This is the title of Volodymyr Bureha’s interview for the Bulgarian magazine “Christianity and Culture”. The text in its Ukrainian version was agreed with Professor Bureha for publication on our website. Here are excerpts from this interview translated into English.
About the “10 theses” and the prospects of Orthodox Church of Ukraine
At first Tomos on autocephaly in 2019… was perceived as a great chance for the OCU. Unfortunately, these hopes did not come true. If you read the “10 theses” published at that time, you can see that none of these theses was fully implemented. Moreover, some of these theses, in my opinion, even contradict the way the OCU lives today. For example, one of the ten theses condemns the “symphony” and speaks on the need to build a new model of church-state relations. But this did not happen. Although in Ukraine the Church is officially separated from the state, today the OCU actively relies on the support of the state. Therefore, I believe that the expected positive internal development in the OCU after obtaining autocephaly almost did not happen. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the OCU suffers from many traditional diseases of the Orthodoxy. It was not able to overcome them. I mean not only the problem of the so-called “symphony”, but also other aspects of the church life.
About the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the context of its May Council of 2022
After the Council on May 27, 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church no longer considers itself a part of the Moscow Patriarchate, although it did not directly declare its autocephaly. In my opinion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church deliberately refused to declare autocephaly in order not to conflict with other Local Churches, because if autocephaly was declared on May 27, 2022, it can be predicted with certainty that it would not be recognized by any Local Church, and this would lead to a break of relations between the UOC and other Local Churches. Therefore, the leadership of the UOC limited itself to the formulation that the UOC is completely “separated and independent”, without using the word “autocephaly”…
Within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in my opinion, today there is no single identity. Rather, there are different groups in the UOC that interpret the decisions of the Council from May 2022 in different ways. There is a group of those who believe that the connection with the Moscow Patriarchate has not been completely severed, and even in Kyiv there are monasteries and parish churches that continue to commemorate Patriarch Kirill at the liturgy. There are those who believe that there has been a complete severance of the ties and that the UOC is de facto autocephalous, although it does not use this term.
But there are also a large number of priests and lay people who are simply confused. They do not fully understand what status the UOC has now: is it with Moscow or no longer? The main problem, in my opinion, is that after the Council adopted the new Statute, the leadership of the UOC did not publish clear explanations on this matter…
Ukrainian mass media usually interpret the decisions of the Council in such a way that the leadership of the UOC is afraid of a conflict with Moscow and therefore uses the mildest possible formulations, hoping that in this way it will be possible to preserve ties with Patriarch Kirill; that there is some secret connection with Moscow, which is not declared because of the war. But today the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has no relations with Moscow and does not implement any resolutions of the Moscow Synod, which have been ignored in Kyiv for a long time. Nevertheless, Ukrainian society does not trust the leadership of the UOC and suspects it of secret connections with Moscow. Therefore, there is a conflict in the relations between the UOC and society, and the conflict is quite intense.
About the search for a way out for the UOC
That part of the UOC, which advocates complete independence from Moscow and autocephaly, outlined a certain alternative plan. It consists in the fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should first restore relations with the Constantinople Patriarchate, which are now severed, and restore Eucharistic communion with Constantinople. According to this plan, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church could send a delegation to Constantinople and start negotiations on the settlement of its status, and at the same time, within Ukraine, it could start a dialogue with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. These steps would be understandable for Ukrainian society. It is clear that such steps would provoke a harsh response from Moscow in the form of an ecclesiastical court, bans or even excommunications from the Church.
On the prospects of church reconciliation in Ukraine
I think that after the Tomos on autocephaly was given to the OCU, some priests of the UOC quite sincerely joined the OCU. I know such priests who, together with their parishes, quite sincerely and voluntarily made the decision to join the newly created autocephalous church. Then they hoped that it would be a younger, open and dynamic church, so they sincerely changed to the OCU. But at the same time, starting from 2019, there were also conflicts. Internal divisions occurred in many parishes: some parishioners supported the change of belonging to the new Church, others were against…
After the beginning of the large war, the mood in the society became much more radical. There have been cases of forced seizures of church buildings, and corresponding videos are available on the Internet. The most serious cases took place in Ivano-Frankivsk, then in Cherkasy, and in Khmelnytskyi (the cathedral was captured there). And this led to a change of mood in the UOC. If in 2022 many UOC priests spoke about the need for dialogue with the OCU, then in 2023 the idea of dialogue became less popular. More and more people in the UOC believe that dialogue with the OCU is impossible, because the OCU tends to use violence. Therefore, in 2023, the situation in relations between the UOC and the OCU deteriorated. Today, the leaders of both Churches do not consider dialogue to be their priority task.
About the “Moscow Church” cliché
Today, in Ukrainian society there is a popular opinion that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a pro-Moscow force that should not be present in Ukraine. The cliché of the “Moscow Church” is firmly attached to the UOC, although in fact, if one looks at the facts, this statement is problematic, since Metropolitan Onufriy condemned the Russian aggression on the very first day of the war and later made similar statements on several occasions. But, as I mentioned, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been never uniformed…
The problem is that the UOC leadership never directly condemned the collaborationists. There is not a single decision of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that not only expresses its support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, but also clearly condemns cooperation with the Russian occupation authorities. The UOC Synod nowhere directly condemned cases of collaborationism, and Ukrainian society perceives this as actual support of cooperation with the occupation authorities.
On the situation in the occupied territories of Donbas
The only diocese in this region that has declared that it wants to come under the direct authority of Moscow is the Rovenkiv diocese in the Luhansk region. In 2022, it, like dioceses in Crimea, came directly under the authority of Patriarch Kirill. All other dioceses in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions did not address the patriarch with such requests. But they were forced to be registered under the Russian legislation. Therefore, they remain a part of the UOC, but are legally registered under the Russian legislation, because without this registration they could not carry out official activities, have bank accounts, etc. Even on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate, these dioceses are listed as UOC dioceses.
About the situation in the Russian Orthodox Church
Personally, I am surprised and deeply saddened that priests who are members of the Moscow church court (and among them there are experienced priests who know canon law well) become full apologists for every decision that is demanded of them from “above”. I get the impression that any task set by the patriarchy will be immediately carried out by the ecclesiastical court. There are many good educated priests in the Russian Orthodox Church. Therefore, I am unpleasantly impressed by the fact that in the priestly circles there is no disagreement with such a course of the patriarchy. On the contrary, I see a complete agreement, complete automaticity of decisions of the church court in the case of completely fictitious accusations. In my opinion, the problem is not only that there is one person at the “top” of the Church who has become an authoritarian leader, but that there is a certain “infrastructure”, there is a church court fully obedient to the patriarch, which is ready to condemn these priests. On the “top” there is an apparatus that feels absolutely confident, because it can make any repressive decisions without fear of reaction from “below”. This is the most terrible symptom, because it means that the disease is deeper.
