Carol Saba on the Current Situation in the Orthodox World

 Arabic original, originally published in an-Nahar, here.

What is happening in an Orthodoxy that is oscillating between geopolitical axes on a line of fire and steel?

The whole world is holding its breath. The geopolitical and military situation in Ukraine is heating up. Friction between Russia and NATO could develop into a military confrontation. A fire is likewise blazing in Ukraine, which sits upon geopolitical fault lines. The snowball of schism, which we have repeatedly warned about, is gathering speed, between the Orthodox churches which, whether they like it or not, have been cast into the competing camps of east and west. The Patriarchate of Moscow accuses the Patriarchate of Constantinople of igniting the spark of division by unilaterally granting, on January 6, 2019, without Orthodox consensus, autocephaly to Ukrainian schismatic groups at the expense of the legitimate, autonomous Ukrainian church connected to the Church of Moscow since the time of the historic agreement signed in 1686 by Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV and members of his holy synod and sent to the tsar of Russia as "protector of Orthodoxy" at the time. Constantinople responds by saying that Moscow is responsible for the division since, when it boycotted the Council of Crete of June 2016, it rejected the primacy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and encouraged other Orthodox churches (Antioch, Bulgaria and Georgia) to boycott the council. Of course, Antioch had its own reasons not to participate in the Council of Crete, for which it had dedicatedly prepared in good faith until the last moment, the first of which being the disregard for and lack of a solution to the issue of the invasion of its historical ecclesiastical territory in Qatar by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, even though Antioch was the first to warn of the ramifications of this attack for the unity of all Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, by the eve of the Council of Crete, this canonical issue had not been dealt with as it should have been.
Thus, since 2019 there has been a split between the two poles of Orthodoxy, Moscow and Constantinople, and each of them has tried to draw the other churches into its camp. Of course, international politics have not been far from this situation. In a tweet in early 2021, the former American Secretary of State Pompeo stated explicitly that the United States supported the establishment of the autocephalous Ukrainian church, strove to win international recognition for it, and helped to free it of Russian influence. It has come to be known that the geopolitical and ecclesial factors have overlapped over the course of the twentieth century and until today, something we have confirmed in our five-part study published in an-Nahar in September 2019 under the title "Orthodoxy at the Crossroads: The Crises and Ways Out of It". This is also confirmed, for example, by recently-declassified CIA documents indicating the relationship and cooperation between the American government and the Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Truman Administration in order to limit Soviet influence and how Patriarch Maximus V, Patriarch Athenegoras' predecessor, was removed to the benefit of the latter, who was in America and was connected to President Truman, all despite the young age of Patriarch Maximus', who at the time was said to have been removed due to his mental health. These documents, which received attention due to two recently-published articles on the American website Orthodox History, also indicate Patriarch Athenagoras' cooperation at the beginning of his reign with the American government with regard to religious freedom. Many reports and articles also show how these practices continue until today. On the other hand, much is said by critics of Moscow, yesterday and today, who insist on the necessity of preventing the expansion of the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the most numerous and is accused of ambitions of "Third Rome" and of being in lockstep with the Kremlin.

In the current crisis, which is the most dangerous because it harms all of Orthodoxy, much is said and written about the immense pressures that have been put on the Orthodox Churches, especially that of Greece, to recognize the new Ukrainian ecclesial entity headed by Epifany Dumenko, whose priesthood has not been recognized by the churches. The Orthodox Church of Poland, for example, continues to consider him to be a layman. Up to today, he has only obtained recognition from the Churches of Greece, Alexandria and Cyprus, despite serious objections within the holy synods of these churches. The Archbishop Anastasius of Albania, a Greek by origin who is greatly respected for his broad theological knowledge and his lengthy ecclesiastical experience on account of his missionary work in Africa followed by his role in the restoration and resurrection of the Church of Albania, objects to the canonical pretext for Constantinople's decision and continues to demand that a meeting of all the Orthodox patriarchs be convened to prevent the schism from widening. Likewise, in addition to Russia, the Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia have not recognized the Ukrainian ecclesial entity.

The schism train is gathering steam now and the mutual estrangement between the churches is becoming deeper. At a time when there is talk of impending decisions from Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the church of Montenegro and  to the schismatic church in Northern Macedonia at the request of political authorities in both countries, something that puts Constantinople in direct confrontation with the Patriarchate of Serbia because Montenegro and Macedonia historically belong to it, the Russian Church has decided to establish establish a pair of exarchates in Africa on the historical territory of the Patriarchate of Alexandria in order to receive priests and parishes from that patriarchate. This disintegration and departure from the paths of unity and true conciliarity are unfortunate. All the calls to hold a synaxis of the patriarchs and leaders of the Orthodox churches to set things right-- including from the Patriarchate of Antioch, which is in danger because it sits on the line of contact in this hot-cold war-- have come to naught.

Where are we today? The Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, Theodorus, regrets and admits, publicly and belatedly, that he did harm to Orthodox unity, as though he were saying that he had been forced to recognize the schismatics without Orthodox consensus. Would it not have been better for him, as someone who had lived and served in Ukraine alongside the legitimate church and is known for his closeness to the Russians, if he had remained a bridge of communication and dialogue between Constantinople and Moscow, fending off mutual estrangement and schism? As for the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, a figure whom we have loved and still love, who had been promising with his mastery of several languages, who had studied at Chalki in Turkey, Germany and Rome, who knows both the West and the East, who has an excellent mastery of canon law, who set the Orthodox world in motion at his election on the heels of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s through his calls for Orthodox unity and joint Orthodox activity, several times convening the Synaxis, summits between the patriarchs and heads of the Orthodox churches as a modern and necessary mechanism for mutual understanding, keeping track of things, and joint activity, today stands obstinate in defending and insisting on an erroneous decision about Ukraine and is being pushed more and more to focus on a dodgy theory that transforms the primacy of honor that the Ecumenical Patriarchate enjoys in the Orthodox world, which is indisputable and entails the primate having rights and responsibilities for coordination as first among equals, into the canonical primacy of a first without equals-- that is, a superior, quasi-papal canonical primacy that imposes itself vertically upon the other Orthodox churches, doing away with the Orthodox tradition since the Apostles, which is the conciliar tradition, the tradition of consultation, discussion and horizontal decision-making. As for Patriarch Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, whose eyes gleam with intelligence, a servant of the Church in difficult times, who was not afraid during the Soviet period to the media to bear witness to the Gospel, who constantly preached to the youth and accompanied them, who rose up with the Church after the fall of the Soviet Union-- and how not, when he was a disciple of Metropolitan Nikodim, his predecessor as Metropolitan of Smolensk in Russia and his predecessor in the Patriarchate's Department of External Relations at the height of the Soviet Union, a renowned man of ecclesial diplomacy for the Russian Church, who knew how to escape the grip of the Soviet communist authorities, who was close to the Vatican, which worked with him to defend the underground Church, who constantly connected the dots and dodged traps to stitch together international support for the underground Christian resistance in Russia that struggled and prepared for the fall of the bastion of communism and atheism, today we see him also trying to cure matters by means of what was itself the illness. Is it possible to treat poison with poison? As we wrote in an-Nahar on August 7, 2018, let us once more lift up a thunderous voice: who will stop this dangerous slide that is threatening the unity of the Orthodox Church? Have the patriarchs lost the ability and boldness necessary to take initiative? Let us pray to the Lord!

Carol Saba on the Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy's Impasse (V)

Arabic original here. Read part IV here.

An Orthodox Church or Churches?
Elements for Escaping the Crisis of Universal Orthodoxy

The crisis is unprecedented. Moscow boycotts the "council" of Crete in 2016 and Constantinople responds in its own backyard by granting autocephaly to the schismatics in Ukraine at the expense of legitimate Orthodoxy there, which has been tied to Moscow for three hundred years. Moscow rejected the decision and broke communion with Constantinople. The Orthodox churches were flabbergasted and their activity was paralyzed. Appeals to the Ecumenical Patriarch to hold an emergency synaxis received no response. This state of schism spoils communion between the Orthodox Churches and hurts their credibility as one, indivisible body.

In the twentieth century, Orthodoxy became globalized and went from being "Eastern" Orthodoxy to being "global" Orthodoxy  on all continents, without revsing its tradtional governance in order to catch up with this new geopolitical situation. The crisis today is two crises: a crisis of governance that is producing intractable crises (Estonia, Qatar, Czechia, Crete, Ukraine, etc.) and the crisis of an absence of mechanisms for conflict resolution.

The most difficult thing right now is that Constantinople is both plaintiff and judge. Exiting the impasse requires diagnosing the roots of the illness. Is Orthodoxy one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church or competing ethnic churches with no complementarity among them, despite Paul's request to the Corinthians, "...  there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other"? Yes, Constantinople fell before falling due to nationalist self-interest. And with time, the Orthodoxy of faith transformed into a nationalist Orthodoxy that searches for God's history in books of geography, geopolitics, and affiliations.

Metropolitan Georges Khodr foretold in August, 1991, as he was analyzing Orthodoxy's maladies, what is happening today in Ukraine: "Can the official Church which is subject to Moscow religiously preserve this allegiance if the Ukrainian Republic splits?" He continued, "No one can see the future because the historical custom, since the last century, is for those who obtain independence nationally to become independent ecclesiastically." "The historical custom" for Sayyidna Georges is only a painful indicator of the influence of nationalisms on Orthodoxy, which was condemned at the council in Constantinople in 1872.

Nationalism is not the criterion, but rather communion of faith. Until now, this "historical custom" has never been applied in Antiochian experience. The Orthodox in Lebanon did not seek to establish their own national church at Lebanon's independence and it is my hope that they will not seek it today. And they won't, despite all the talk about imminent dangers to Antiochian unity and that Antioch, like Serbia, is the target after Ukraine. Of course, there are problems of governance, sensitivities and estrangement, but they must all be dealt with under the roof of Antiochian unity, so dear to Christ.

Here lies the seriousness of the Ukrainian crisis: as an attempt to subject the governance and geography of the Church-- today more than ever-- to variable nationalist and geopolitical considerations. Did not the new president of Ukraine, Zelensky, withdraw from the invervensions of his predecessor, President Poroshenko, in the Church?

Historically, the Ancient Patriarchates were centers of communion of faith for circles of communion for flocks that transcend national, geographic and political considerations. Apostolic Canon 34 expresses this in the most marvelous way. However, with the rise of ideologies of national liberation in the 19th century under Western influence, there came the theory of the inevitability of ecclesiastical schism upon national indepdence, against the backdrop of the Greek national revolution.

The ideologue of this equation, which states that the boundaries of the Church, like the boundaries of the nation, should follow political boundaries and not the opposite, was the Archimandrite Theoklitos Farmakidis, the theorist of Greek autocephaly, which was declared in 1830 and recognized by Constantinople in 1850. Greek independence from the empire was also independence from Constantinople, which the leaders of the Greek Revolution accused of being dependent on the Sublime Port. But Farmakidis' analogy reversed the ancient ecclesiastical rule and subjected the church to variable geopolitical considerations, opening the way for nationalist Orthodoxies and the intertwining of the ecclesiastical and the political in Orthodoxy, especially for Constantinople and Moscow in the context of their struggle over leadership.

For example, the correspondence of Harry Truman's advisor Myron Taylor with Truman and the American ambassador in Turkey, as well as other documents of correspondence with the Vatican, show that during, before and after the election of Patriarch Athenagoras, there was an ongoing relationship between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the American administration in order to oppose Russia, Communism and, at the time, the Soviet Union. This relationship continues until today and one might point out statements from the US State Department in support of Constantinople's decision in Ukraine.

On the other hand, many documents also demonstrate the exploitation of the Church in Russia by the Soviet state and today the Church in Russia is accused of identifying with the politics of the Russian state.

Escaping the crisis requires both sides and all the Orthodox Churches to look critically at the intertwining of the ecclesiastical and the political in Orthodoxy, to make nationalist Orthodoxy submit to the Orthodoxy of faith rather than the opposite, and to put into place modern practices and rules for participatory clergy-lay governance that constructively and productively connects the dialectic of primacy and conciliarity.

As for escaping the Ukrainian crisis, this requires historical boldness and sacrifices on both sides for the sake of the higher Orthodox good. It requires:

1) A decision by Constantinople to "freeze" the tomos of autocephaly.

2) A decision by Moscow to suspend the decision to break communion in order to open the way for a meeting, discussions and negotiations between the two sides.

3) A decision by both sides for the necessity of cooperating with the request for Ukrainian autocephaly in an open, churchly manner through joint agreement on the terms and conditions of this autocephaly: including the special relationship with Russia and the historical relationship with Constantinople, bearing in mind both sides' historical rights and preventing any political exploitation of the issue.

It remains to wonder: the people of God or peoples of God? Church or churches? The future is close at hand. Kyrie eleison.

Carol Saba on the Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy's Impasse (IV)

From yesterday's an-Nahar. Arabic original here. Read part III here and part V here.


The Suffering of the Orthodox Church during the Twentieth Century:
Internal and External Dangers Alike

The twentieth century was crueler to Orthodoxy than previous centuries. All the Orthodox churches were-- and continue to be-- along geopolitical fault lines, pulled in different directions by various countries' interests and hot and cold wars. After Eastern Orthodoxy's imprisonment in the Ottoman cage for four hundred years, there came the First World War, which started in the Balkans and went on to weigh heavily on all Orthodox societies.  This was followed in 1917 by the atheistic Bolshevik Revolution, which struck Russia, the largest Orthodox nation, and Orthodoxy was crushed between the anvil and hammer of Communism.

Before Stalin resorted to Orthodoxy and nationalist sentiment in 1941 to save Russia from the Nazi steamroller, around 600 bishops, 40,000 priests and 120,000 monks and nuns were killed and thousands of cathedrals, churches and monasteries were destroyed. Communism was defeated in 1988, and Gorbachev asked Patriarch Pimen to jointly organize the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the Baptism of the Rus. Then, Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe was liberated from the Soviet cage when the Berlin Wall fell in 1990.

As for Greek Orthodoxy, it suffered repeated blows: in 1923, with the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks of Asia Minor; with the bloody events of September, 1955 against the Greeks of Istanbul to expel them; the invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus in 1974; the Greek economic crisis and its being under international trusteeship since 2008; and the efforts by the radical socialist, atheist government of Tsipras to tame the Church of Greece by force.

The rise of radical, Salafist Islamism on account of the weakness of Arab civil society has threatened the Middle Eastern churches and pushed their members to emigrate.  And let us not forget the suffering of Serbia, the Yugoslav wars since 1991, and NATO's campaign against it; the hostile situation for Serbian Orthodoxy and its historic sites in Kosovo; the seizure of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli struggle since 1948; "others' wars in Lebanon," in the words of Ghassan Toueini, since 1975; and the ongoing tragedy in Syria. Efforts to enervate and divide Orthodoxy continue with the Ukrainian crisis and attempts to split Orthodoxy in Macedonia and Montenegro from Serbia. In this way, the lines of fire shifted within the Orthodox space over the course of the twentieth century and they continue to do so, their flames biting at the body and flesh of Orthodoxy.

Blows have come from within and from the outside. Internally, with Orthodoxy's inability to coalesce and anticipate and cope with the transformations of the globalization of the twentieth century, and on account of the rivalry, deadly for universal Orthodoxy, between Constantinople and Moscow, which has opened the door for global powers to exploit the weaknesses of nationalist Orthodoxies, which has damaged the the Orthodoxy of faith which, even if the arrows have struck it and it has become a martyr, continues to bear witness. In the midst of these transformations (the West seeking to seize the East, religious radicalism, atheistic Communism and irreligious, secularized and globalized liberalism), Orthodoxy has tried to break the bonds around it.

Within the context of attempting to strengthen the Ecumenical Patriarchate because of the transformations that were weakening it, Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis called for a Pan-Orthodox Congress in Istanbul in 1923. He was also the originator of the idea of saying yes to Orthodox unity in the diaspora, but under the banner of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which was rejected by Moscow and a large portion of the Orthodox Churches. There followed meetings at Vatopedi Monastery on Athos in 1930, the first conference for Orthodox theological institutes in Athens in 1936, and the Moscow conference in 1948, which was held amidst difficult international circumstances and a growing cold war for leadership between Moscow and Constantinople. The latter rejected Moscow's right to call for Pan-Orthodox meetings and boycotted the conference, along with the churches of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Greece.

Then came the election of Patriarch Athenagoras, who opened a window of hope and whose star shined in the Orthodox space like a man of peace, striving "to bring the Orthodox together into one house, albeit with many windows." The path toward the Great Orthodox Council began on Rhodes in 1961 with hope and tribulations. It was followed, over some decades, by several Pan-Orthodox conferences and synaxes of the primates of the Orthodox Churches which should have, were it not for the pathologies of competition and primacy that prevented attention from being paid to the common good and to finding solutions to crucial ecclesiastical problems-- among them, the issue of Jerusalem's violation of Antioch's jurisdiction in Qatar. Confrontational positioning between the churches grew at the expense of true conciliarity, which accompanies and proceeds slowly and deliberately. The Crete meeting of 2016 was fragmented and not universal, given the absence of four large churches: the apostolic Church of Antioch, Moscow, Bulgaria and Georgia.

The competition and blockage has continued through the Ukrainian crisis of 2018.

Carol Saba on the Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy's Impasse (III)

Arabic original here. Part one , part two and part four.

The Transformations of the 19th Century:
Laying the Groundwork for the Competition and Rivalry of the 20th Century

Istanbul, 1872. Let's go back a little... "In the Church of Christ, which is a spiritual communion that aims, through her Head and founder, to encompass all nations in one brotherhood in Christ, considers Phyletism and discrimination on the basis of ethnic and linguistic origin to be something completely foreign to the concept... when each ethnic church strives to realize what is particular to it, is a deadly assault on the dogma of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church..."

Thus spoke the fathers of the famous Synod of Constantinople, which met in 1872 in response to the conflict that had been raging since 1856 between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Bulgarian dioceses in the Ottoman Empire, which were striving for ecclesiastical independence from Istanbul. For the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément, this was "the last council of the Pentarchy." That is, the Church's ancient system of governance based on the principle of five patriarchates: Rome (which left it in 1054), Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. As for the Russians, they regarded it as a "Greek council" because all the patriarchs of the East and all the bishops who attended it were of Greek origin, an indication of the Greek ethnicity's domination over the patriarchates of the East.

Competition and rivalry in the twentieth century had as background the ongoing struggle between Moscow and Constantinople, which had become deeply rooted since the rise of ethnic and nationalist chauvinisms and European and Russian interventions in the Ottoman Empire shortly after the issue of the famous Ottoman Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1856, which spoke of reforms to the system and the rights and responsibilities of every millet, whetting the appetite of the Orthodox of the empire for independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

After the fall of Constantinople and the Sultan Fetih's recognition of its patriarch as the sole leader of all the Orthodox of the "Rum Millet" in the empire, Constantinople tightened its control over the empire's patriarchates and bishoprics, from the Middle East to the Balkans, including the Bulgarian lands. Theories developed, declaring that the Ecumenical Patriarch had inherited the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodoxy of Constantinople came to be a synonym for the "Hellenic nation", which encompassed many ethnic groups and languages. Greek became the holy language of Orthodoxy and any move towards independence was an attack on this Orthodoxy.

A "gerondist" (in Greek, geronda means 'elder' or 'senior') movement developed in Constantinople, establishing a conservative ecclesiastical aristocracy, which regarded the continued existence of the Ecumenical See over the course of history as being due to resisting change and preserving traditions and inherited prerogatives. It resisted all reformist movements in the See, accusing their followers of being creatures of western politics. And so Constantinople came to be "the Great Church" and "the Mother Church" which, even if it reluctantly accepted the independence of the empire's churches from it under the pressure of circumstances, continued to regard them as daughters dependent on it. These established relations characterized by an attitude of superiority and paternalism toward the churches, which continues until today, in defense of the prerogatives of byegone Byzantine and Ottoman times.

Nevertheless, movements of national liberation arose in the East, due to the European Enlightenment and Western influences, which threatened these methods of Constantinople's. Ideas of "national" independence from the Ottoman yoke developed among the peoples alongside ideas of ecclesiastical independence from submission to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The leaders of the Greek Revolution in 1821, which in 1830 won independence for Greece from the empire, demanded and declared ecclesiastical independence in 1833. They accused the Patriarchate of Constantinople of being attached to and dependent upon the Sublime Porte. Constantinople did not recognize the autocephaly of the Church of Greece until 1850 and there continue to be disagreements on various thorny issues between the mother and her daughter.

Greek independence whetted the Bulgarians' appetite. The shifting tides, the ecclesiastical, political and diplomatic negotiations and interventions and tug-of-war between Constantinople and Moscow continued from 1856 to 1870. Constantinople attempted to prevent the Bulgarian autocephaly that was declared unilaterally by the Bulgarians in 1870 and in 1872, the Holy Synod of Constantinople came out against the Bulgarian schism, to which it gave its assent in 1945.

The competition and rivalry over this issue testifies to the struggle between Moscow and Constantinople starting in that time, as does the role of the Russian ambassador to the Ottomans, Nikolai Ignatiev, in the Bulgarian issue. Then came Serbian autocephaly in 1879, which was recognized by Constantinople in 1920.

As for Antioch, the election of Meletius Doumani in 1898 as the first Arab patriarch of Antioch since 1724 provoked a crisis of his recognition by Constantinople, which saw Moscow's fingerprints on this election under the cover of Arabization. This delayed the sultan's confirmation of the patriarch for a year, so that his enthronement in Damascus took place on December 31, 1899.
Will the 20th century be any less cruel for Orthodoxy than those that preceded it?

Carol Saba on the Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy's Impasse (II)

 Arabic original, from today's an-Nahar here. Read part one here and part three here.

"O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance."

Orthodoxy from the Fall of Constantinople to the Rise of Moscow

"O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance." This lament for Constantinople upon its fall is like weeping by the rivers of Babylon, words that mourn with nostalgia, sorrow, pain, tears and grief over the holy Queen City. Byzantium rose with Constantine the Great, it flourished and its wealth amassed for more than a millennium. It established a civilization that Europe has inherited. With its defeat on the walls of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, the earth shook and a deep wound was opened in Orthodoxy that still bleeds today.

Orthodoxy entered into the Ottoman era and experienced a state of historical stasis, during which its powers declined, its immune system weakened, and factors of worldly anxiety grew within it. The Ottoman sultanate encompassed it and enfeebled the Eastern Patriarchates and the churches of the Balkans over the course of four hundred years.

Nor was the West absent from efforts to weaken Orthodoxy, absorb it, and drain it of its blood through missions, biting off chunks, poaching, efforts to dominate the East and effectuating schisms within it. The Orthodox became strangers in their homelands and their theological and leadership capabilities for recovery and renewal declined. Their worldly anxiety pushed them to develop ethno-phyletist politics based on wedding Orthodoxy to nationalist chauvinism as a means of liberation from the Ottoman cage. The Orthodox were transformed from being masters of the house to being a closed-off protectorate. After having been the "people of God" in harmony with its patriarchal and imperial leadership, according to the idea  of "Byzantine symphonia" upon which Justinian's empire was based, the Orthodox turned into the Rum ethnic millet, which was seen as a minority that was closed in on itself and subject to certain privileges granted to it by the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

The Ecumenical Patriarch inherited the position of the Byzantine Emperor. A crown of imperial majesty, studded with precious stones, was placed on his head. There began a transformation of the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch along with an effort to further develop canonically his inherited authority by way of the Patriarch Gennadios' agreement with Sultan Mehmet II Fetih immediately after the fall of Constantinople. The latter recognized the former as patriarch and "ethnarch". That is, as the temporal and religious leader of the Rum Millet.

After the fall of the empire, the Ecumenical Patriarch comprised in his person two authorities: ecclesiastical and temporal. He became the symbol of the double-headed eagle, responsible for defending religious and historical Orthodoxy. Over time, his synod was transformed into a "permanent synod" that incorporated the Orthodox patriarchs of the East, who were forced to reside in Istanbul for long periods of time because the Ecumenical Patriarch was their gateway, passage and intermediary before the Sublime Porte, because he was the only one recognized by law for Orthodox affairs in the sultanate.

The Greek element overwhelmed the leadership of the Eastern Patriarchates and the Ecumenical Patriarch became a "super-patriarch" who decided as he saw fit. In practice, this established a quasi-papal canonical hierarchy of ecclesiastical authority far removed from the universal Orthodox conciliarity that had constituted its governance since the time of the Apostles. The governance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was ottomanized and it became a "court" where Byzantine and Ottoman courtly practices and traditions were mixed. The patriarch became a sultan and he was characterized by sultanic manners of acting, which became for them an involiable Orthodox tradition.

In contrast, the rise of tsarist Russia began as the largest Orthodox nation numerically. The baptism of Prince Vladimir and his people, which took place in Kiev in 988, came as the result of Greek missions that had been evangelizing the Slavic peoples since the time of Saints Cyril and Methodius. The growth of the influence of Muscovy and its prince, however, came after Tatar invasions in the thirteenth century and the transfer of the princes of Rus from Kiev to Moscow.

Constantinople hesitated very much to grant independence to the very influential metropolis of Moscow that was dependent on it and which had for some time begun to elect its own bishop locally. Constantinople's recognition of Moscow as a patriarchate took place in 1589 after the mediation of Patriarch Joachim V of Antioch, "who visited Moscow in 1586," as Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim of thrice-blessed memory informs us, "and supported Tsar Boris Godunov's request to turn the Church of Russia into a patriarchate. He raised the issue with Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, who after that visited Russia in 1589 and took part in the election of Job, the first patriarch of the Russian Church." Appended to the historical document of the tomos of autocephaly is his signature, in addition to that of Jeremiah of Constantinople and Sophronius of Jerusalem.

Thus, as Moscow rose, its military, diplomatic and political influence was magnified and its role as protector of the Eastern Orthodox grew, talk began of Moscow as "Third Rome", which laid the basis for the competition and tug-of-war between Moscow and Constantinople in the Orthodox world. This, alongside the transformations of the nineteenth century and the rise of ethnic chauvinism, continues to menace Orthodoxy's purity, its evangelistic momentum and the edifice of its catholic unity.

Carol Saba on the Ukrainian Crisis and Orthodoxy's Impasse (I)

Arabic original, in today's an-Nahar, here. Read part two here.

The Ukrainian Crisis: 

The Apogee of the Crisis of Impasse in the Orthodox Church 

Part One

The new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently visited the Phanar, headquarters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. He is someone who knows the importance of Russia's geostrategic reach in Ukraine and is working, contrary to his predecessor, President Poroshenko, to reach an understanding with it. After his meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew, Zelensky refused to sign a joint declaration with him, stating that "the state must not intervene in ecclesiastical affairs." In addition to the fact that the Ukrainian presidential delegation was purely secular, this position  may be considered to be a radical change contradicting the behavior of his predecessor, who openly interfered in the affairs of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, spurring Constantinople with pressure, promises and concessions to grant "autocephaly" unilaterally.

Geopolitical and ecclesiastical politics and interests intersected and on January 6, 2019 Constantinople granted a tomos of autocephaly to schismatic Ukrainian groups without any legitimacy, at the expense of the legitimate Ukrainian Church tied to Moscow, which had been granted autonomy and is recognized by all the Orthodox Churches.

Thus, despite the warnings of the Orthodox Churches, Constantinople imposed a new ecclesiastical reality in Ukraine, hoping that parishes would attach themselves to it and that it would be recognized by the Orthodox Churches. This has not yet happened, despite enormous pressure.

Moscow responded by breaking Eucharistic communion with Constantinople and withdrawing from all Episcopal Assemblies, committies and organizations in which the latter's bishops were present. This put the entire Orthodox world into a state of stasis and unprecedented crisis and no one knows how it will end. The struggle between Moscow and Constantinople is not a product of the moment, but is rather the end result of historical accumulations and the politics of competition for primacy between them over the twentieth century, which is impairing Orthodox conciliarity and leading the Orthodox Church off along papist paths that are ruinous for her.

Who is using who, the Church or international politics? The ambiguous geopolitical-ecclesiastical overlap in Ukraine, which is seriously damaging the credibility of universal Orthodox spiritual witness, has blown up the global Orthodox crisis and fanned its flames. Constantinople's critics speak of the intersection between its attack on Moscow in Ukraine and Western Atlanticist policies seeking to encircle Russia politically and ecclesiastically by separating the Church of Ukraine from the Patriarchate of Moscow to which it has belonged since the agreement signed by Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV and the members of his Holy Synod in 1686 and sent to the tsars of Russia, the protectors of Orthodoxy at that time. Moscow's critics, on the other hand, speak of the necessity of preventing the expansion of the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest, accuse it of greed to be "Third Rome" and identify it with the Kremlin's diplomacy.

Constantinople's offensive in Ukraine can, however, only be understood through an analysis of the factors behind the decline of its leading role and its transformation over the twentieth century on account of various geopolitical factors, the fall of the bipolar world and the Berlin Wall, and Russia's political return to its previous glories, as well as the engines of globalization, especially "Orthodox globalization", which brought its churches, on account of forced emigration, from the geography of the East to a worldwide geography on all continents.

Constantinople started to fear for the exclusivity of its declining primacy, especially after the Havana summit in February, 2016, between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis and after the "Council of Crete" in June, 2016 failed to be a universal Orthodox council, a council of unity, after four large churches--Antioch, Moscow, Georgia and Bulgaria-- backed out. And so it started to behave confrontationally according to the principle of "cutting off my nose to spite my face."

But Constantinople's strike in Ukraine was not only painful for Moscow, but for the entire Orthodox world. Things took place without any agreement between the Orthodox Churches, but rather by a unilateral decision of Constantinople, as if the intention of the intersection of the geopolitical with the ecclesiastical is to remake a new global role for Constantinople that would give its primacy hierarchical content, as canonical leadership over the other Orthodox Churches, far removed from honorary primacy.

The new theory of the Ecumenical Patriarch's primacy worldwide is defended by Constantinople's new champions. At their forefront is the Ecumenical Patriarchate's new bishop in America, Archbishop Elpidophoros, who hold Turkish nationality, is avid to become the next patriarch and has strong American and Western relationships. This theory goes beyond the primacy of honor that the Ecumenical Patriarch has according to Orthodox tradition to a global "canonical" primacy that makes him "first without equals", where he is the one who knows the highest good for Orthodoxy and he is the one who decides without referring to his brothers, the leaders of the local Orthodox Churches and their holy synods, while they are to follow him...

How did Orthodoxy arrive at this crisis point?

Carol Saba: Speak Now... Or Forever Hold Your Peace!

French original below the jump.

Speak Now... Or Forever Hold Your Peace!

"You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

The Orthodox Church, which is the Body of Christ, shall never be defeated by the gates of hell. We should, however, admit that the state of world Orthodoxy, which is supposed to reflect the condition and manner of divine life, is badly damaged. A sort of generalized chaos seems to be establishing itself under the cover of the "canonical" theses of some and the "canonical" antitheses of others. They invoke the spirit of unity, while their actions here and there betray and dismantle the Church's witness, discrediting it. The Orthodox Church has certainly experienced better and worse since the glorious resurrection of the Lord, which we tend to box off, at the risk of losing all the meaning and power of the Savior's life-giving Cross.

The Orthodox Church, which has experienced in history worse moments than today, appears to be badly damaged, from the inside out. At the moment when the accelerations of globalization, of the digital revolution and of communication should have appeared to her as a vast field of mission and as manna fallen from heaven, a divine opportunity to bear witness to her unity, Orthodoxy seems to give itself over to the spirit of this world and every form of internal competition, offering itself to every form of political instrumentalization by the powers of this world and every possible form of wrangling, which risk causing schisms and tears within it.

A deleterious showdown from another era appears to be establishing itself between Orthodoxy's poles of "communion", transforming them into poles of "competition" and even of clashes. A warlike language appears to have replaced that of the Gospel. The logic of trench warfare appears to have the upper hand over the dynamic of conciliarity and that of the mutual responsibility of all the autocephalous Churches, a subject dear to the heart of Patriarch Daniel of Romania, of which he recently reminded Patriarch Bartholomew during the consecration of the "national cathedral." 
  
We build enormous stone churches, but we forget Christ, who suffers from out internal quarrels, as if Orthodoxy were a "game of thrones". A christ of this world appears to overshadow our Lord and our God, who rose from the dead for the life of the world. A ball of fire appears to tumble along at lunatic speed, burning everything in its path. Instead of raising up, it crushes. Instead of enlightening the world with the unfading light of Christ, it worries the little flock...

Should we keep silent and let the leaders on all sides of this descent into hell act? Or should we proclaim to the primates loud and clear their responsibility, regardless of what might otherwise be the validity of their pretexts for justifying their deleterious enterprises when they desire good but do evil?

I am certain that if discernment is set in motion, if the audacity of those in charge of the Lord's flock today was on display for bearing witness to what is essential, to the one thing needful, for mutually correcting and considering each other-- truly and not just in the nice words of nice speeches pronounced in beautiful cathedrals-- as members of one Body, then we shall see the beautiful Face of faces of Christ the Savior and the Cross of the Lord who has already triumphed and shall triumph once more!

Carol Saba: Antioch, Ukraine and the Danger of a Schism in Orthodoxy

Arabic original here.

Antioch, Ukraine and the Danger of a Schism in Orthodoxy

"I implore you, let us not demand everything, lest we lose everything." A little less than a thousand years ago, these wise words were written with blazing fire as the estrangement between Rome and Constantinople started to accelerate, leading to the Great Schism in 1054. From that time until today, not a single letter has fallen away from these wise Antiochian words. With these expressions, Patriarch Peter III of Antioch addressed Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople in 1054, asking him in a fraternal letter to distinguish "between what must be avoided, what must be reformed, and that about which silence must be kept" in the dispute with Rome, imploring him to look "with attention to good intention, so if the faith is not in danger, then we must prioritize peace and love over other things because the Westerners are our brothers, even if they very often err." The Patriarch of Antioch closed his letter by saying, "Therefore, I cast myself at your feet and implore you to be more lenient than you have been, lest you too also be one who, desiring to raise one who has fallen, only makes his fall heavier."

This position of Antioch lies at the heart of Antioch's gift and role as a "bridge" between the churches, prophetic Antioch who warns of dangers and calls for unity. How applicable is the position of the wise Patriarch Peter III of Antioch, who did not deviate from the necessity of reforming what is corrupt in faith and dogma and the necessity of leniency in what does not touch on either, to the situation of the Orthodox Church today and to the necessity of distinguishing between what is important and what is more important!

With the acceleration of the process of estrangement between Moscow and Constantinople over Ukraine, which may bring the Orthodox world to a spasm of schism resembling the schism of 1054, the events of 1054 come once more to the fore and the same equation is posed to the conscience of the universal Orthodox Church with the growing dispute between the two poles of Orthodoxy over the issue of granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

After Constantinople's decision to name two Ukrainian bishops as its emissaries in Ukraine for preparing, alongside all ecclesiastical and political parties, for the disputed autocephaly, a harsh response came from the Holy Synod of Moscow on September 14, considering this step to be a violation of the canonical ecclesiastical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, since the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has, by the admission of all Orthodox churches, the system of an autonomous church dependent on the Russian Church. So Moscow decided to "suspend" communion with Constantinople and to not commemorate Patriarch Bartholomew, along with other decisions that will lead, if there are further negative developments, to a "break in communion" with Constantinople.

The situation is very difficult, as both sides are entrenched in hard-line positions. It is a thorny situation in terms of history and canon law, as well. Each side has its canonical arguments and documentation, intransigent in its belief that it possesses all the right and truth. The truth, however, is not entirely with one side or the other. The media war between the two today is fierce. Each side has its articles, historical studies, and ecclesiastical, canonical arguments. They are pursuing statements from the other Orthodox churches here and there, not to mention Western political interventions great and small.

In this climate of gathering storm clouds, the Holy Synod of Antioch is currently meeting in the Patriarchal Monastery of Balamand, presided over by His Beatitude Patriarch John X. On the agenda are Antioch's great worries and concerns, challenges and dangers. There is no space here to delve into the hierarchy of priorities of what is important: -Antioch- and what is more important: -the universal Church-.

What is the required Antiochian position? Is what is required a middle-way, colorless position on the Ukrainian issue? No. Is what is required an Antiochian "compromise" position? Of course not. Is what is required a position that sides with one side or the other? Of course not. What is required, then?

More than any time in the past, the Orthodox world today is lacking systematic, objective and scholarly ecclesiastical mechanisms for resolving conflicts between the churches or between two or more sides among them, mechanisms that at the same time would take into account the Church's geography of the past, geography of the present and geography of the future, not so that the Church may position herself without standards or generally accepted truths, following and imitating today's world, nor at the same time positioning herself in the past as a fossilized museum-piece, without any analysis of the requirements of the present and future with intelligence and pastoral acumen.

What is required, then, is a principled Antiochian position, one that rests on universal ecclesiastical principles, that reminds both sides and everyone involved of the correct ecclesiastical standards and the need for bringing the universal Orthodox Church out of deadly and oppressive internal competition at the expense of mutual complimentary, leading to suicide. This position should remind both parties of the dialectic between what is important and what is more important and should lead to an Antiochian initiative to bring brothers together without taking a position for or against, no matter relative correctness of one side or the other. True brotherhood and love of the Lord and His Church today require of us to return to the equation of Peter III of Antioch who spoke to history and has spoken to us with his golden words to Patriarch Michael, that in today's crisis we might not "demand everything, lest we lose everything."

Carol Saba: Who will Prevent the Coming Schism in Orthodoxy?

Arabic original here.

The Ukrainian Crucible between Moscow and Constantinople:
Who will Prevent the Coming Schism in Orthodoxy?

The situation in global Orthodoxy is worrisome. Its catholic unity is threatened while it still has not yet healed from the repercussions of the 2016 "Council of Crete". The manner of preparing it and holding it with the presence of some rather than all of the Orthodox churches and its decisions has resulted in complications and a rift between the fourteen Orthodox patriarchates. It appears that in the Ukrainian crisis raging between the two poles of Orthodoxy, the Greek and the Russian, we are headed for the first application of "majority rule" in universal Orthodox ecclesiastical decisions, at the expense of a logic of unanimity, the standard that must prevail in order to prevent schism, especially with regard to decisions to grant autocephaly to a region within the universal Church.

On the surface, the crisis centers on the intention of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, at the request of Ukrainian political officials, to grant the church in Ukraine ecclesiastical independence and so make it an independent church like the fourteen autocephalous Orthodox patriarchates. Constantinople is acting individualistically in this dangerous endeavor, considering it her right as the "Mother church" of the Church of Kiev, as the process of evangelizing the Slavic countries was launched at her hands from Thessaloniki, from the womb of Byzantine Christianity, by the Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius. Constantinople adds that it was she who baptized Vladimir the Great on July 28, 988 and through him all the Kievan Rus, an event that changed the entire geopolitical map of Christianity. She continues her case by saying that the metropolitan and metropolis of Kiev were dependent on her for a long period of time.

As for the Russians, they say that the metropolitan of Kiev's glow diminished with the rise of Muscovy, where he sought refuge after the Tatar invasions of the 13th century, placing himself under the protection of the rulers of Russia, first in Vladimir and then in Moscow. The Ukrainian church became increasingly dependent on Moscow when the latter received autocephaly from Constantinople in 1589 as a new patriarchate, and even more so with the rise of the power of the Cossacks in Ukraine, as they defended it from Tatar and Polish attacks. There followed a great deal of give-and-take between Constantinople and Moscow, until the Russians held a local council in 1685 to confirm Moscow's ecclesiastical authority in choosing and electing the new metropolitan of Kiev. Moscow says that Constantinople acquiesced in the end and granted a patriarchal tomos in May of 1686, confirming Moscow's ecclesiastical authority over Kiev and agreeing to the appointment of a metropolitan for it who had been elected in Moscow. Moscow also says that Constantinople's agreement is still in force after more than 330 years by the recognition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate which, despite all the schisms in Ukraine, still recognizes the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow.

Vacillation began with the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence in 1991, when discussions of autocephaly began between Constantinople and some of the schismatic Orthodox in Ukraine. While Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew recognizes the exclusive representation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Patriarchate of Moscow, he has on more than one occasion indicated, criticizing the agreement of 1686, that political interventions made with the Sublime Porte and that the events of 1686 amount to an annexation of Ukraine.

It is evident to everyone today that the driving forces of this crisis are not only ecclesiastical, but also overlap with global political rivalries between Russia and the West. President Poroshenko of Ukraine is acting openly and encouraging the Ukrainian parliament and its Western allies to obtain ecclesiastical independence from Russia. The NATO-aligned West once more wants to encircle Russia and to prevent it from expanding to the west, while Russia wants to foil these schemes in preparation to dominate Eastern Europe and encircle Western Europe using influence and gas. Over the course of history, the geography of Ukraine has been a territory disputed between the East and the West and has been at the heart of Russia's geopolitics of defending the country's interior since the rise of tsarism. The Russians do not forget the words of Bismark, "If you want to defeat Russia, strike her in Ukraine." The fall of tsarist Russia in 1917 awakened a desire for ecclesiastical independence in order to get out from under the mantle of the Russian church that was inseparable from the defeated tsarist state. This desire reappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence in 1991.

Today both Moscow and Constantinople fiercely defend their historical rights in Ukraine, displaying their historical ties and documents. Successive shuttle visits by the foreign ministers of the two patriarchates, the Russian Metropolitan Hilarion and the Constantinopolitan Metropolitan Emmanuel of France to the Orthodox churches in order to mobilize them are merely an indication of the severity of the situation and a prelude to the big confrontation. Deep down, however, Ukraine is only an expression of the general crisis of Orthodoxy. It is not a crisis of unity of faith or ecclesiological unity, but rather a crisis of ecclesiastical governance centered on the sin of love of primacy that strikes at integration between the churches in the interest of competition and opens the way for global geopolitical interventions in the Orthodox Church. It is also a crisis of modernity. The Orthodox Church, which was Eastern in character and geography, in the twentieth century became globalized in form without being globalized in substance and institutionalization. Her governance has remained traditional, without any arrangement for regular meetings between the patriarchs for consultation, integration and prevention of the competition that is pushing the Orthodox Church further and further toward fragmentation and schism instead of integration, collaboration and unity. The responsibility of the ecclesiastical leadership is great because it still acts in a traditional manner and does not rise to the level and dimensions of these dangers.

The question remains today, who will prevent the schism in Ukraine, of which the foreign minister of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Metropolitan Hilarion, spoke, comparing it, if it occurs, to the Great Schism of 1054?

Carol Saba on Macron's Understanding of Laïcité

French original, from the Beirut newspaper l'Orient-le Jour, here. This essay is worth a read because of the importance that French models of secular society continue to have for Lebanese Orthodox concepts of Church-State relations.

Macron, or the Implementation of a Partnerial Concept of Laïcité

During the traditional ceremony of the president of the French Republic's greeting religious leaders (Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox) on January 4 of this year at the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech explaining his thinking on laïcité as well as the way in which he understands the spiritual and existential question, religions' role in society, and the relationship that he is calling for between the public authorities and religions in France.

President Macron revealed some aspects of his "on the move" thinking about the question of French-style laïcité, its joys and sorrows, and prospective elements of its renewal based on the challenges and questions of today's world. On this subject like so many others, Macron's strength is that he moves forward without revealing too much... And, when he reveals himself, he once more hides his thinking by an exercise of methodical balancing, using his formula "while at the same time..." which has become famous since his presidential campaign and which allows him to be heard by everyone, with each person thinking that they have understood the meaning. Once a position is taken, Macron removes the link and once more puts things into perspective by integrating the past, present and future into a narrative dynamic. Thus we detect the influence of Paul Ricoeur, the young head of state's mentor.

Dialogue
His speech to France's religious leaders fits perfectly into this dynamic of thought and style where has succeeded in telling these leaders where we are coming from and where we are probably going. It is worth highlighting one aspect, which falls under the category of a discourse on method and which runs through the president's entire speech: he desires to "dialogue" with religions, not on an episodic basis, but on a permanent and recurrent basis, on various social and political topics (laws on bioethics and the questions they raise, the reception of refugees and the impact of migration, chaplaincies, schools, international crises and the instrumentation of religion, etc.)

The term "dialogue" returns repeatedly to the president's tongue to suggest implicitly his desire to move methodically towards what I have described as being "the partnerial understanding of laïcité" at a lecture I gave in July 2013 at Notre-Dame de La Salette in the south of France entitled "The Ambivalence of Church-State Relations in our Modern Societies." During that talk, I was able to explain the parameters of this partenarial understanding of laïcité by saying that it was not "a history of texts, of laws and decrees, but of the development of a 'partnarial' understanding of laïcité through the search for innovative balances that win the support of all concerned parties."

This 'partnerial' understanding of laïcité implies bringing together three conditions. First, a renunciation of radical, authoritarian and dogmatic understandings of laïcité. Then, recognition of its evolutionary character. Finally, the rejection of both a 'permissive' laïcité that gently sails in the wake of short-term interests at the risk of jeopardizing the foundations of the republican agreement and of an 'identitarian' laïcité that creates useless fights, creating boundaries and divisions that do not need to exist.

'Partner' State
By recognizing diversity and the necessity of approaching particularities with pragmatism and intelligence, such a 'partnerial' understanding of laïcité is the best vector for the fight against communitarianism in France. The partnerial understanding of laïcité  thus implies an evolution of mentalities and methodological and relational approaches. It implies that the state in France accepts not to act as an 'authoritarian' state, but as a state that regulates, arbitrates and organizes the permanent dialogue that promotes the emergence of balances that win the support of the largest number of actors in society. In a word, it is the 'partner' state that sets common limits, taking into account what is essential for each of these actors. For their part, the religions must act as partners of this state by integrating the imperatives of the republican agreement and positioning themselves within society as a factor for cohesion, progress and peace, separating the religious factor from any political or identitarian instrumentalization. Thus the objective is to find balances without calling into question republican fundamentals.

This 'partnerial' concept of laïcité is fully reflected in the remarks made by President Macron: "Religious faith that is intimate does not disqualify someone from being a citizen: it would be crazy to think that the two do not dialogue constantly within the same person."


"The Republic," adds the president, "does not ask anyone to forget his faith, but to make a nation, one must also know how to overcome one's differences by putting them at the service of the community of citizens and working every day to avoid creating something irreconcilable in society. In any case, I will never ask some French citizens, whoever they may be, to belong moderately to their religion or to believe moderately or as they should in their god. It makes little sense. But I will constantly ask everyone to respect absolutely the rules of the Republic. It is in this balance, where the strength of two commitments can be fully compatible, that we will come out stronger."


Has he not thus acknowledged the necessity of taking into account the fact of religion in the life of the polis, thus breaking with the conceptions of a certain radical laïcité that wanted to delete the fact of religion in the private space by excluding it from the public space?

Carol Saba: The Orthodox Patriarchs and the Church's Political Positioning

Arabic original here. Originally published in an-Nahar on December 29, 2017.


The Orthodox Patriarchs and the Church's Political Positioning:
Where are Jerusalem and Metropolitan Paul?

"This night will be dark and long, very long, as long as the night of Good Friday." These words were pronounced by Patriarch Tikhon on his deathbed, on the night of his repose on April 7, 1925 at the historic Donskoy Monastery where he was being held by the Soviets, prophesying Russia's long descent into hell during the Bolshevik era. At the beginning of this month, the Russian Church celebrated the centenary of the election of this patriarch, a holy martyr and confessor of the faith, and his ascending the throne of the Patriarchate of Moscow in 1917, after a local Russian synod, meeting amidst the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, restored the patriarchal system. Tsar Peter the Great had abolished, out of a caesaro-papist tendency, the patriarchal system in 1720, placing the Church under the domination of the state by appointing a lay Ober-Procurator over the Church, replacing the deceased Patriarch Adrian.

Attempts by the Church to dominate the state-- and the reverse-- are many in the history of the Church, east and west. They have been fought against in ancient times by holy fathers who defended the truth, since the time of the patriarch of Constantinople and native of Antioch John Chrysostom, who did not fear being beheaded when he confronted the Empress Eudoxia, wife of the Emperor Arcadius. The scene that is driving the Orthodox churches today remains the competition over primacy between the Russian and Greek poles and the geopolitics linked to each. Analysts connect the politics of the Russian Church with the geopolitics of Russia's return, just as they point to the connection between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the geopolitics of the United States since the time of President Truman. The rest is "photo diplomacy".

The scene of the Orthodox patriarchs in Moscow around Patriarch Kirill and the show of their being warmly and magnanimously met by President Putin is, in the opinion of the correspondent for Vatican Insider, Gianni Valente, an ecclesiopolitical scene intended to demonstrate the greatness, power and influence of the Russian Church and her harmonious relationship with the master of the Kremlin and the extent of his power into Europe, through Ukraine, and the Middle East, through Syria.

All the Orthodox patriarchs, including the patriarch of Antioch John X, flocked to Moscow this month, with the exception of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who did not accept the invitation and did not send a representative and Archbishop Ieronymos of Greece, who did likewise. It is as though the scene of Moscow 2017 is a response to the "Council of Crete" of 2016, where Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew mobilized the Orthodox patriarchs in a photo to demonstrate a scene of universal Orthodox unity around himself in support of his system of primacy. At that time, the Churches of Russia, Antioch, Bulgaria and Georgia were absent.

There are many examples of the Orthodox churches' political positioning around the powers of today's world, something that is causing them to lose their pure, prophetic vision and is impeding their movement. Thus the report during the Russian centenary celebration that Patriarch Vladimir of Kiev, who in schism from the Russian Church, requested forgiveness from Russia and to once more join the Patriarchate of Moscow appeared as a response from Russian diplomacy, both ecclesial and political, to the attempts of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to unify the Orthodox schismatics in Ukraine into an independent church separate from Moscow.

While the Orthodox patriarchs were gathering Moscow around President Putin and praising his role in combating "terrorism" and the vocal cry of the Arabs was being raised over the violation of Jerusalem, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was on a visit to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, where he was received by President Rivlin of Israel and within that patriarchate about suspicions that the rights of the mother church and her children are being violated.

The question remains: for how long will the Orthodox Churches forget the principle place of their prophetic mission in the world and continue to keep pace with politics and powers on the basis of realpolitik?

Dostoevsky and many Russian writers since the end of the 19th century have warned the Russian Church about the dangers of the state's domination over it and the lack of internal reform over the phariseeism that dominated the Church and kept it far away from what the Holy Spirit demands of it. That is, to bear witness to the truth, to tend to man's freedom and dignity, and to support the poor, so that there will not be an internal explosion that causes the entire edifice to collapse. In 1871 Dostoevsky wrote in his famous book Demons, warning about the coming revolution, "Fog will cover Russia, the sea will dissolve and the stage will collapse...." And today, fog will cover all the various Orthodox churches, which confuse what is important and what is more important and inter into the game of realpolitik.


The patriarchs in Moscow passed over two fundamental, critical issues without approaching them from the principle of judiciousness, kept apart from politics: the issue of Jerusalem and the issue of the kidnapping of Metropolitan Paul Yazigi. Where were the patriarchs when it came to Jerusalem and the kidnapping of Metropolitan Paul Yazigi and the demand that his fate be revealed, since a mere reminder about this issue is not enough? Where is their sit-in at the United Nations, a call for a global conference regarding Jerusalem, and a demand that the fate of Metropolitan Paul Yazigi be revealed, not only on account of our love and his brother's love for him, but because it is the single most important issue for Antioch today?

As regards Jerusalem, she is ours and the gates of hell will not prevail over her. She is not holy because of her stones and many successive walls, but for a symbolism that transcends these walls, emulating the Lord who rose from her and from the dead, because, in the words of Metropolitan Khodr, we are people of the resurrection. We do not make pilgrimage to stone but to the Lord: "he who is in the Gospel and in the Eucharist is with Christ, in pilgrimage or without pilgrimage."

Nour al-Sharq interviews Carol Saba

Arabic original here.

The lawyer Carol Saba, an expert in the affairs of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, told the program Waqfa wa-Mawqif, "Christians, especially the Orthodox, must regain their national role and establish a partnership of life and citizenship."

He spoke to Léa Adel Mehmari.

Commenting on the gathering of Eastern Catholic patriarchs, the lawyer Carol Saba, an expert in the affairs of the Antiochian Orthodox Church and a close advisor to Patriarch John X, observed that, "The crisis of Middle Eastern Christianity is a crisis of decline whose roots go back to the start of the transformations in the Arab Middle East in the early twentieth century. Where once the Christians formed the core of the thinkers and engines of the Arab Nahda that heralded a promising future for the Arab world, today they have arrived at a crisis of decline that gradually grew over the course of the twentieth century alongside the rise of the crisis of the state and the crisis of governance in Arab societies. The Christian role gradually receded on account of the rise of various political radicalisms in the Arab world, from a concern for an active Christian 'presence' in Arab societies to a concern for preserving 'existence' and abdicating from every national role to the point of decline, insularity and seeking protection."

Carol Saba's spoke during his appearance on the program Waqfa wa-Mawqif and said, "Despite this path of regression and its consequences of frustration and emigration, there remain the writings of Christian thinkers like Georges Khodr, Youakim Moubarac, Gregoire Haddad and others to point to the necessity of arriving at Arab systems of governance based on the civil state which separates religion from the state without separating it from society, so that it can be a society that embraces an active Christian presence in the Middle East."

According to his analysis of the current situation of growing sectarianism in our Arab societies and the repercussions of the rise of religious radicalism, Christians, especially the Orthodox, must "regain their national role and the initiative and break into public affairs with enlightened ideas in order to overcome the state of rampant sectarianism and to partnership of life and partnership of citizenship that makes everyone equal in terms of rights and responsibilities and which protects by law all elements of our Arab societies. Only the civil state that allows everyone to preserve their specificities can prevent the emigration and hemorrhaging of Middle Eastern Christians and make Christians secure here in their land, as they are one of the historical elements of this region."

Carol Saba: Eternal Russia- Her Saints and Demons

French original here.

Eternal Russia: Her Saints and Demons

Russia has been causing a lot of ink to be spilled lately. Particularly in France, on account of the new spiritual and cultural center that was just opened on October 19 of this year at the former sight of the headquarters of Météo France. The complex, which belongs to the Russian state, was set to be formally opened by the French and Russian heads of state but diplomatic tensions between the two countries reduced the scope of the official representation at the event. In an innovation at the level of diplomatic protocol, France, through the voice of her president, publicly questioned the advisability of the Russian president's coming to Paris in this context and then the latter decided to sulk. The new Russian cathedral dedicated to the Holy Trinity, one of the buildings of the complex next to the Eiffel Tower, is to be consecrated in December by Patriarch Cyril of Moscow. It now sits with its five golden onion domes on Quai Branly, not far from the place where President Jacques Chirac put the Museum of the Arts and Civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas now bearing the former head of state's name. The whole thing is thus a new tourist attraction, this time Russian, on the map of Paris monuments. Even before the Napoleonic military campaigns, Franco-Russian relations have always been of the love-hate variety and since then they have known cycles of rejection and attraction.

Russia is indeed fascinating. The Russia of yesterday and today is intriguing. Russia provokes a lot of ambivalence. Some idealize her. Others demonize her. General De Gaulle, who only ever called the Soviets "the Russians," refused to see in Soviet Russian anything other than "a temporary avatar of eternal Russia" and in her government "a modernized form of a deadly autocracy." The latest book by Pierre Goneau, published by Editions Tallandier, is dedicated to a study of the historical, political, cultural, artistic and spiritual depths of this eternal Russia, of this czarist Russia and its four centuries of imperial autocracy. The title chosen by this great specialist on Russia, professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and director of studies of the section for historical and philological sciences at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, already declares the enormous scope of the project: Histoire de la Russie, d'Ivan le Terrible à Nicolas II, 1547-1917. It is a wealth of information. A historical fresco that depicts the three times-- long, medium and short-- of Russian history. Writing that combines a novelistic style with the demands of historicity. A style that knows how to "enclose" personalities and periods, like Russian dolls, the great and the little history of eternal Russia. All the czars pass through it, the great and the less great, the glorious, the mysterious, the erased, the modest, the illumined, and the reasonable. A fresco also rich in portraits of emblematic figures of czarist Russia.

First, of course, Ivan the Terrible. This ambiguous, constantly tormented personality who in an excess of madness founded and combined political terror and a sort of radical mysticism whose secret and recipe only the Russians know. Then passing by Peter the Great, the builder, who constantly looked to Europe but who also embodied the Russian ambivalence, constantly oscillating between East and West. And how can we not mention Catherine II, that originally German czarina, an iron fist in a velvet glove, who knew how to not be a foreigner to the Russians, but rather knew how to fully embrace Orthodoxy and make herself to be seen by the Russians as one of their own. Then comes the figure of czar Alexander II, the civilized man, who dared to emancipate the serfs, one of the last great czars before the rumblings in the empire, before ending with the last of the czars, Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs to sit on the throne, who distilled in the Russian subconscious the entirety of the Russian tragedy, the double image of the czar upon the throne and the Christ-like czar who experiences martyrdom along with his family in extremely dramatic circumstances.

Gonneau's book is a fresco that also arouses real reflection on the Russian syntheses that have been wrought century after century between different confluences and inspirations, those coming from the European, Germanic and Latin, Catholic and Protestant West and those coming from the Asiatic Mongol and Tatar East. The whole of Russia, past and present, is in the crucible of these different confluences. The Russian millefeuille can be discerned in these different historical and sociopolitical strata. This work also and especially provides a framework for understanding today's Russia, which is also, in its own way, decidedly czarist. It informs us of the major characteristic traits of this czarist Russia and of the typical profile that marks its political governance. It reveals the factors of continuity and the factors of discontinuity of such autocratic and imperial, centralized and decentralized governance and its strategies of influence and mental geopolitics. It also informs us of the universal, spiritual and cultural tensions that animates these monarchs and of the geopolitical and geostrategic projection of their influence in the world.

Gonneau's book is not just a book of history, but also one of useful keys for deciphering the reality of Russia today. The book begins with a question: how does one become czar, extending the question with a historical account of the coronation of Ivan the Terrible on January 16, 1547, before affirming that change is continuity in Russia and continuity is change. Eras and personalities change. What underlies them remains. "The Russia of the czars perpetuates itself until the abdication of Nicholas II on March 2, 1917. Then, everything changes... or nothing changes. Stalin was often described as a red czar and Moscow's Kremlin has always been the site of power par excellence." For those who wish to conduct an objective and dispassionate analysis of today's Russia, this historical fresco offered to us by Pierre Gonneau is an ideal help for reflection, analysis, deciphering and questioning. There remain questions that speak to Russia's today.

How does the eternal Russia evoked by De Gaulle extend into Soviet Russia, then post-Soviet Russia, then Putin's Russia? Is there a historical determinism to be seen in the endless repetition of these cycles of attraction and repulsion between Russia and the Europe that she nevertheless claims? How can the factors of incomprehension and misunderstanding that develop be defused? Is there in principle an incompatibility between Russia and Europe? The demonization of Russia by some is just as dangerous for world security as the idealization of Russia by others. In any case, Gonneau's book, which contains valuable keys for further study including maps, an impressive bibliography, a chronological guide to the czars, and an index [embarrassingly rare in French publications], as well as a genealogy of the Romanovs is enlightening in its attempt at better understanding Russia, her saints and her demons, her deadly ambiguities and creative inspirations. It invites the reader to see Russia differently from the black and white of the approximate analyses of the moment, because beyond persons and conjectures, what remains and abides is indeed eternal Russia.

Carol Saba on the Lebanese Presidency

Arabic original here.

The Presidency is not Anyone's Favor or Consolation Prize

How we wish you were here, Ghassan Toueini, to throw into the face of Lebanon's bankrupt politicians the famous cry you made to the world at the United Nations in 1978: "Let my people live!" The people are bleeding, the state is disintegrating at an alarming pace, and the leaders involved in presidential chatter are not addressing the dangers facing the nation. And there remains the question: whose president? And for what state? There is no talk of re-establishing and correcting the Taif constitution, which was transformed from being a  pluralist, democratic constitution that preserves diversity within a single state into a consensual democracy that has become a confederation of sects.

There is no talk of the future president's vision or his strategic plan in critical matters, nor is there any talk of his capabilities and network of disinterested relationships that would make it possible for him to move with speed and wisdom locally, regionally and internationally in order to ward off dangers and keep Lebanon neutral. Discourse about the presidency dances to the tune of words like agreements, declaration of intentions, and duopolies. All of these are words pertaining to dividing up influence and interests, which negate the constitution in divided state that has not yet been declared to be a confederation.

The drift of governance in Lebanon since Taif has been toward division and confederation and has produced sectarian "duopolies" [i.e., most Lebanese communities are dominated by a pair of simultaneously colluding and competing parties] that today are the constitutive basis and entryway for this state of sectarian quotas. Today the Lebanese state is nothing but a confederal state made up of four sectarian statelets, each based on a duopoly driven by sectarian anxiety. Each of these duopolies has been forced to coexist after having previously shed each others' blood, and each of them rules its sect and limits any diversity to be found in it. It seems that the newly-emerging Christian duopoly has accepted the trajectory of division and confederation and has gotten in line to claim its share from the other duopolies that by far beat it to dominating the reins of what remains of the state.

This loss of way by the Christians is nothing other than an inevitable result of Christian infighting since independence and the Christians' inability to this day to make a critical assessment of their errors and trajectories. Starting in 1943, they seized the reins of power and rejected national cooperation. This was the start of the transformation of the hopes of the secular constitution of 1926 and of the progression towards the abyss. Through political Maronism, they promoted political sectarianism at the expense of national value, then they fell and along with them the First Republic. Taif came in 1989.

The Christians did not understand and they continued their game of dancing at the edge of the abyss, rejecting the balances of the Taif constitution and fighting among themselves. They were the means of entry for the [Syrian] tutelage that exploited everyone, beat them, and altered the balances of Taif. Political Sunnism arose, taking advantage of the Christian retreat. After that, political Shiism arose to take advantage of the Sunni retreat, especially after the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri. So a process of eroding authority and forming duopolies began. After the exit of the tutelage in 2005, there was no critical re-assessment by the Christians and there was no establishment of an expanded Christian base that includes all actors and elites, whose discourse would be "national" and which would put a spring back in the national watch.

So each Christian went in his own direction to support other duopolies that were competing with each other and for the Christian "share". Then there were the lethal steamrollers of March 8 and March 14. The Christians' rolling along did not stop the election of a president by consensus after the Doha Agreement. Until we reached the presidential vacuum. Bkerké completed the erroneous course by limiting the presidency to four poles. This equation, deleterious to the president and the presidency, eliminated two of them and pushed the other two, opposite twins, to form a fragile duopoly. The declaration of intent, mired in generalities and contradictions, conceals more than it declares. How, for example, can the Christian opponent of Hezbollah's project reach an understanding with the party's Christian strategic ally? At the hour of truth, who will eat whom?

A Christian awakening is needed today, so that they do not fall and that Lebanon does not fall once and for all. Bringing back the stolen Lebanese state will not happen by confirming the state of duopolies, but rather through escaping them via a foundational national salvation plan that will re-establish the charter and the formula, put into place a comprehensive national defense strategy controlled by the Lebanese Army, establish policies that will revive the nation of law and fight corruption, draw up an exceptional plan for defending Lebanon and keeping it neutral amidst the region's growing maelstroms on the basis of "Lebanon first", saving its disappearing economy and threatened currency, and resolving the dangerous dilemma of refugees and migrants. At that point, the president will be a plan for a solution and the presidency will not be anyone's favor or consolation prize.

Carol Saba: Crete 2016 Failed to Read the "Signs of the Times"!

The French original was published in the magazine of the Catholic charity Oeuvre d'Orient in its July-August-September 2016 issue, no. 784, pp. 518-519.

Crete 2016 Failed to Read the "Signs of the Times" (Matthew 16)!

An "objective" reading of Crete 2016, which is giving rise to worrying fractures among the Orthodox, is premature. Subjective readings that embellish the event and make extrapolations on the basis of its texts, which are already under heavy criticism, are feeding the Orthodox conciliar crisis and setting the stage for a possible ecumenical crisis.

Crete 2016, as a moment and a process, was an expression of a longstanding Orthodox "autism", incapable of reading the "signs of the times" (Matthew 16), the original spiritual and conciliar vision put forward by John XXIII and Athenagoras I. The symptoms of the Orthodox conciliar crisis, which are many and easily expressed, were neither "seen" nor identified for an Orthodoxy that is, while very rich, in need of an aggiornamento that would cause it to be renewed without betraying itself.

The twentieth century was a trying time for the Orthodox lands, but also a great moment of theological renewal with the neo-patristic inspirations of the Paris School. The historic ice age that lasted from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to that of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 was followed by thaw with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The Orthodox world abruptly shifted from a static geopolitics toward a dynamic geopolitics, not without tensions, that placed the Orthodox poles more in competition than in complementarity, although the latter is a prerequisite for any strengthening of unity. From hot wars to cold wars, the path to the council was progressively led astray by new issues of Orthodoxy's worldwide governance and the organization of its influential "diaspora", present on every continent. Everything else is just window-dressing, and perhaps in poor taste.

To lay the cards on the table regarding Crete 2016, there is the battle, as much furtive as open, that has for some time pitted the partisans of "primus sine paribus" (first without equals) against those of "primus inter pares" (first among equals). Among the former, there is an innovation of Orthodoxy that seeks to take its governance in a direction it should not go, calling for a different content-- more juridical than honorific, more global than local-- of the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its primate in the entirety of Orthodoxy, separating him from the other primates. Thus it was necessary to move forward at no matter what cost on Crete without concern for the "coming together of Orthodoxy", if that is a barrier to putting into place this new governance for Orthodoxy. We are far from the original vision of Athenagoras I for whom, from 1959, the council was not an end in itself but a "common path" so that "the Orthodox may learn to work together."

Crete 2016 is thus the expression of an unfinished unity of Orthodoxy between the ten autocephalous churches that were present and the four churches (and not the smallest) that were absent for well-founded reasons. Moreover, in the opposition between the "conciliarity" based on the largest number to the traditional conciliarity of the full communion of the pleroma of the fourteen autocephalous churches of Orthodoxy, a worrying rift is expressed, something that is not without consequences for ecumenical dialogue as well.

What should be done to escape the impasse? The biased and triumphalist discourses of Crete 2016 should be replaced by a responsible discernment of the "signs of the times" and of what is needed for unity and rallying together. His Holiness Bartholomew I, a servant of Orthodox unity, has a leading role to play here. A leading responsibility to repair what has been broken.

Carol Saba: Deciphering Orthodoxy's Current Conciliar Crisis

This is a slightly expanded version (provided by the author) of an article that will appear in this Thursday's issue in the leading French Protestant magazine, Réforme.

Crete 2016: 
Deciphering Orthodoxy's Current Conciliar Crisis 
And How to Overcome It

All Orthodox had been waiting for the the pan-Orthodox council since the 1960s. Visiting all the Orthodox sees in 1959, Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople explained that the council was not an end in itself, but rather a "common path" so that "the Orthodox may learn to work together." He insisted on the necessity of "having everybody on board." Thus the council should have brought together all 14 autocephalous Orthodox churches who, acting together, constitute and engage the pleroma of Orthodoxy. This long-awaited meeting took place from June 16 to 27, 2016, but what should have been the "gathering of Orthodoxy" was, in the end, merely the representation of an incomplete unity. Certain churches took part. Others abstained for reasons they deem well-founded. The council was not to decide any doctrinal issue, but to affirm Orthodox unity on common issues. In accordance with the established rules, the council could only be held and engage the fullness of the Chruch with the assent and unanimous participation of the 14 Orthodox churches.

Would it be anachronistic here to evoke [French Protestant politician] Michel Rocard, the man of the New Left, who just passed away? Not at all. His requiring truth in action, connecting truth in word to truth in deed, is a spiritual requirement that challenges Orthodox ambivalences and an interpretive framework for understanding the conciliar crisis. "What gives meaning to my life?" the illustrious believing-agnostic constantly asked himself. My friend Laurent Schlumberger recalled this question in his sermon at the Temple, before the national tribute at the Invalides, where those who had buried Rocard politically while he was alive were present. Those representatives of the institutional establishment were completely wrong. The author of Suicide of the West, Suicide of Humanity was completely right. The structural depression in politics attests to this.

As in politics, Crete 2016 reveals worrying gaps within the Church between an institutional "establishment" that is traditional in its approach and disconnected from the real issues, centered on itself an unable to see crises as they are coming, and those "whistleblowers," both clergy and laity, who in truth decipher "the signs of the times" (Matthew 16) and propose significant correctives to the Church's problems. Thus the establishment did not see the conciliar crisis coming, nor did it know how to determine its magnitude or manage its implications. Its official communications trivialized the complaints of the absent churches and constantly repeated untruths. In place of ecclesiastical discernment, an autistic triumphalism took over, as if the slogan were to be "move along, there is nothing to see and nothing to find fault with here." The concern for coming together disappeared, but not the allegations at the meeting against the absent churches, accusing them of every evil and conspiracy!

Several indications already foreshadowed the conciliar crisis. Several warnings had been given very early. The Church of Antioch did so at the synaxis of March 2014, with regard to the conflict with Jerusalem, the progress of the preparatory work, and the Council's conception, organization and manner of making decisions in terms of Orthodox ecclesiology. She noted that relations between the Orthodox churches are relations of communion requiring the accession of each and that unanimity must preside over the convocation of the council, the quorum of holding it, the undertaking of its activities, and the taking of its decisions. "Consensus" (understood by some as a rule of vote by majority) should have been clarified as signifying unanimity, a weapon to be wielded not abusively but responsibly. Mere arithmetic is incompatible with the life of the Church. With the numbers game, everyone loses, since if ten of the fourteen Orthodox churches constituted a relative majority, this was not the case for the churches absent from Crete, which alone accounted for more than half of the world's Orthodox! So it was false what they kept insisting on Crete, that the convocation for the council was valid since the rules for the council required the agreement of all the autocephalous churches but Antioch had not signed the resolutions of the Synaxes of 2014 (Istanbul) and 2016 (Chambésy). Clearly, it would have been wiser to take a couple steps back in order to move forward all together rather than making a misstep forward that will mark the Orthodox world with new fronts/borders and new fractures. The rift is there between those churches that recognize the validity of Crete 2016 and those that reject it.

The historic march towards the council was not a systematic, uninterrupted effort over fifty years. The established preconciliar rule was unanimity, as the communiqué of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Antioch of June 27, 2016 recalls. The preconciliar preparation, which was not always consequential, remained in the hands of insiders, greased for the preconciliar work. Texts redacted in the style of the 1970s were fixed too early, excluding any possibility of change apart from a superficial "refreshing". The old textual ambiguities, particularly in the text "Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World," which was the object of lively debates, blew up in mid-air before and during the debates of Crete 2016. All these texts require a critical re-reading in light of the minutes of Crete 2016, if they are to be published. They are already the object of a systematic critique from the part of several bishops who took part in Crete 2016, who explain why they did not sign certain documents, pointing to their theological and ecclesiological risks. Such is the case with Amfilohije of Montenegro and Irenej of Bachka (Church of Serbia), Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Jeremiah of Gortys and Megalopolis (Church of Greece), Athanasius of Limassol (Church of Cyprus), etc. Another interesting and critical testimony about the conciliar process and its documents is that of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (Ecumenical Patriarchate).

The issue was raised on Crete of systematizing the council, which would meet every five or seven years. This is an innovation with respect to the tradition of the Orthodox Church, something that is not without significant ecclesiological implications. This is not only burdensome and costly; it could also jeopardize the historical rules of autocephaly since no authority, conciliar or otherwise, had jurisdictional primacy in Orthodoxy over the holy synods of the autocephalous churches, which remain sovereign unless there is voluntary adherence to a decision. On the other hand, systematizing the work of the synaxis of primates is not without interest. The Orthodox conciliar crisis has revealed the inability of the fourteen Orthodox churches to resolve their differences together on time, to face the hard questions, and to manage crises. What they are missing is an ordinary, regular structure for internal dialogue, a sort of round table or G8 that would allow for regular exchanges without waiting for super-councils that never manage to meet.

In conclusion, the two parties-- for and against Crete-- are at an impasse. My roadmap for getting out of the crisis? The emergency convocation of an exceptional synaxis of primates around the following agenda:

1. Enact the principle of shared responsibility for causing the current conciliar crisis and the necessity of a review of the processes that led to this result.
2. Enact the principle of a coordinated exit from the crisis by way of (a) immediately resolving the disagreement over Qatar in order to reestablish communion between Antioch and Jerusalem, (b) the recognition of a certain legitimacy for Crete and its documents by the churches that were absent, (c) in exchange, the churches that were present on Crete renounce qualifying Crete 2016 as a council, with all its implications in terms of the process of reception.
3. Review the politics of competition over the past twenty years between the main poles of Orthodoxy in order to replace it with a politics of complimentary, requiring the unanimous cooperation of all autocephalous Orthodox churches.
4. Reflect on renewing the governance of the Orthodox Church by systematizing the work of the synaxis without transforming it into a super-synod.

I have often mentioned to the press the existence of an "official agenda of the council," but also an agenda of the Holy Spirit. Will the churches know how to join the Holy Spirit's agenda and rise to the level of Christ's seamless garment? Kyrie eleison!

Carol Saba
Paris, July 12, 2016
The Feast of Saint Paisios the Athonite (1924-1994)