THE PROBLEM OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTOCEPHALY

Vladimir Moss

The recent quarrel between the patriarchates of Constantinople and

Moscow over Constantinople’s proclamation of an autocephalous Ukrainian
Church raises once again the problem of ecclesiastical autocephaly that has so
plagued the Orthodox Church over the course of the last millennium.

Let us first offer a definition of ecclesiastical autocephaly. Following the

canonist Sergei Troitsky (1878-1972) in his article “Church Autocephaly”
(Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1948), we may define a Church as
autocephalous if it is “self-headed”, having its own supreme or sovereign
power independent of that of any other autocephalous Church, whose
bishops elect their first bishop and the rest of the hierarchy, and are able to
judge their own hierarchs, including the first hierarch, independently of any
other church hierarchy. In addition, an autocephalous Church “enjoys full
freedom in producing holy myrrh for itself, canonizing its own saints,
composing new hymns, determining the time of the liturgy, etc.” However,
an autocephalous Church is not independent in its dogmatic and canonical
definitions, which have to conform to the decisions of the Ecumenical
Councils, and is also subject to the decisions of all truly Orthodox Ecumenical
and Pan-Orthodox Councils.

If we exclude the five patriarchates that came into existence in the first
Christian centuries – Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and
Jerusalem – autocephalous Churches have come into existence in the
following three ways:-

1. By the Decision of an Ecumenical Council. In this way were born the

autocephalies of the Churches of Georgia, Cyprus and Sinai. In later
ages, for their protection in the face of overwhelming external pressure,
the Church of Georgia was absorbed into the Church of Russia, and the
Church of Cyprus into the Church of Constantinople. But these
absorptions, or annulments of autocephaly, were recognized as
temporary, and therefore did not significantly hinder the reassertion of
autocephaly in later ages.
2. By the Grant of a Mother or “kyriarchal” Church. In this way were
born the autocephalies of the Churches of Bulgaria and Serbia in
medieval times, and of many other Churches in the twentieth century.
In most cases the Mother Church has been the patriarchate of
Constantinople; in a few cases it has been the patriarchate of Moscow.
One characteristic of this method of autocephaly-creation has been its
instability: the Church that grants the autocephaly feels itself entitled to
take back this grant for one or another reason. Thus in 1766-67 the
 Patriarchate of Constantinople abolished the autocephalies of the
Churches of Bulgaria and Serbia. Another characteristic is that a grant
of autocephaly by one Church is often contested by another. For
example, the patriarchate of Constantinople has always contested
Moscow’s granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of America,
regarding it as a metropolitanate of the Russian Church. Again,
Moscow contested Constantinople’s grant of autocephaly to the Church
of Poland until it had confirmed it with its own grant, and similarly
contests Constantinople’s grant of autocephaly to a Ukrainian Church
in 2018. Sometimes this leads to the creation of two autocephalous
Churches on one territory, as when two autocephalous Churches of
Estonia were created, one by Constantinople and the other by Moscow.
3. By a Unilateral declaration of Autocephaly. Usually such a declaration
is rejected as invalid or schismatic by the Church which considers itself
“kyriarchal” (usually Constantinople), but is then recognized some years
later ex post facto. For example, after the proclamation of the kingdom of
Romania in 1881, the Romanian Synod itself consecrated the holy chrism
in 1882. This aroused the stern opposition of Patriarch Joachim III, but his
successor Joachim IV bowed to the reality: Constantinople officially
recognized the autocephaly by the Tomos of 25 April 1885, and in 1924
also recognized the Romanian patriarchate.

From the above, it is obvious that the only stable method of creating
autocephalous Churches, without the threat of schism or uncanonicity, is by
means of an Ecumenical or Pan-Orthodox Council whose decisions are
accepted by all the Local Autocephalous Churches. For the creation of a new
Church, whether or not it takes place on the territory of an existing Church or
not, is a matter affecting the life of all the existing Churches and should
therefore be authorized and confirmed by all the Churches sitting in council
together. Thus the de facto autocephaly of the Russian Church since 1448 was
recognized and confirmed de jure by the Pan-Orthodox Councils of 1589, 1590
and 1593.

However, this approach to the problem has proved difficult to implement

for three reasons:-

1. Political Interference. When wars or national revolutions or the influx

of large numbers of immigrants of a certain race into a certain territory
create changes in state boundaries, or a change in the dominant race on
a certain territory, the need for the creation of a new Church to
accommodate such changes becomes obvious and not unreasonable.
More problematic is the situation when an imperial or totalitarian
power seeks to exploit inter-church relations and rivalries for its own
political ends. The Orthodox Church of its nature has always striven to
be independent of political interference, but in some cases this becomes
difficult if not impossible. For example, when the Ottomans conquered
the whole of Eastern Europe and Anatolia, and placed the patriarch of
 Constantinople as ethnarch of all the Orthodox Christians in the region,
the weakening of the autocephaly of the non-Greek Churches became
inevitable. From this there arose the attitude (evident even before the
Ottoman conquest) of Constantinople seeing herself as “ecumenical” in
a way that was incompatible with the full autocephaly of the other
Local Churches. And unfortunately this attitude has persisted even
after the fall of the Ottoman empire; in fact, in some ways it appears to
have increased as Constantinople seeks to make up for the power it lost
under the Ottomans. Similarly, the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe at
the end of the Second World War gave the Moscow Patriarchate, as a
tool of Soviet political power, dominion over all the autocephalous
Churches of Eastern and Central Europe – a dominion that it has not
been willing fully to relinquish since the fall of Soviet power. And
where new states have arisen within the former Soviet Union (as in the
Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine), the Moscow Patriarchate, following
the bidding of its political master, has acted as if these new boundaries
did not exist, and all Russians everywhere, being all parts of one
“Russian world”, should all belong to one Russian Church.

2. The Orthodox Diaspora. Large numbers of Orthodox Christians whose

racial and cultural roots lie in Eastern Europe now live in the countries
of the West, where a multiplicity of separate and parallel ethnic
jurisdictions have sprung up, violating the territorial principle of
Orthodox ecclesiastical organization, whereby there should be only one
bishop in one defined territory. This problem has been on the agenda of
a future Pan-Orthodox Council for decades, but neither the Council that
met in Crete in 2016 nor any other inter-Church consultations have
succeeded in solving it. Here again, political interference has played its
part…

3. The Heresy of Ecumenism. Since the 1920s in the Greek Churches, and
since the 1960s in the Russian and East European Churches, the
ecumenist heresy has played havoc with the spiritual lives of all the
Local Orthodox Churches, making a truly spiritual and canonical
resolution of their problems impossible. Ecumenism divides the
Churches within and between themselves. While the leaders of the
patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople vie with each other in
trying to be the closest satraps of the Pope of Rome, the lower clergy
and people begin to have doubts whether their leaders are Orthodox at
all, and look towards the True Orthodox Churches that have remained
undefiled by the pollution of ecumenism.

In conclusion, there is an urgent need for an Ecumenical or Pan-Orthodox

Council that will sort out the problems of the organization of the Orthodox
Church and in particular the criteria for the lawful creation of new
Autocephalous Churches. However, such a Council cannot be convened until
a new leadership is in place that is free of the pollution of heresy and all
association with anti-Orthodox political interference. Only then can the One
True Church make its unity manifest to the rest of the world that lies in
darkness.

September 4/17, 2019.

Holy Prophet and God-Seer Moses.