17 April 2006, 14:58
Division in Russian Orthodox Church senseless - patriarch
Moscow, April 17, Interfax - Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II said on Monday that he prays for the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church inside and outside Russia in every service he ministers.
"Today there are no reasons for schism between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian people who found themselves abroad during the Revolution. It is our duty to resolve problems that remain in our relations," he said.
Many Russian emigrants have died and the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia "is losing its Russian nature," he said.
He called on members of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia who still accuse the Moscow Patriarchate of cooperation with the Bolsheviks to review their opinion.
The accusations are mostly based on the appeal by Metropolitan Sergius (Stargorodsky), who asked the Soviet authorities not to regard the Church as a counter-revolutionary organization in 1927. Some Russian emigrants viewed the appeal as a form of cooperation with the atheistic regime.
Metropolitan Sergius was trying to rescue the Church and put an end to the executions of clerics on counter-revolutionary charges, Alexy II said. The metropolitan showed that the Church rejoices at the Fatherland's joys and grieves at its sorrows, he said.
I must say this idea that the Church should foster ethnicity is pernicious to me. And heaven knows the GOA does it in spades. To my way of thinking, the inculcation of Greekness or Russianness or whateverness, in a place like America, is the business of parents, not the Church. Obviously the Churches will carry on our respective ethnic ethoses to some extent and that's important if only so the converts can develop an Orthodox phronema and everyone can remember the people who brought The Faith to America and struggled to build our Church in a hostile culture, but beyond that, NO!
Counting my boys, 5 generations of my maternal family have lived in America...and my boys both speak and understand Greek and are quite at home in our village. In many ways they are far more "Greek" than some of the GOA Greek chauvinists who continually spout off about Greece but have never been there and don't even know the name of the village their parents were from! But when it comes to spending money for "Greek Letters" or Greek TV in America, they are the first ones to say the Archdiocese should pay for this stuff. Its just awful! I am sorry to see +Alexei pushing this, but I suppose I am jo more surprised to see it from him than I am from my own hierarchs.