Today we may congratulate our country – it has gained its own local Orthodox Church and elected Metropolitan Epiphanius, a young and educated person, as the leader of the new church. A crowd of thousands celebrated in Sofievska Square, people were hugging one another. Such things happen at days of victory. And it was a victory in a certain sense.
I recognize we are going through a historical time. Its results will not be limited by granting independence (autocephaly) to Ukrainian church. In actual fact, Tomos provided by the Ecumenical Patriarch means only the beginning of the self-governance for Ukrainian church. UOC-MP will still be there alongside with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (such a name was proposed by the Ecumenical Patriarch) for quite some time and in some regions of our country, UOC-MP will take precedence over the new Local Church.
But I do hope Ukrainian religious community will get rid of the complex of being “non-canonical” (which is somewhat similar to inferiority complex) and in the long run, it will also forget that it is under “Moscow anathema”. I also hope the believers of UOC-MP will realize they are alienated from the family of the World Orthodoxy.
“Ukrainian Church problem” has appeared to be a rock and a fragile and unstable unity of the Orthodoxy was wrecked on it. The unwise position of Russian Orthodox Church, to say the least, has demonstrated the world that the idea of the Third Rome keeps motivating the Russian minds in the same way as it was four hundred years ago. It has also shown the leadership of ROC is ready to proclaim itself the only anastasy of the Orthodoxy.
The Ukrainian issue is not the first one demonstrating that ROC-MP prioritizes itself over the World Orthodoxy. Recall that this church has not sent its delegates to the All-Orthodox council. And now, for want of a better response, the leadership of ROC cut off canonical relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Good, they haven’t anathematized Bartholomew yet, you can never know with them.
Ukrainian Church will also have problems. But they will be local, domestic ones.
One problem is already there, though. It goes beyond the national boundaries of Ukraine. No, it is not for nothing our church has been called “Orthodox Church in Ukraine!” Now it has got a canonical right to have its parishes only within the boundaries of Ukraine and it must move all other Ukrainian diaspora churches with their parishes under the command of the Ecumenical Patriarch. And there are many such churches and such parishes disseminated around the world. How will the clergy and believers respond to the fact that their mother church left them behind? I am already aware of the first reaction…
Whatever, but this year we will celebrate Christmas within a new Church that still has a hard way to go.
Borys Khersonskyi