The document as such was not read out in full, but even without it, the question of conciliarity was discussed carefully and quite responsibly. The entire Council, which was composed of bishops (that is, if I may say so, of those people who usually have the least idea of conciliarity, because they are accustomed to give orders rather than to consult with others; I am one of them, so I can safely speak with such impudence) had the consciousness that – yes, one of the misfortunes of the life of the Russian Church is that we have lost the ability to consult, to listen to each other and to speak out with complete frankness, with truthfulness; Of course, there was also a consciousness of why this happened. We have also lost the ability to listen to the thought of the person who is speaking, not just his words, and sometimes to understand more than he can express; After all, not everyone is an outstanding orator and is able to express with great clarity and precision the thoughts that swarm in him. The thought of conciliarity must permeate the whole Church; It should take place, first of all, among the laity in an unorganized form, that is, the laity, discussing their church and non-church life among themselves, should learn to talk among themselves, and not to argue – and this is a very Russian trait. Secondly, when instead of a casual argument around the tea table, people meet in a parish council (even if tea is served there), we must learn to listen and speak in order not only to understand each other, but also to take into account what the Church is: what we are building. Are we building a practical human community, which can be believing, unbelieving, or whatever, or are we building the Church. Further, parish councils should unite into diocesan councils, which have the same approach. And at all levels (and here a kind of dual education is required), it is necessary, first, that people learn to be serious, truthful, understanding with each other, but also – and this is very important – that they understand that they are building a church, and not just a human society. In England, we worked on this for five years, drawing up the Statute for the Diocese of Sourozh. We studied first the dogmatic teaching on the Church, then the ancient canons of the Church, then the decisions of the Council of 1917-1918, then the Statutes existing in the Local Churches, and finally worked out the Statutes, which are the expression of the teaching on the Church in action. This is what we should strive for. And this does not require special theological scholarship; because each of us, if he is a believer, if the Gospel lives in him, if Christ lives in him, should be able to say something, to make a contribution to the extent of his churching. If he has no words, bring a prayer, if he does not have prayer words, reverent attitude to what he is doing; And this is how conciliarity can be built. It should also be built among the bishops; And now I was amazed at how much she had grown. I have been to the Councils before, I remember very vividly the Councils of 1971 and 1988; I see how this conciliarity grows step by step, this desire for mutual understanding, mutual participation, the mutual gift of one's knowledge and experience; And I think that this will bear fruit. There is one difficulty: the Church has been deprived of this real experience for an awfully long time; You have to learn it, and you can't learn it right away, it's groping, it's gradually being created. In England, we felt this when I first began to introduce meetings of priests, then parish meetings, then diocesan meetings – we had to work for a very long time to develop a common mind and a common heart; But this must be worked on, and it will be achieved.

     Vladyka, since the Lord called you already at a conscious age, the question probably arose for you which Church to belong to. Why did you choose the Moscow jurisdiction at that very difficult time for the Russian Orthodox Church?

     I will start, perhaps, a step earlier and say that of all the possibilities I chose Orthodoxy. And not only because I was baptized Orthodox, and it was natural to do so by myself; but because I was struck by the precise and very surprising consonance between the simplicity, integrity, transparency, and freedom of the Gospel and Orthodoxy. I felt the same element here and there; They were consonant like two sounds that can merge into one chord. From the experience of other Churches that I had to see at that time, I had the feeling that they were the same, smaller, or somehow different from what I experienced when reading the Gospel. Of course, this is a subjective assessment; This does not mean that it is wrong, but it was my personal motive.

     As for the Moscow Patriarchate, we were then a very small group of people who made this decision on a very simple basis: as long as the Church does not confess heresy, one does not separate from it; This is the Church's approach. Another approach is that the Church, which is in a tragic situation, should not be abandoned by its children. This was not just a different or irrelevant approach. Of course, we could not do anything for the Russian Church: there were about fifty of us in Western Europe, we did not matter at all. But we felt that by this we were bearing witness that the Russian Church is a Church – holy, ours, Christ's – and that was enough.

     In this first group, as far as I remember (I was about seventeen years old at the time), there were people of the most diverse political and social trends: and this did not play any role. People went to the Patriarchal Church not because they had this or that social or political conviction; they went because she is the Russian Church, she has not betrayed Christ in any way, and we want to stand next to her or be in her. We had the feeling that she was holding us and carrying us in her arms (and I still have this feeling).

     A little over forty years have passed since then; People are already different, and the situation has changed. In America, in the United States, there are now about five million Orthodox Christians, of whom there are very few native Russians, those for whom Russia is their homeland. With such a large number of Orthodox Christians on the one hand, and such a tiny percentage of Russians on the other, it is quite natural that the Church, which began as Russian, has now become American. But it has become an autocephalous Church, the legitimate, true Church of America, not by way of splitting or renunciation; it has become an independent Church in the same way as, for example, a daughter who has become an adult marries and starts her own family, just as a young man does not remain a ward endlessly. This is a completely different topic.

     At the time of the Russian schisms of the twenties and thirties, there was no question of creating a local Church in France or anything else; they dissociated themselves from the Russian Church either because it was perceived as a non-church, or because it was easier to live without it; and I could perceive neither one nor the other reason. The perception of the Russian Church as a non-church went very far. For example, about twenty years ago I was talking to the rector of the Karlovtsy parish in London and asked him: "What do you think of me, what am I to you?" and he answered me: "If I did not want to offend you, I would tell you: you are simply not a priest, but I will tell you frankly what I think: you are a priest of Satan, because you have received ordination from the Moscow Patriarchate..." It is necessary to understand to what extent the denial reached. And when people from the outside tell us: why are you so divided, why don't you communicate, why don't you have more unity with this or that person? "Try to have unity with such an attitude. If he had told me that he thought I was a bad person, I would not have objected; I know myself better than he does, and I agree with him. But I cannot admit that I am not a priest or that I am a priest of Satan, that is, that the sacraments that I perform are at best nothing, and more likely blasphemy, and that my preaching is the preaching of the Antichrist, because I have my own conscience, and I carefully examine myself in what I say. I may be wrong about something, it's different, but I don't preach the gospel other than Christ's.

     And the other attitude: "Let them live their own lives, and we will build our lives without hindrance" – to me and not only to me, but to many of us, seemed to be the most cruel and ugly attitude; because, as I have already said, we could do nothing for the Russian Church, but to break away meant to say in front of everyone: leave her, she is doubtful, there is something wrong with her... – this is how it is perceived. And no one had the right to do this. I believe that those who in the twenties and thirties departed from the Patriarchal Church in this order betrayed some kind of ecclesiastical and human truth. Those people who said that our hierarchy, Metropolitan Sergius or someone else was wrong in their church policy, could have said: yes, we do not agree with what he is doing, but we will not condemn or depart from him... Whether he was right or wrong – at best, people who were in Russia could judge, but certainly not us, who were abroad... If I am not honest and truthful enough, then this is not the fault of the Russian Church, but my fault; If I make mistakes, they are my mistakes – they are not imposed on me. At the moment when the civil war ended, there were about five million Russians abroad; if five million made up one Church, our testimony could be of value. And when some fifty people remained in the Patriarchal Church at the Three Hierarchs Metochion in Paris, and thirty people in Berlin, and six people in Nice, yes, indeed, the witness was very difficult. But this was evidence of radical churchliness, not of political adaptability. People were profoundly different: there were monarchists, there was Berdyaev, there was Mother Maria, there were average people of all tendencies – and we were completely united in our love for our native Church and in this assessment: as long as the Russian Church does not confess heresy, we belong to it.

     Do your words mean that the Russian Orthodox Church, acting in our atheistic state, a symbol of the crucified body of Christ for the salvation of its tormentors, should be silent and agree, and not call to think, to tell the truth truly, and not in words, and to give the light of Christ to believers and non-believers? How is it possible to further coexist with the Marxist-Leninist ideology, which has been elevated to the rank of a state ideology?

     Я думаю, что в России соотношение мира и Церкви, конечно, гораздо более острое, чем в других странах, на Западе, потому что существует одна партия, которая “исповедует” атеистическое учение. Но при новом положении, при осторожном, вдумчивом отношении, сосуществование двух несовместимых идеологий могло бы привести к диалогу. Как я раньше говорил, если бы мы научились смотреть на противника не как на врага, а как на человека, имеющего в себе образ Божий, которого он сам не обнаружил и не раскрыл, если бы мы научились говорить не против, а выше его, были бы готовы учить примером, учить тем, что мы иного рода люди, которым хотелось бы подражать, тогда мы могли бы нечто сделать в этом отношении. Я думаю, что Русская Церковь на самом деле и сейчас делает очень многое для того, чтобы открыть новые храмы и сделать возможным то, что было невозможно раньше. Я думаю также из опыта других обстоятельств (я, например, три года с лишним работал во Французском Сопротивлении во время немецкой оккупации), что очень важно сегодня сделать всё возможное, а не пытаться делать невозможное... Но если делать исчерпывающе возможное теперь, то через день делается возможным то, что мы не могли делать вчера. Я совсем не хочу сказать, что всё делается идеально, но из того, что я видел, слышал, из большого количества разговоров с отдельными людьми, мне кажется, что делается гораздо больше, чем на поверхности видно.

     Сейчас на Западе и у нас уже приходится слышать голоса о том, что Православие в России вновь становится государственной религией. Как Вы относитесь к этому утверждению?

     Я думаю, что до этого, слава Богу, очень далеко. Одно дело, что государство убедилось, что можно быть христианином или, в широком смысле, верующим (я сейчас думаю и о мусульманах, и о буддистах) и вместе с тем быть верным сыном своей родины. А каждый раз, когда какая-либо церковь представляет собой подавляющее большинство верующих, отношения этой церкви и государства делаются, конечно, более тесными и сложными. И одна из задач церкви, опять-таки, и на Востоке и на Западе, заключается в том, чтобы не становиться частью политической или общественной системы, а наоборот, будучи до конца лояльной, то есть желая самого большого добра родине, предупреждать общественность о том, что есть другое измерение в жизни, – не только общественно-политическое, что есть в жизни глубина.

     Пожалуйста, еще о жизни карловчан на Западе. Повинны л. они и в какой степени в том, что произошло в России в двадцатые-тридцатые годы нашего столетия?

     Карловчане – кличка, которая прилипла к группе православных русских иерархов и их пастве, которые в двадцатых годах отреклись от Московской Патриархии, создали свое церковное управление и до сих пор нас считают неприемлемыми. Среди них есть разные течения, более или менее крайние. Вот, я уже упомянул реакцию на меня их священника в Лондоне много лет назад. Это одна крайность, и с этим надо считаться. Другая группа, гораздо более умеренная, относится к нам иначе; они считают, что сами не могут быть в Московской Патриархии по опасению, что на них будет влиять советская власть через Церковь, но относятся к нам, как к Церкви, с уважением. Например, советуют паломникам или туристам, которые приезжают в Россию, общаться и приобщаться. И есть бесконечное множество оттенков.