Metropolitan Dymytriy (Rudiuk) of Lviv and Sokal, speaking in an interview of last year’s main theological or other church discussions in Ukraine and beyond said that the words of Patriarch Bartholomew voiced during his latest Ukraine visit were not fully comprehended in Ukraine.
“In my opinion, we are yet to thoroughly reflect on or theologically analyze the words spoken by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew during his visit to Ukraine in August this year. So, what are the main theological and canonical signals or messages that Patriarch Bartholomew delivered, on which we would need to reflect deeply? Firstly, it’s the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in establishing the autocephaly of the churches of Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Albania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which were formed from the canonical and jurisdictional body of the Mother Church of Constantinople. Secondly, it’s the Ecumenical Orthodoxy, the uniting of incompatible, such as rapprochement in differences. Thirdly, it’s is providing once again an in-depth canonical and theological assessment of the annexation by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Kyiv Metropolis in 1686, which at that time had been torn away from the same body of the Mother Church of Constantinople. Fourthly, it’s is the understanding of the essence of autocephaly as such, to which the Church of Constantinople has an exclusive right, and the purpose of granting it to a mature Local Church. And finally, it’s the role of primacy in honor of the Ecumenical Patriarch, which consists in sacrificial service, not in the arrogance of power and the promotion of various malign imperial ideologemes, as proposed by the neighboring Patriarchate,” Metropolitan Dymytriy said in an interview with Religion Pravda.
He noted that these topics are more about ecclesiological and theological issues.
“But here’s why I think they are emerging now and are being associated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. That’s because the issue of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church has greatly aggravated church relations of the Constantinople-Kyiv-Moscow triangle. And who else but us would defend the position of the Mother Church, which offered us such a gift, and in return receives from Moscow a barrage of false accusations. And all this is a reaction, as one theologian said, to the fact that ‘the Ecumenical Patriarch did not act in line with a canon of force, but was forced to act so by a canon, turning his ecclesiastical power for liberation, not prosecution.’ I would like to recall and reiterate that I have singled out all these issues from the speeches of His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew during his visit to Ukraine in August this year,” the hierarch of the OCU said.
