Foreword: Towards the Local Church

Following a recent post, some readers have asked me how I envision the shape of a future Local Church in Western Europe in concrete terms. You may read on for this, but only as long as you understand that my view may well be completely irrelevant. God creates the Church, human-beings do not. My first suggestion for a future new Local Church was made in 1988. It was thrown into the bin of an Archbishop, who suicidally had no vision and who literally considered that the Church should only ever use Slavonic or Greek in its services. He lost all the vital forces from his Archdiocese, including the present Metr Athenagoras in Belgium and his parishes there, as well as many others. Only the freemasons stayed with him from among the younger generation.

And yet this present proposition is based on the same one made 37 years ago. However, as the old Russian emigration has since 1988 died out and there has been mass emigration from Eastern Europe, it is also different. We have always navigated between the political extremes in the Orthodox Church. Since one extreme was, and is, Greek (racist, imperialist and still CIA-controlled) and another extreme is Russian (racist, imperialist and now nationalist-controlled), it is only natural that we in Western Europe should now be with the Romanian Church. In the last eighteen years this has become easily the majority Orthodox group in Western Europe, speaking a Latin language, in communion with all, and, in the mainstream, distant from both Greek and Russian extremes.

The foundation of a new Local Church presupposes that all Local Churches which have a Diaspora on the territory concerned are able to and wish to collaborate to grant autocephaly together. Therefore, our suggestion must presume that the Churches of Moscow and Constantinople have reconciled by the time that any proposition can be discussed. It also presumes that the splinters of the Russian emigration in Western Europe (one based in Paris, the other in New York, and neither now Russian in spirit at all) will have been absorbed into the Mother Church, once they have collapsed.

As one well-known and very experienced Russian Metropolitan from Moscow confirmed to me about a month ago: ‘It is inevitable that both parts of the Russian Emigration will fall into our hands, like ripe fruit hanging from a tree’. Of course he is right, it is inevitable and always has been, ever since 2007. Therefore, unlike one German ROCOR bishop who is extremely hostile to the Mother Church in Moscow and continually expresses highly critical and sectarian attitudes towards it, we believe it would be much better to be positive and contribute the real pre-Revolutionary heritage of ROCOR towards the new Local Church, instead of rejecting all others who have different customs.

The Suggestion

This new Autocephalous Local Church would cover the territories of the 412 million people and 21 countries of Western Europe, listed below and grouped into eight regions of on average some 50 million each. (We do not include here Eastern European Hungary and the three Baltic States with Finland, which will surely have their own two Local Churches, like Poland and Czechoslovakia, long before any of the eight regions of Western Europe below).

This Local Church would be composed of the at present 2,000 or so Orthodox parishes and monasteries and the seven million or so nominal Orthodox in Western Europe. There would initially be a Synod of 40 bishops (which is about the number of Orthodox bishops present in Western Europe today), led by the ‘Archbishop of Paris and All the Western Lands’. He would be in Paris, as this has long been the centre of most of the Orthodox jurisdictions in Western Europe.

Each regional Archbishop would be chosen from the Orthodox national majority of that particular region. The terminology used here is the Greek, in which an Archbishop is higher than a Metropolitan, who is in fact a Diocesan bishop (and called a Bishop in the Russian and Serbian practice), and a Bishop is in fact an assistant or vicar to the Archbishop or Metropolitan of his nationality, if there is one on that territory, or else he is simply a Diocesan Bishop.

A Diocese would usually be defined as about 50 parishes representing 25,000 practising Orthodox, indicating about 1 million practising Orthodox. These Dioceses would not initially be geographical, but ethnic, though with time, they could gradually become geographical. The total population is given for each region.

France and Monaco (66 million)

Archbishop of Paris and All the Western Lands (Romanian)

Bishop of Southern France, French Switzerland and Monaco (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Russia in Western Europe

Bishop of Western France and Brittany (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in France

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in France

Metropolitan of the Church of Antioch in Western Europe

Metropolitan of the Church of Bulgaria in Western Europe

Metropolitan of the Church of Georgia in Western Europe

Germany (84 million)

Archbishop of Berlin and All Germany (Russian)

Bishop of Western Germany (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Romania in Germany

Bishop of Northern Germany (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Germany

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Germany

The British Isles and Ireland (74 million)

Archbishop of London and All the Isles (Romanian)

Bishop of Ireland (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in the British Isles and Ireland

Bishop of Scotland and Northern England (Greek)

Bishop of the Church of Russia in the British Isles and Ireland

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in the British Isles and Ireland

Italy, San Marino and Malta (60 million)

Archbishop of Rome and All Italy, Malta and San Marino (Romanian)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Italy

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Italy

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Italy

Iberia: Spain, Portugal, Andorra (58 million)

Archbishop of Iberia (Romanian)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Spain and Andorra

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Portugal

Bishop of the Church of Russia in Iberia

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Iberia

Benelux (30 million)

Archbishop of the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg (Greek)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg

Bishop of the Church of Russia in the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg

Scandinavia: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland (22 million)

Archbishop of Stockholm and All Scandinavia (Serbian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Scandinavia

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Scandinavia

Bishop of the Church of Russia in Scandinavia

Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria (18 million)

Archbishop of Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria

Afterword: Battling Against Exclusivism

There are those in the Church who unite and there are those who divide. The dividers are always exclusivists, but there are two different ways of being exclusive – racially and doctrinally. For example, the nationalist dividers will say such things as ‘Only Greeks are really Orthodox’ or ‘Only Russians have kept Orthodoxy’. In other words, they exclude all others on racist grounds and that swells their pride, as they of course belong to the ‘right’ nationality.

However, there are also those who divide by laying claim to alone possessing ‘the True Faith’, who exclude others by laying claim to an exclusive faith. Such love to be exotic and esoteric, using words like ‘temple’, ‘omoforion’ and ‘noetic’ for their pseudo-mystical cult, to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. They spend their time digging trenches between themselves and other Orthodox, thus creating artificial divisions, for ever inventing new ‘teachings’ which are exclusive to them. This swells their pride, as they paint themselves even further into their ghetto corner. This has long been the temptation of some in ROCOR, especially the rebaptisers, whose hearts clearly lack love.

The uniters are those who do not pay attention to languages, for they are all only weak echoes of Divine language, or customs. We are Orthodox Christians, beyond nationalities. However, we are not abstract dreamers who promote some heady philosophy of intellectual theories and dreamy unfinished, because disincarnate, iconography. We are also down to earth, incarnate, and belong in our bodies to the places where we live and wish to have some influence to shape human reality there.

As long as credit is given to the exclusivists and they are put into power, there is little hope for a Local Church. However, today we are slowly moving towards a situation where the exclusivists are increasingly discrediting themselves. For instance, the same German bishop as mentioned above told the local Moscow Patriarchal bishop after the Russian reconciliation in 2007, who was rejoicing at unity, that, ‘No, we are not together, we are still enemies.’ Thus, we see that some of the greatest impediments to unity come from crazy converts, not only from Eastern European nationalists. And the crazy converts have merely used the canonical authority of the Russian Mother-Church in order to mask who they really are – sectarians and schismatics.

May God’s will be done.