www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News MP diocese in UK to join EP?

Peter,

I am sorry, I did not see any of Alex's offensive posts. They may have been deleted before I saw this thread.

I am sorry that you percieve me as biased, as I have been anything BUT biased when posters try to gang up against other posters behind the scenes in the last few years that I have been here. I was raised not to let other people's opinions sway me, but to judge people for myself. I would like to think that I would not have cried 'crucify Him' along with the crowd.

I also try to judge every post on its merit and words, rather than on whether I like someone or not. It is only natural that some of us here will take a liking and/or disliking to others, their opinions, their personalities, their writing styles, their religious views, etc.

Finally, what I wrote to you was as a fellow poster, NOT as a moderator. I have no jurisdiction on 'Church News'.

In Christ,
Alice

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=1559

14 June 2006, 11:38
Russian Church: Bishop Basil Osborn�s move to Constantinople�s jurisdiction invalid as he is still her bishop

Moscow, June 14, Interfax - The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church deemed the decision of the Patriarchate of Constantinople that the former administrator of the Diocese of Sourozh, Bishop Basil Osborn, �be accepted into its jurisdiction� as �canonically invalid�.

The Synod�s resolution of June 13 states that �the issue of a letter of release is a necessary condition for a canonically valid move to the jurisdiction of another Local Orthodox Church�.

This letter of release, the Holy Synod pointed out, had not been granted to Bishop Basil, nor could it be issued since no request for it came from the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

In the absence of such release, the Synod emphasized, Bishop Basil �remains a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in retirement till his case is fully considered�.

In this connection, it was decided to summon Bishop Basil to Holy Synod meeting to take place on July 17, 2006, and to examine the situation in which the Church of Constantinople made her decision and only after all this �to make a judgment on the merit of the case�.

Alexandr

Священный Синод вынес постановление в связи с решением Константинопольского Патриархата относительно принятия епископа Василия (Осборна) в свою юрисдикцию

Ниже публикуется решение Священного Синода Русской Православной Церкви, принятое на заседании 12 июня 2006 года под председательством Святейшего Патриарха Московского и всея Руси Алексия II.

Ж У Р Н А Л № 32
Заседания Священного Синода Русской Православной Церкви
от 12 июня 2006 года

В заседании Священного Синода под председательством ПАТРИАРХА

ИМЕЛИ СУЖДЕНИЕ: о решении Священного Синода Константинопольского Патриархата относительно принятия Преосвященного епископа Василия (Осборна) в свою юрисдикцию.

СПРАВКА: 8 июня 2006 года было распространено официальное сообщение Священного Синода Константинопольского Патриархата о принятии Преосвященного епископа Василия, бывшего Сергиевского, в юрисдикцию Константинопольского Патриархата и о его назначении викарием Преосвященного архиепископа Команского Гавриила с титулом епископа Амфипольского в составе Патриаршего экзархата православных приходов русской традиции в Западной Европе, �дабы он пастырски окормлял тех православных, живущих в Великобритании, которые пожелают находиться под юрисдикцией экзархата�.

ПОСТАНОВИЛИ:

1) Деяние Священного Синода Константинопольского Патриархата о принятии в свою юрисдикцию Преосвященного епископа Василия без получения им отпускной грамоты и без предварительного уведомления Священноначалия Русской Православной Церкви признать канонически неправомочным, как принятое в нарушение правил Святых Апостолов 33, I Вселенского Собора 6, II Вселенского Собора 2, III Вселенского Собора 8, Карфагенского Собора 32, Двукратного Собора 15. По изучении всех обстоятельств данного решения иметь особое суждение по существу дела.

2) Отметить, что выдача отпускной грамоты является непременным условием канонически правомерного перехода архиерея в юрисдикцию иной Поместной Православной Церкви. Поскольку таковая грамота Преосвященному епископу Василию не выдавалась (и не могла быть выдана, так как об этом не поступало ходатайства со стороны Священноначалия Константинопольского Патриархата), � епископ Василий по-прежнему остается архиереем Русской Православной Церкви, находящимся на покое впредь до окончательного рассмотрения его дела. В связи с чем вызвать Преосвященного епископа Василия (Осборна) на заседание Священного Синода 17 июля 2006 года.

Alexandr

Many thanks to Slavopodvizhnik for providing us with this document in both languages. Actually Moscow's response seems surprisingly moderate. We must continue to watch developments - and to pray for the peace of the Church.

Incognitus

Dear Alex and Fr. Anthony,

My post on Monday was in response to a statement by Fr. Anthony that I felt was slightly lopsided in regard to Catholics and Orthodox on this board, which is why it seemed natural to me, at the time, to address my post to Fr. Anthony. In retrospect, however, it really was pretty thoughtless of me not to address the post to both of you. So for that, I apologize.

Sincerely,
Peter.

Dear Alice and Alex,

Oh by the way, the good cop / bad cop routine doesn't work on me. Just so you know. (But if you'd like to try it anyways, be my guest. )

Alice, if you don't mind, I would like to add one thing to what I said to you earlier (something which was included in my "etc"). You criticized me for not having "addressed Alex directly with your thoughts and feelings", yet I notice that you never criticized Alex for doing the same thing to me. Coincidence perhaps? (Alex, I'm referring to paragraphs 15 and 24 of your Monday post.)

God bless,
Peter.

Peter,

Alice is an excellent moderator and clearly strives to be fair and balanced. There certainly is no �good cop / bad cop routine� going on.

If you choose to have a problem with Alice or any of the moderators please feel free to contact me via PM or e-mail to discuss it. But please be aware that given your behavior in this forum the end result may very well be an invitation for you to post on another forum.

Admin

Dear Administrator,

The "routine" comment wasn't intended to be offensive; but since it has, in fact, offended you, please delete that paragraph of the post. (I tried to do so myself, but it said the time had expired.)

Thanking you in advance,
Peter.

P.S. Alice and Alex, if that comment offended you, I hope you'll understand that that wasn't my intention (nor, for that matter, did I intend it literally).

That really shouldn't be necessary: I don't think I'll post here again after this.

What new updates have transpired, if any, between Moscow and Constantinople over this transfer?

Here is a blog edited by Ruth Gledhill. It is a bit biased towards +Bishop Basil, but also presents links to Russian thought.

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/06/bishop_basil_gr.html#more

Michael

From what I can see, Bishop Basil is setting up his new administration under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Moscow is very upset and has summoned Bishop Basil to a meeting in Moscow on July 17th. No indication has been given whether he will attend the meeting or not.

In the meantime, the Diocese under the Moscow Patriarchate was supposed to have their annual conference over the weekend. Whether they have the required officers and members or not is yet to be seen. It seems like a number of the administration have followed Bishop Basil to the new diocese. It probably will not until mid-week that we now for sure what has transpired.

I will keep you updated and I am sure Incognitus will also as news becomes available.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?page=31673

The Diocese of Sourozh annual conference was held in Oxford on 27 to 29 May 2006. This year�s theme was The Human Person: Fallen and Reborn. Meetings of clergy and people like that had been held for years, however this year it had been looked forward to with anxiety due to the crisis in the diocese. The main speaker planned to open the conference, Bishop Basil Osborne, had decided not to take part in the event.

The temporary administrator of the diocese Archbishop Innokenty of Korsun, opened the conference with an address and proposed the situation in the diocese be discussed in the spirit of brotherly love.

Archbishop Innokenty reminded he had attended the similar conferences when Metropolitan Anthony was still alive. He said Metropolitan Anthony�s life and heritage was very important and precious.

The Very Revd. Benedict Ramsden addressed the meeting and said he was glad to see Archbishop Mark there and to be a witness of a church reunion he had not expected to see. He also said he would stay a loyal and grateful to the Russian Orthodox Church, which opened the Orthodoxy to him.

After him the Very Revd. Daniel Joseph, the Revd. Philip Steer, the Very Revd. Maxim Nikolsky, and the Revd. Stephen Platt were speaking.

Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a member of the commission investigating the crisis in the Diocese of Sourozh was also speaking. He shared his memories of Metropolitan Anthony and said the metropolitan brought into the Russian Church numerous people of all ethnicities. Dividing the Church means betraying his heritage.

In the end of the conference Metropolitan Innokenty said the exchange of opinions was profitable, and he felt God�s help. He suggested they should base their work on principles of Metropolitan Anthony, keep the unity, and stay faithful to Patriarch Alexy and the Orthodox Church.

Alexandr

http://www.orthodoxengland.btinternet.co.uk/sourepsd.htm


Sourozh Received by Constantinople


Nearly thirty years ago, we recall a personal conversation with the then Fr Basil Osborn, in which he advocated belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate, 'because it is the only Local Church which gives autonomy and autocephaly, unlike the Greeks'. Clearly, he has changed his views. We cannot help feeling sorry for him, as he is now revealing the weaknesses of the late Metropolitan Antony (Bloom) on his website (www.dioceseinfo.org [dioceseinfo.org]), rather than discreetly concealing them, as many would have wished.

The news on 8 June 2006 that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has received this renegade Bishop and some members of his clergy into its Western European 'Exarchate of Churches of the Russian Tradition', led by Archbishop Gabriel in Paris, will surprise many. Not because Sourozh did not fit in with the post-1917 modernist Constantinople identity - 'Birds of a feather flock together', but rather because Constantinople has aggressively dared to take on this small dissident group against the wishes of Moscow. This now raises many broader issues between the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow. What are they?

1) Bishop Basil had already been retired by the Patriarchate of Moscow and forbidden to leave it for another jurisdiction. He has now left it. Is he then to be suspended by Moscow for gross disobedience? Since Bishop Basil has been received by Constantinople, does this also mean that the latter does not recognize the canonical authority of the Patriarchate of Moscow over its own bishops and internal affairs? Does this mean that Constantinople sees itself as an 'Orthodox Papacy', as the late Metropolitan Antony (Bloom) held, and Constantinople itself denounced Moscow for in the Athens newspaper 'To Vima' of 8 July 2004? Notably, the Patriarchate of Constantinople quotes in favour of its decision to receive Bishop Basil the notorious and dubious Canon 28 of the Fourth Oecumenical Council, allegedly giving it authority 'in barbarian lands'. Once again this opens up very old wounds.

Indeed, it almost seems tantamount to a Constantinople declaration of war against the Patriarchate of Moscow. Constantinople has now aggressively intervened in the internal affairs of Moscow, on the grounds that it has committed an injustice against one of its own bishops. But what injustice? Moreover, since, unlike in the 1980s, when one priest in England tried to join the Paris Russians and was refused, because at that time Constantinople's policy was to wind down the Paris Russian group, today they are trying to expand it, does this mean in general a declaration of jurisdictional war against Moscow everywhere in Western Europe?

2) What will now happen to the Sourozh clergy who wish to join the Patriarchate of Constantinople and, apparently, have already been received by it? After all, their canonical releases were given to them (they should have been given not to them, but to the receiving bishop) by Bishop Basil, after he had already been retired. Although they were, irregularly, backdated to 1 February, they cannot therefore be considered to be legal documents - and yet Constantinople appears to recognize them as such. What is to happen to these clergy?

3) What will become of the Patriarchal London Cathedral in Ennismore Gardens and other Patriarchal property in London? Although the trustees who run the Cathedral appear in their majority to be in favour of Bishop Basil, the vast majority of the parishioners are most certainly not. Legally, the trustees are supposed to represent the beneficiaries, i.e the churchgoers of Ennismore Gardens. Therefore, in law, they cannot take the Cathedral with them. If they did attempt to act anti-democratically, against the popular will, there could be disruption of services and there would surely be a court case. If there were a court case, brought in the name of Bishop Basil by his supporters against the Patriarchate, it seems difficult to imagine how the Patriarchate could avoid suspending and defrocking Bishop Basil. And let us not consider the bad publicity, costs and bitterness that a lengthy court case would inevitably bring.

Moreover, legally, it seems impossible for Bishop Basil's supporters to win such a case. After all, the Cathedral was bought by many donors in the mid-seventies for �80,000, in the name of the Russian Church, not in the name of a splinter-group of the Russian Church, supported by less than 5% of its members. There is little use putting out propaganda that Moscow's only interest is the alleged �16 million value of Sourozh real estate in London. The real estate concerned is simply not for sale, just as, although Queen Elizabeth II may on paper be very wealthy, in fact Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and everything else she 'owns', is not actually for sale.

4) What is the destiny of the small Sourozh parishes and communities (the 'Sourozh Diocese') outside London? Obviously, those that divorce themselves from the Russian Church will in future depend on the support of Non-Russians, that is, of small numbers of English people. But the English members themselves have divided loyalties. At the present time, many of these tiny communities seem to have been left split, and in limbo, without services. What is their future?

5) This last point raises the real problem for Bishop Basil's group. How can this modernist, liberal elite survive, when it does not enjoy the popular support of the mass of the people? Are not the people the guardians of the Faith, according to Orthodox teaching? Surely a bishop should act on behalf of his flock, not on behalf of a mere fraction of his flock? Could it be that the flock is unwanted, because the flock is Orthodox, whereas the Orthodoxy of the leadership of the splinter-group is for some dubious?

The trouble is that the rejection of the people by the Sourozh elite has been going on for over forty years. The defection under pressure of the then Moscow loyalist, the late Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) and his then skete (ironically to Constantinople), in the early 60s, the continual 'leaking' of members from the Sourozh Diocese to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), as Sourozh persecuted those zealous for Holy Orthodoxy, especially those who wished to venerate local saints, especially those who spoke Russian, then the Sourozh rejection of missionary work in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to the formation of many English parishes within the Patrarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, all indicate its long history of rejectionism.

The transfer of a part of the Sourozh jurisdiction to the Paris Exarchate, means that that Exarchate in size now represents perhaps a third of the combined Russian Jurisdictions of the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR in Western Europe. It is still a minority and moreover it still basically exists only in France, where it is losing both parishes and clergy, not to mention people, to Moscow. And Moscow is expanding rapidly all over Western Europe. Therefore, even with the addition of a few in England, the Paris Exarchate is rapidly becoming a minority phenomenon, a minor sideline in international Orthodoxy.

The Moscow Patriarchate may be bitter about this splitting of the Russian Church in Western Europe, in open contempt of the Patriarchal hopes of April 2004 for a multinational Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Western Europe and just at the time when it is in the process of uniting with ROCOR. However, it is also possible that the Russian Church will take this latest episode in the long-running Sourozh saga serenely. After all, it has now, at long last, rid itself of 'troublemakers', without lifting a finger. Tiny Constantinople, already besieged by Turkish nationalism, has little to gain from the Sourozh episode, but much to lose. As for the huge Russian Church, with its forthcoming unity with ROCOR, it can now proceed to its planned Metropolia in Western Europe, without the grating presence of dissident modernist intellectuals in England.


Alexandr

those who read either French or Russian should check dioceseinfo.org

For those who don't: the council of the Constantinople Archdiocese/Exarchate in Western Europe for parishes of the Russian Tradition met on 16 June in Paris; Bishop Basil of Amphipolis is a full member, and he was accompanied this time by a Protodeacon and two lay women who are active in organizing the judicatory (there's a nice neutral word) in England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and perhaps Ireland.

Yesterday (Sunday) the Archbishop and Bishop Basil served the Divine Liturgy together at the Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky on the Rue Daru in Paris.

Incognitus

Well,

I believe this answers whether or not Bishop Basil is going to the meeting he has been summoned to in Moscow. He for all matters has left Moscow behind and is now busy ordering about the new administration.

I am still interested in seeing what the outcome of the other meeting over the weekend was like (Sourozh MP Diocese). Alexsandr there is another meeting much along the lines of diocesan asmebly that was to take place on the 17th of June. A number of questions were up in the air if it could take place with so many last minute resignations from the diocesan council. If anyone sees it up, please post the link to it.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+