епископ Константинополя

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АФИНАГОР.

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Система «пентархии», как мы видели, действовала более или менее нормально вплоть до середины XIX века. Вселенский патриарх регулярно собирал восточных патриархов, их синоды, а зачастую и многих епископов, на настоящие общие соборы. Члены пентархии участвовали в общей жизни Церкви, выступали на поместных соборах. В 1620 году, например, после того, как некоторые епископы подписали унию с Римом, патриарх Иерусалимский восстановил в Киеве православную иерархию. В 1666 году восточные патриархи участвовали в большом соборе в Москве. К Русской Церкви, вошедшей в систему пентархии в 1589 году и занявшей в ней пятое место, продолжали обращаться и после отмены патриаршества Петром I в 1721 году. В 1848 году, когда Вселенский патриарх собрал в Константинополе восточных патриархов вместе с их синодами, чтобы выработать ответ Риму, стремящемуся в своей экклезиологии к догмату о непогрешимости, он также заботился о том, чтобы получить согласие Священного Синода Русской Церкви, где митрополит Филарет Московский, не имевший титула патриарха, фактически играл его роль. Из этих консультаций, как и из соборного совещания в Константинополе, возник один из основных документов, выражавших православное понимание Церкви, знаменитое послание 1848 года, где говорилось, что «у нас все тело церковное сохраняет истину».

Consequently, nothing could be further from the truth than to repeat, as the Western press did on the occasion of the Rhodes Conference, that the Orthodox Churches had not met for more than a millennium. Even if we leave aside the councils that took place in Kiev, Iasi, Moscow, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, let us recall that only in Constantinople councils met in 1285, 1341, 1351, 1454, 1484, 1589, 1638, 1672, 1691, 1735, 1842 and 1872, among which the most important were the councils of the fourteenth century devoted to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and grace; in the seventeenth century – the attitude of Orthodoxy to the Reformation, in the nineteenth century – the understanding of the Church.

Only from the middle of the last century, when many new autocephalous Churches appeared in South-Eastern Europe, did the pentarchy system begin to become obsolete. But if Constantinople tried to slow down the process of obtaining new autocephalies, the Russian Church, which enjoyed the support of a powerful empire that in its Balkan policy sought to protect Orthodoxy and the Slavic peoples, encouraged their ecclesiological "emancipation." Thus, for example, in 1872, contrary to the opinion of the Mother Church and what was left of the pentarchy, it recognized the Bulgarian autocephaly.

Constantinople understood that the Orthodox world was being organized in a new way and that in the new system the national Churches would already represent only themselves. In 1902, Joachim III, in the same letter in which he called for rapprochement between Christians, invited sister churches to consult with each other every two years. However, it took the shock caused by the First World War and the Russian Revolution for the Churches to part with their inertia. Patriarch Meletius IV convened the First Pan-Orthodox Conference in Constantinople in 1923, at which, on the occasion of the 1600th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, it was decided to convene a council in 1925. But political circumstances forced the Council to be postponed, and then to cancel it. A preliminary conference held on Mount Athos in June 1930 decided to convene 626

Pre-Council Conference in 1932. But this intention was not crowned with success, but it made it possible to hold a Pan-Orthodox Theological Conference in Athens in 1936. The general weakness of all these conferences was that the Russian Church could not participate in them, in view of her tragic situation and the schisms that tore her apart.

World War II forced the Soviet regime to search for the "moral unity" of the Russian people, which made it possible to reorganize the Moscow Patriarchate and cope with schisms. The restoration of the one and weighty Russian Church, many of whose leaders, following the regime and the people, were adherents of zealous patriotism, seemed to revive the old theme of the Third Rome and put Orthodoxy in a difficult position. This is how the "Orthodoxy of the East" was formed, coordinated by the Moscow Patriarchate, which insisted on the independence and complete equality of all "autocephalies", denied Constantinople any prerogative other than the primacy of honor, and, finally, considered the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948, an instrument of Western imperialism. On the other hand, there was the "Orthodoxy of the West," which recognized, though not without reservations, the role of the "center of concord" that belonged to Constantinople, and continued to participate in the ecumenical movement.

Moscow reorganized in its own way the Churches of Poland and Czechoslovakia, to which Constantinople, referring to its pan-Orthodox responsibility, granted autonomy in exceptional conditions – in the interval between the two wars. Moscow refused to recognize the similar autonomy that the Phanar had granted to the Finnish Church. It did not agree to recognize the creation of the "Russian Exarchate" of the Church of Constantinople in 1932 for the most numerous Russian emigration in Western Europe. This care was considered "temporary," it made it possible for Russian religious philosophy, which then bore its most ripe fruits, to develop freely and to contribute to the birth of the ecumenical movement. However, Moscow's objection was justified: how can one be called a "Russian Orthodox" outside the Russian Patriarchal Church without dismissing it for political reasons?

Two understandings of the Church clashed: on the one hand, the modern concept of the complete independence of the sister Churches, and on the other, the traditional concept of primacy, not in terms of jurisdiction, but as a guardian concern for their communion in the universal Church.