Wednesday, March 27, 2024
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    Theologian on amendments to UOC-MP statute: Moscow’s calm about its branch becomes clear as it’s not turning its back on Moscow

    One of the versions of the new Statute of the UOC-MP has surfaced on the internet. So far, there is no official version (on the UOC page). If you believe this document, it turns out that not everything was deleted from the previous document. Something was added, too. In particular, paragraph 1.1 it used to go like this: “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is independent and autonomous in its administration and structure.” Now it says: “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is independent and autonomous in its administration and structure in accordance with the Decree of Patriarch Aleksiy 2 of Moscow and All Russia of October 27, 1990. The governing center of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is located in Kyiv.”

    Let’s refer to the said decree: “… The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, united through our Russian Orthodox Church with the One Holy, Conciliar and Apostolic Church, without a conciliar decision of the entire Orthodox Catholic Congregation shall not change anything concerning the dogmas of faith and holy canons.”

    Ingenious move – all that is crossed out, the editors elegantly hid in this appendix to paragraph 1.1. The calm of Moscow (church and secular) becomes clear as no one is leaving…

    That is, the “united through” remains in place and the canons shall not be violated. And it’s in the canons where action protocol for such parts of the church, “independent in administration,” are laid down.

    Why all this masquerade, you ask? Well, go try and ban the UOC-MP in Ukraine on a legislative basis or argue with the UOC-MP clergy at the general meetings of any religious community…

    I will only add that this effort by of the UOC-MP Council has nothing to do with the norms of the current legislation on adopting changes to the titles of religious communities. The law sets out three criteria for determining affiliation with a foreign religious center, which these changes will not be able to outsmart. But here’s another issue – our masochistic government, which for some reason doesn’t consider it necessary to comply with the law.

    Source: theologian, PhD Oleksandr Sahan

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