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NEW ZION in BABYLON the Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century

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NEW ZION in BABYLON the Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century NEW ZION IN BABYLON The Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century Vladimir Moss Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2008 PART 3. THE MOST TERRIBLE YEARS (1925-1941) ........................................3 The Repose of Patriarch Tikhon.................................................................................3 Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa ..................................................................................6 The Miracle of the Cross in the Sky.........................................................................11 The Struggle on Mount Athos.................................................................................14 The Struggle on Valaam ..........................................................................................17 The Albanian Orthodox Church..............................................................................21 The Rise of Metropolitan Sergius ............................................................................24 “The Dogma of Redemption.....................................................................................35 The Eulogian Schism ...............................................................................................38 The Church Decentralised .......................................................................................43 The Fall of Metropolitan Sergius.............................................................................46 The Sacred Struggle in Greece.................................................................................53 The Sacred Struggle in Romania.............................................................................56 The Birth of the Catacomb Church ..........................................................................59 The Martyrdom of the Catacomb Church................................................................67 ROCOR and Metropolitan Sergius.........................................................................73 Archbishop Andrew and the Old Ritualists ................................................................78 Not Bowing the Knee to Baal...................................................................................85 The Return of the Three Bishops..............................................................................92 Persecution in Romania...........................................................................................98 The Vatican and Russia.........................................................................................102 Three Holy Hieromartyrs ......................................................................................106 Divisions among the Greek Old Calendarists .......................................................114 ROCOR’s Second All-Diaspora Council ..............................................................120 The Serbs and the Concordat .................................................................................124 Secret Catacomb Councils .....................................................................................133 Archbishop Theophan of Poltava ...........................................................................138 ROCOR in Germany.............................................................................................141 The Cost of Sergianism ..........................................................................................143 The Russian Borderlands.......................................................................................148 2 PART 3. THE MOST TERRIBLE YEARS (1925-1941) Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. Isaiah 5.20. Then shall be tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall be. Matthew 24.21. The Repose of Patriarch Tikhon The ecclesiastical situation in Russia in the first months of 1925 was very serious. Archbishop Seraphim (Lukyanov) wrote to Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky): “”His Holiness Tikhon is getting better after a third bold attempt on his life, but he has become very weak and is terribly exhausted. He frequently serves and receives people every day. They come to him from all corners of Russia. He has the following rule: every day he receives not more than 50 people; he speaks with no more than 10 hierarchs, and not longer than 5 minutes with the others. Sometimes in consequence of his weakness he receives people lying on a sofa. He has become much older and looks like a very old man. He has neither a Synod nor a chancellery around him. He avoids issuing written decrees so as to escape complications with the authorities. He has weakened not only physically, but also in his will – he has begun to make more concessions than he should, and is not firm. Therefore hierarchs often rebel openly against his decrees, and then he revokes his decisions. “In Moscow there are now around 60 hierarchs who have been appointed to various dioceses by his Holiness, but who have been detained by the authorities. These hierarchs are free and have no work. Their only occupation is to serve in various churches and thereby earn their bread, living somewhere and somehow… “His Holiness Tikhon enjoys enormous authority and love. It is forbidden to commemorate his name, in some places people are even persecuted for commemorating it. He himself does not force anyone to commemorate his name, and now in Russia they usually pray thus: ‘For their Holinesses the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Moscow”… “People in Russia are very unhappy with the political statements of the Carlovtsy Council; they consider that at this time hierarchs should wall themselves off from any political actions, since all this is blamed on the Patriarch. The attitude to those who have fled is in general negative. They are very much waiting for an Ecumenical Council, thinking for some reason that the union of the Anglicans and even of the Catholics will take place at it. 3 Professor Dmitrievsky is even intending to go to the East for this. They are hoping that the foreign powers will force the Bolsheviks to let the Patriarch and the hierarchs go to the Council. They do not always have a good understanding of the situation of the autocephalous Churches and their attitude to our Church. “The question of the new calendar has not died down and it has many supporters, especially in view of the fact that the Bolsheviks do not recognize the old feasts and the believers are very constrained when they go to services. It seems that the Bolsheviks again want to put pressure on the Patriarch to introduce the new style…”1 Shortly before his death, on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1925, the Patriarch confided to his personal physician and friend, Michael Zhizhilenko, that he felt that the unceasing pressure of the government would one day force the leadership of the Church to concede more than was right, and that the true Church would then have to descend into the catacombs like the Roman Christians of old. And he counselled his friend, who was a widower, that when that time came, he should seek the monastic tonsure and episcopal consecration.2 That time came in 1927 with the notorious declaration of Metropolitan Sergius; and Michael Zhizhilenko, following the advice of his mentor, was consecrated as the first bishop of the anti-sergianist Catacomb Church in 1928, for which he paid with his life in Solovki in 1931. Thus was the concept and even the name of the Catacomb Church foreseen by the Martyr-Patriarch himself; it was, and is the “Tikhonite” Church. The concept of “the Catacomb Church” brings to mind the situation of the Christians in Roman times, and again during the iconoclast persecutions, when the Church was forced to live in a semi-legal or illegal position vis-à-vis the State. Such a move was to prove still more necessary under the militant atheists of the Soviet anti-State, whose enmity towards religion was much fiercer than that of the pagan Roman and heretical Greek emperors. The idea that the Russian Church might have to descend into the catacombs, in imitation of the Christians in early Rome, was suggested as early as 1909 by the future head of that Catacomb Church, Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) of Petrograd: “Now many are complaining about the hard times for the Church… Remembering the words of the Saviour with complete accuracy, we must expect still worse times for the Church… Without any 1 Monk Benjamin, “Letopis’ Tserkovnykh Sobytij Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda” (A Chronicle of Church Events of the Orthodox Church beginning from 1917), http://www.zlatoust.ws/letopis.htm, pp. 135-136 ®. 2 I.M. Andreyev, Russia's Catacomb Saints, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman Brotherhood Press, 1982, p. 56. 4 exaggeration, she must truly live through a condition close to complete destruction and her being overcome by the gates of hell. Perhaps with us, exactly as in the land of freedom, America, they will drive the Name of Christ out of the schools. They will adapt prayer assemblies into ordinary meetings permitted by the police, as in that other land of freedom, France, and will convert the heritage of the Church, together with the very right of faith, into the property of the state. Perhaps the faith of Christ will again hide in the woods, the deserts, the catacombs, and the confession of the faith will be only in secret, while immoral and blasphemous presentations will come out into the open. All this may happen! The struggle
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