, is limited only by the interests of those around one.

However, this approach does not take into account the complexity of human nature. A person, who is limited only by the rights of people around him, does not have to seek moral perfection and to follow the voice of his conscience. Actually, a person deprived of moral guidelines is inclined to sin and self-destruction. Besides, such a person is incapable of not only social constructive endeavor but even mere co-existence with his dearest ones. For him the freedom of will turns into shameful slavery to sin.

If is for this reason that His Holiness Patriarch Kirill has devoted his book to the question of relationships between freedom and responsibility and we are called to answer it in our everyday actions and thoughts. In the articles and statements included in this book this problem is considered from various perspectives.

Moral responsibility as prerequisite for human survival

The very reality around us leads a person to the realization of the need for him to bear moral responsibility for society and himself. Clearly, a refusal to give moral assessment to the actions of individuals, authorities and the people makes many social problems insoluble. Thus, society has actually refused to combat such social vices as alcoholism, drug-addiction and promiscuity since, according to the liberal logic, if these vices are chosen by free will then society and state should not impede it but rather create conditions for its realization in the best way. Indeed, in Europe today there are houses of prostitution everywhere, in some places drugs are legalized; there are a lot of night bars and dens for drunkards. These recipes for solving moral problems lead to the degradation of whole nations and to the growing depopulation of our continent.

In addition, amoral ways are imposed on society, especially the younger generation, through the mass media and educational system. Here we deal with inadmissible violence against the conscience of people who become victims of a new totalitarian ideology.

Even the global financial crisis has in its basis not technological difficulties or economic patterns but human vices, such as thirst for money, deception and betrayal, greed and egoism. Continuing to ignore their destructive power and rejecting morally-oriented education, humanity finds itself on the brink of collapse.

Absolutizing the right to choose

We have increasingly encountered the attempts to absolutize the right to choose and to neglect responsibility with which this right is closely connected. But the Christian culture in which the modern teaching on rights is rooted has always asserted that amoral behavior incompatible with the God-given dignity is an evil parodying freedom and driving human beings away from their Creator.

Lost relation between human rights and morality

It should be noted that the post-war documents on human rights reflect the relation of freedom and moral responsibility. Thus, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms state that human rights and morality are related.

In the later international acts, such as the 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union does not establish this relation between human rights and morality. Freedom is thus completely torn away from morality. Moreover, in the modern liberal socio-political practices, it is considered amoral to pose the question that law may restrict sinful aspirations of the individual. It means that human rights become increasingly a closed system which has nothing to do with the spiritual tradition preserved in Europe by the Church.

Liberalism’s monopoly on the truth

Christianophobia is spiraling in Europe. Among the example of the infringement on the rights of Christians is the decision made by the European Court of Human Rights on 3 November 2009 in the case of Lautsi versus Italy. This decision asserts that the presence of crucifixes in public schools in Italy is a violation of human rights. The decision places believers in an inequitable position by declaring secularism to be the neutral foundation of societal life. Here we deal with an attempt to establish a new godless ideology depriving Christians of an opportunity to bring the religious dimension into public life. The Russian Orthodox Church has supported Italy, Russia and some other states who have come out against this decision which vividly shows how the modern understanding of human right may become a pretext for restricting the freedom of believers.  Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Romania and San Marino have come out as a third party. It would be good to see Poland among them.

The need for dialogue of worldviews. Development of ‘Basic Teaching…’ as a contribution to this dialogue

The importance of discussion on human rights in the modern world has brought out the need to adopt a document to reflect the Russian Orthodox Church’s view of this problem. The Basic Teaching of Human Rights and Dignity, adopted by the Bishops’ Council in 2008, had been drafted under the guidance of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill for two years. Many of the articles and statements included in this book were a subject of preliminary public discussion on the ideas put in the basis of this church-wide document.

We believe a search for balance between freedom and responsibility to be one of the most complicated tasks of the modern poly-cultural society and the main theme of dialogue between people of various worldviews. This dialogue should be conducted on the basis of mutual respect and openness and exclude diktat and coercion. It should be built on the notion of universal value of human personality, which Christians believe stems from the fact that man is created in the image and after the likeness of God. The high value of human beings is embodied, among other things, in their desire of virtue and perfection, to which society cannot be indifferent.

Conclusion

Christianity teaches righteous life in conformity with God-given dignity. Only such life can be truly harmonious and free. By returning to their spiritual roots and following in their actions and deed the lofty ideals of morality, European Christians are capable of building a prosperous society on the principles of good and justice, charity and mutual aid.

I hope that this book by Patriarch Kirill will become a contribution to the discussion in Poland on acute problems involved in human rights.