Why is it necessary to restore the patriarchate?

Your Holiness, archpastors of the Russian Church, fathers and brothers! We have already heard many speeches about the patriarchate. Most of those who spoke here about the patriarchate - both for and against - considered the patriarchate from the point of view of its expediency and timeliness. Some pinned, perhaps exaggerated, hopes of an ecclesiastical and even political nature on the patriarchate; others hastened to predict almost complete disappointment for those who had pinned these hopes on the patriarchate. At the same time, in the speeches of both sides, the same note was equally heard: the patriarchate can be restored, or it can not be restored, depending on what is more useful and what is more modern. For me, the question of restoring the patriarchate is completely different. We cannot help but restore the patriarchate; we must certainly restore it, because the patriarchate is the fundamental law of the supreme government of each Local Church. I base my speech on this truth about the patriarchate. We have not gathered here to bring about a reformation in the Russian Church. Our goal is to free our church administration from those ulcers that were the sad fruit of two centuries of captivity of the Russian Church by state power. These ulcers of our church government consist in its deviation from strict compliance with the canonical system. The Church of God has lived on earth for many years. Over the course of entire centuries of its history, it created canonical norms for the highest governance of Local Churches, and these norms were molded into specific church legislation. According to church laws and church history, we must understand the church consciousness and determine what this church consciousness requires from the highest management of the Local Church. The patriarchate in history has been varied; its historical forms varied depending on conditions, place and time. The highest administration of the Local Churches was also varied in its details, and church laws do not require complete uniformity in this matter. But despite all the historical diversity, one unchanging basic rule remains: at the head of the highest administration of each Local Church is the First Hierarch. This is the main idea of ​​the patriarchate. Let us abandon all historical forms for a moment and ask: what is the patriarchate? It is essentially the leadership of the bishops of the Local Church by the First Hierarch. This position is the basic law of the supreme government of each Local Church. Here we heard bewilderment: we do not know what kind of power the patriarch will have, and therefore we cannot yet wish for the restoration of the patriarchate. To this bewilderment I will answer: the patriarch will be what the Council makes him, and he will have the power that the Council gives him. We are free in this; we are free to determine the details of patriarchal government. But we cannot fail to restore the patriarchate itself, we do not have the right to do this, if we do not want the dubious glory of the decisive reformers of the Church, if we do not want to break with the eternal Tradition of the universal Church of Christ. At the last meeting, Rev. Η. P. Dobronravov 1 said that the canons say nothing about the patriarchate. Prof. Titlinov 2 went further and declared that the idea of ​​patriarchal autocracy is alien to the Orthodox Eastern Byzantine tradition. When I heard these statements, I confess that my eyes opened wide in amazement and bewilderment. What actually is the Orthodox Church tradition regarding the higher governance of Local Churches? Let's turn to history and church canons. If we bring to mind the very first time of the historical life of the Church, then we will not find anything there for the organization of the highest administration of the Local Church. Why? But because at that time there were no Local Churches. Scattered throughout the world, the Churches and dioceses-parishes were, of course, always in close communication with each other, but at first they were independent in governance and were not united into Local Churches by any specific church-administrative organization. Therefore, it would be in vain for us to look in the first two centuries for a specific model for the organization of higher administration in the Russian Local Church. There is no such example there. If anyone now decided to restore the church government of the first two centuries, he would have to demand the abolition of all higher government of the Local Churches and the granting of complete independence to each diocese headed by a bishop. But without the organization of Local Churches, the Church of Christ did not live long. Christians who lived in one or another province of the Roman Empire and were united in one way or another in civil terms, naturally, soon united in church terms around the main city of the province - the metropolis. This process of organizing Local Churches into provinces undoubtedly began as early as the 2nd century, and in the 3rd century this process had already led to the formation of certain provincial metropolitan Churches. The order of governance in such Local Churches had already developed, and for the First Ecumenical Council it was already an “ancient custom.” “Let the ancient customs accepted in Egypt, and in Libya, and in Pentapolis be preserved, so that the bishop of Alexandria has authority over all of these. This is also common for the Bishop of Rome. But both in Antioch and in other regions (έπαρχίαις) let the advantages of the Churches be preserved” (Rule 6). The 34th Apostolic Canon also speaks about governance in such ancient, first in time, Local Churches. “The bishops of every nation (of course, the people living in one province or another, since the division into provinces in the Roman Empire had an ethnographic basis, among other things) should know the first in them and recognize him as the head, and do nothing that exceeds their power without his judgment: do for each only what concerns his diocese and the places belonging to it. But even the first one does not do anything without the judgment of everyone. For such will be one mind, and God will be glorified in the Lord in the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Here two principles of the highest governance of the Local Church are indicated: the Council and the First Hierarch. Both the Councils and the First Hierarchs in the Local Churches began in the 2nd century. Neither the Council excludes the First Hierarch, nor vice versa. On the contrary, according to the apostolic rule, the combination of the First Hierarch and the Council in the Local Church determines church unanimity and in this unanimity the glorification of the Most Holy Trinity. There are a number of rules regarding the governance of the Local Metropolitan Churches, defined by the Councils of the 4th century: Antioch (rights 16,17,18,19, 20 and 9), Sardician or Serdica (right 14). All these rules establish that at the head of the management of the Local Church is the Council and the Metropolitan, with the special rights of the First Hierarch, which personally belong to him. And no one then believed that the existence of the first hierarch contradicted the beginning of conciliarity. On the contrary, the leadership of the Local Church by the Metropolitan First Hierarch was considered a necessary addition and, as it were, an improvement of the very conciliarity of governance. In the rules of the Council of Antioch (16, 17 and 18) there is the concept of a “perfect Council”. What is the “perfect Council”? “The perfect Council is the one at which the Metropolitan is present with others,” answers the 16th canon of the Antioch Council. Thus, we see that in the distance of centuries, as soon as the first Local Churches began to form, they were headed by first-hierarchs-metropolitans named after the main cities of the metropolitan provinces. The organization of the Church did not end with the Metropolitan Local Churches. It continued in accordance with the administrative divisions of the Roman Empire. In this empire there were administrative regions larger than provinces - dioceses (διοίκησις). Local Churches located within one diocese soon united with each other, so that the Church of the entire diocese became the Local Church. As soon as this unification of the Churches of the diocese took place, the First Hierarch immediately became the head of the Local Church of a new type over all metropolitans. The Second Ecumenical Council speaks about such Local Churches in canons 2 and 6, calling the first hierarchs bishops of the diocese and delimiting the boundaries of their ecclesiastical areas. The Fourth Ecumenical Council names the same first hierarchs as exarchs of the diocese (Rules 9 and 17), and also calls the Bishop of Constantinople an Archbishop (Rule 28). Likewise, under the new form of Local Churches, the law on the head of their highest administration by the First Hierarch remains unchanged. The next stage of church organization is patriarchates, formed from the ecclesiastical union of several dioceses. Thus, the dioceses of Thracia, Asia and Pontus formed the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Patriarchs became the heads of the patriarchates, these Local Churches of the later type. The Byzantine Empire never coincided with one Local Church; within its borders there were several separate Churches headed by patriarchs. Afterwards, Local Churches were created according to the principle, among other things, and national. At moments of rise of national power and self-awareness, peoples established an autocephalous Church for themselves and headed it by a first hierarch. This was the case, for example, in Serbia in the 14th century under Stefan Dusan, when the autocephaly of the Serbian Church was declared and a Serbian patriarch was installed. Our Russian Church began as a metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople; from the middle of the 15th century it became autocephalous, under the leadership of the Moscow Metropolitan, and from 1589 it itself became the Patriarchate. Currently, the Orthodox Church consists of 16 autocephalous Churches, and all of these Churches - Greek, Slavic, Arab, Romanian - are headed by first hierarchs; with different names and with different powers, but first hierarchs are everywhere. The same is true in societies that have fallen away from the Church, for example, among the Armenians, Jacobites and others. This is the evidence of history. Everywhere and always the forms of higher government of the Local Churches are changing, the Local Churches themselves are changing, but the law of higher government, according to which it is headed by the first hierarch, is invariably preserved. The names and scope of power of the First Hierarch change, but the very principle of the First Hierarch stands unshakably in every Local Church. The sad exception is our unfortunate Russian Church with its Synod. Until 1721, the entire universal Church of Christ did not know a single Local Church governed collectively, without a first hierarch. The Russian Church has never been without a first hierarch. Our patriarchate was destroyed by Peter I. Who did it stop? Conciliarity of the Church? But wasn’t it during the time of the patriarchs that we had especially many Councils? No, it was not conciliarity or the Church that was hindered by the patriarchate. To whom? Here before me are two great friends, two beauties of the 17th century - Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. To quarrel between friends, the evil boyars whisper to the tsar: “Because of the patriarch, you, the sovereign, have become invisible.” And Nikon, when he left the Moscow throne, among other things wrote: “Let him, the sovereign, have more space without me.” This idea of ​​Nikon was embodied by Peter, destroying the patriarchate. “Let me, the sovereign, have more space without the patriarch.” The Moscow autocracy, transformed by Peter into an unlimited autocracy, was prevented by the Russian patriarchate. In a clash with state power, the Russian patriarchate died out for a while, and at the head of the Russian Church there became a college unknown to the entire Church of Christ, in which the spirit of the monarch soon reigned, because some hussar, assigned to it by the chief prosecutor, “commanded the host of bishops, like a squadron in training.” The establishment of the college was, in any case, news in the Church of Christ; This news was created according to Dutch-German models and not at all for the benefit of the church. Let us now ask: what is this constant, always and everywhere unchanging phenomenon in the Church of Christ, that the First Hierarch becomes the head of the supreme administration of the Local Church? Is this really a mistake of all centuries, of all Local Churches, which we are called to correct? Was everyone really mistaken, and the truth was finally revealed only to us? Did all the Local Churches, by establishing the supremacy of the first hierarchs, push Christ away from them, wishing not for Christ to be in their midst, but for the patriarch, as Archpriest N.V. Tsvetkov 3 presented the matter of establishing the patriarchate in one of our past meetings? Is this not too proud and arrogant an attitude towards the Tradition of the entire celestial Church of Christ? Isn’t it better for us to humbly bow before the basic law of the supreme government of the Local Church, as this law is clear from history and from the canons? There was an objection, at the last meeting from the lips of prof. Titlinov, as if the patriarchate is a Western, papist idea. Nothing of the kind. The papacy desires supremacy over the entire Church, and the patriarch is the head of the Local Church. Does anyone here really dream that the Moscow Patriarch will subjugate all 16 Local Churches under his authority? In our contemporary Orthodox Church, the idea of ​​papism cannot have any basis. On the other hand, the pope rules the Church autocratically, sine consensu ecclesiae, and without the consent of the Church, the Orthodox First Hierarch of the Local Church does nothing without the judgment of all its bishops. Since the 34th Apostolic Canon imperatively demands patriarchate in every Local Church, it exposes the error of the papists. In polemics with the Latins, one should, among other things, use the 34th Apostolic Canon. There are no papist heretics among us, but there are many Orthodox patriarchists. There is nothing in common between papism and the patriarchate, and any mention of papism at our Orthodox Council is completely unnecessary and not at all necessary. It is not papist tendencies that require the restoration of the patriarchate, but the Orthodox church consciousness. I will turn to 1917. Apparently, we came to the Council at the wrong time to talk about the patriarchate. The Pre-Conciliar Council answered the question about the patriarchate very quickly and decisively: the patriarchate supposedly contradicts the beginning of conciliarity, and therefore it should not be restored. The All-Russian Church and Public Bulletin published feuilletons and articles against the patriarchate in almost every issue. Even one of the synodal institutions (Publishing Council) published an unscrupulous leaflet entitled: “Do we need a patriarch?” The leaflet answers this question in the negative, and the last Synod, convened by the last chief prosecutor, as usual silently “took note” of this unacceptable mockery of the sacred idea of ​​the patriarchate. Finally, we are dominated by a “revolutionary” ochlocracy, to which it is always possible to denounce the supposed counter-revolutionary nature of the patriarchate. So what? Despite everything, we are talking about the patriarchate. The first big question that we discuss is the question of the patriarchate. Even in the section on higher administration we could not resist talking about the patriarchate first of all. We could not resist doing this here, at the general meeting of our Council. The heart is already joyfully experiencing the pre-celebration of the great church-folk celebration of the restoration of the patriarchate. Those who in our meetings object to the patriarchate themselves admitted last time that they are taking on a thankless task and making hopeless speeches. Why is this? Where is this from? Doesn’t this mean that the church consciousness, both in the 34th Apostolic Canon and at the Moscow Council of 1917, invariably says one thing: “It is fitting for bishops of every nation, including the Russian, to know the first in them and recognize him as their head.” And I would like to appeal to all those who for some reason still consider it necessary to object to the patriarchate. Fathers and brothers! Do not disturb the joy of our like-mindedness! Why are you taking on a thankless task? Why are you saying hopeless speeches? After all, you are fighting against church consciousness. Be afraid lest you turn out to be fighters against God (see: Acts 5:39)! We have already sinned, we sinned by not restoring the patriarchate two months ago, when we arrived in Moscow and met each other for the first time in the Great Assumption Cathedral. Wasn’t it painful for anyone then to see the empty patriarchal place to the point of tears? Wasn’t it a shame to see that the Moscow Metropolitan was standing somewhere under the scaffolding during the all-night vigil for the Assumption? Wasn’t it sad to see a dirty plaque and not a patriarch in the historical patriarchal place? And when we venerated the holy relics of the wonderworkers of Moscow and the first thrones of Russia, didn’t we then hear their reproach for the fact that their high priestly see had been widowed among us for two hundred years? There is a “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem. Old faithful Jews come to her and cry, shedding tears for the lost national freedom and for the former national glory. In Moscow, in the Assumption Cathedral, there is also a Russian Western Wall - an empty patriarchal place. For two hundred years, Orthodox Russian people have been coming here and crying bitter tears about the church freedom destroyed by Peter and about the former church glory. What a grief it will be if this Russian wailing wall of ours remains forever! It won't happen! Moscow is called the heart of Russia. But where does the Russian heart beat in Moscow? On the stock exchange? In shopping arcades? On Kuznetsky Most? It is fought, of course, in the Kremlin. But where in the Kremlin? In district court? Or in the soldiers' barracks? No, in the Assumption Cathedral. There, at the front right pillar, the Russian Orthodox heart should beat. Peter's eagle, based on the Western model of autocracy, pecked out this Russian Orthodox heart. The sacrilegious hand of the wicked Peter brought the Russian High Hierarch from his centuries-old place in the Assumption Cathedral. The Local Council of the Russian Church with the power given to it by God will again place the Moscow Patriarch in his rightful inalienable place. And when His Holiness the Patriarch goes to his historical sacred place in the Assumption Cathedral to the ringing of Moscow bells, there will be great joy on earth and in Heaven. Dobronravov N. P. (1861–1937) – archpriest, master of theology. As an archpriest, he took part in the actions of the Local Council of 1917–1918, where he opposed the restoration of the patriarchate. In 1918, having become a widow, he became a monk. In 1921 he was consecrated bishop. Since 1923 - Archbishop of Vladimir and Suzdal. During his priesthood he became a close associate of Patriarch Tikhon and actively opposed the renovationists. He was arrested several times. In 1937 he was shot in Butovo. Canonized (November 27" December 10). – Approx. ed. Titlinov B.V. (1879-?) – historian of the Russian church, professor of St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, master of theology. In 1917, he became the editor of the All-Russian Church and Public Bulletin, from the pages of which he promoted the ideas of “church renewal.” Subsequently, he was an active figure in the renovation movement. – Approx. ed. Tsvetkov N.V. (1862-?) – Archpriest of the Church of the Intercession on Varvarka in Moscow, Master of Theology. In 1919 he was arrested for exposing the actions of the authorities to open the relics. In 1921, the patriarch's representative in Pomgol. – Approx. ed.