An essay in universal history

23. THE COMMUNISTS BECOME ECUMENISTS

So far it had been the Ecumenical Patriarchate that had made the running in Orthodox ecumenism. However, in 1959 the MP sent its representative, Metropolitan Nicholas of Krutitsa, to the Orthodox consultation proposed by the Faith and Order Committee near Athens, which indicated that the communists had changed their minds about ecumenism, and decided that the Russian Church’s participation in it would further their cause.

This change of mind was partly because they suddenly realized the opportunities for espionage among leftist Western churchmen, and partly because, as Fr. Georges Florovsky lamented, from the time of the Evanston conference a progressive takeover took place of the “Faith and Order” concerns by the “Life and Work” concerns.²⁸⁷ That is, of the two strands of ecumenical activity that had existed before the war – the resolving of dogmatic differences among Christians, and “concern for the world and its problems” – it was the latter that was becoming dominant.
And this was of great interest to the communists.
We have seen that, as late as the Moscow council of 1948, the MP, in obedience to its communist masters, had adopted an anti-western and anti-ecumenical position. However, this position began to change in the late 1950s, when the MP began to be pushed into joining the WCC by the Council for Religious Affairs. Thus on January 16, 1958, Metropolitan Nicholas asked the Council how he was to reply to the suggestion of the WCC general secretary that he meet representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Comrade Karpov, head of the Council for Religious Affairs, said that he should reply that they in principle agreed to a meeting in June-July of that year.
And so on May 13 Metropolitan Nicholas asserted that “in the last ten years, thanks to the participation of some Orthodox Churches and the non-participation of others in the ecumenical movement, significant changes have taken place witnessing to its evolution towards churchness [tserkovnosti]. Very indicative in this respect have been huge movements in the sphere of German Protestant theology revealing the mystical depths of Orthodoxy and overcoming its traditional rationalism… On coming into contact with our ecclesiastical life, many actors in the ecumenical movement have completely changed their idea of Orthodoxy… Evidently approving of the declaration of the Orthodox participants in the Evanston assembly, we agree to a meeting with the leaders of the World Council of Churches exclusively in the name of our Pan-Orthodox duty – to serve the reunification of all Christians in the bosom of the Church of Christ.”²⁸⁸
In 1959, as a sign of the changing times, the MP joined the European Conference of Churches… Then, on June 15, 1960 the new head of the Council for Religious Affairs, Kuroyedov met Patriarch Alexis. As Fr. Sergius Gordun writes, “Kuroyedov declared that he had carefully studied the external activities of the Patriarchate and he had come to conclusion that the situation was quite unsatisfactory. ‘In recent years the Patriarchate has not undertaken a single major initiative for the unification of the Orthodox Churches around the Russian Orthodox Church headed by the Moscow Patriarchate – initiatives, that is, aimed at exposing the reactionary activities of the Pope of Rome and the intensification of the struggle for peace. The Patriarchate is not using those huge opportunities which she enjoys; she has not undertaken a single major action abroad… The Russian Orthodox Church is not emerging as a unifying centre for the Orthodox Churches of the world, usually she adopts a passive stance and only weakly exposes the slanderous propaganda concerning the position of religion and the Church in our country… The Council recommended to Metropolitan Nicholas that he work out suggestions for intensifying external work. However, Metropolitan Nicholas has not fulfilled this request of the Council and has put forward suggestions which in no way correspond to the requirements discussed with the metropolitan in this regard.’ Then Kuroyedov suggested that Metropolitan Nicholas be released from his duties as president of the Department of Foreign Relations and that they be imposed on another, more fitting person.”
The “suggestion” was accepted, and Metropolitan Nicholas was retired on June 21. In July, he asked Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein) of Brussels to tell the world that a new persecution was beginning, and in August repeated this message to western church leaders. In August, Kuroyedov suggested to the patriarch that he retire Metropolitan Nicholas from the Moscow diocese. The patriarch suggested to the metropolitan that he accept the Leningrad diocese, but the latter sharply rejected the offer. On September 9, Metropolitan Nicholas sent a letter to Khruschev. On September 19, the MP Synod retired him. On December 13 he died in suspicious circumstances; many believe he was murdered.²⁸⁹ Some believe that Metropolitan Nicholas was removed because in 1959 KGB defector Major Peter Deriabin had exposed him before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee as a KGB agent.²⁹⁰. There is no doubt that he was an agent, as we have seen; but it also appears likely that he sincerely wanted to protect the Church. In any case, his career is yet another illustration of the Lord’s words that one cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon…
The new foreign relations supremo turned out to be Bishop Nikodem (Rotov), who was born in 1929, made priest at the extraordinarily young age of 20, and Bishop of Podolsk on July 10, 1960, at the age of 31.
His arrival on the scene marks a new advance in the apostasy of the MP. For his personality, as Fr. Sergius continues, was “linked with the change in the position of the Moscow Patriarchate in relation to the ecumenical movement. As is well known, the Conference of the heads and representatives of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, which took place in Moscow in 1948, accepted a resolution declaring that ‘the aims of the ecumenical movement… do not correspond to the ideals of Christianity and the tasks of the Church of Christ as those are understood by the Orthodox Church’. In this connection particular mention was made of the ecumenical movement’s turn towards involvement in social and political life, which was not acceptable for Orthodoxy. This position was maintained by the Moscow Patriarchate until 1960. In a conversation which took place on April 2, 1959, his Holiness Patriarch Alexis informed the Council about the attitude of the Russian Church to the ecumenical movement, and declared that she intended gradually to increase her links with the World Council of Churches and to send her observers to its most important conferences, but would not become a member of this organization. However, a year and a half later this position changed. In the notes of a conversation which took place between Patriarch Alexis and V.A. Kuroyedov on September 15, 1960, there is the following phrase: ‘The Patriarch accepted the recommendation of the Council concerning the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the membership of the World Council of Churches and evaluated this as a major action of the Russian Orthodox Church in its activities abroad.’ What was the aim of the Council for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in recommending that the Russian Church enter the World Council of Churches? To conceal, it would seem, the anti-ecclesiastical policy of the Soviet government. Having cornered the Church, the Council wanted to create the image of a free and active Russian Church abroad…”²⁹¹
In November-December, 1960 Patriarchs Alexis and Athenagoras met in Constantinople, and discussed questions related to the Second Vatican Council After their meeting Bishop Nikodem, now president of the MP’s Department of External Relations, gave a press conference at which he said: “The Russian Church has no intention of taking part in the Council, since the union between Orthodoxy and Catholicism cannot take place unless the Vatican renounces from the beginning certain principles – for example, the infallibility of the Pope.²⁹² However, as we shall see, this was by no means to be the last world in MP-Vatican relations…
On March 30, 1961 the MP Synod resolved “to consider the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches to be timely, and to ask his Holiness the Patriarch to send a letter to the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches declaring the desire of the Russian Orthodox Church to become a member of the World Council of Churches.”²⁹³
From September 24 to October 1 the Orthodox Churches in the WCC met on Rhodes under the presidency of Metropolitan Chrysostom of Athens. One of its participants, Archbishop Basil of Brussels, recalls that “the relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian world were reviewed in detail. With regard to the Catholic Church, the majority of participants in the conference expressed themselves ‘for the development of relations in the spirit of the love of Christ, with particular reference to the points envisaged by the 1920 encyclical of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate.’”²⁹⁴
Also discussed was a catalogue of topics for a future Pan-Orthodox Council. The MP tried hard to ensure that no topic that might prove embarrassing to the Soviet government was included. For, as Gordienko and Novikov write, “in the course of the debate on the catalogue, the Moscow Patriarchate’s delegation [led by Nikodem] suggested the removal of some of the subjects (The Development of Internal and External Missionary Work, The Methods of Fighting Atheism and False Doctrines Like Theosophy, Spiritism, Freemasonry, etc.) and the addition of some others (Cooperation between the Local Orthodox Churches in the Realisation of the Christian Ideas of Peace, Fraternity and Love among Peoples, Orthodoxy and Racial Discrimination, Orthodoxy and the Tasks of Christians in Regions of Rapid Social Change)… Besides working out the topics for the future Pre-Council, the First Conference passed the decision ‘On the Study of Ways for Achieving Closer Contacts and Unity of Churches in a Pan-Orthodox Perspective’, envisaging the search for contacts with Ancient Eastern (non-Chalcedonian) Churches (Monophysites), the Old Catholic, Anglican, Catholic, and Protestant Churches, as well as the World Council of Churches.”²⁹⁵ In other words, the Orthodox were to abandon the struggle against Atheism, Freemasonry and other false religions, and were to engage in dialogue towards union with all the Christian heretics – while at the same time persecuting the True Orthodox and using ecumenical forums to further the ends of Soviet foreign policy in its struggle with the Capitalist West!²⁹⁶
The argument used by Nikodem for removing atheism from the agenda was that discussion of this question might elicit persecution against the Church in Russia. As for Masonry, “it does not exist in contemporary Russia, we don’t know it, Masonry exists only in the West. Consequently, this question is not of general, but only of local Orthodox interest, and for that reason it should not be included in the programme of a general Orthodox Council…”²⁹⁷ He omitted to mention that the February revolution in Russia had been created by 300 Russian Masons…
In November, 1961 the newly promoted Archbishop Nikodem, accompanied by Bishop Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, who lived in London, Bishop (and future Patriarch) Alexis (Ridiger) and “a Russian government courier who is responsible for their comfort and all their expenses”²⁹⁸, went to New Delhi for the Third General Assembly of the WCC. On December 6-7, the MP was accepted as an official member of the WCC at its Third General Assembly in New Delhi. 142 churches voted for, 4 abstained and 3 voted against.
The Vatican immediately warned that the MP’s membership was aimed “at the fulfilling of plans hatched in the Kremlin, which are bound to assist the triumph of Soviet propaganda through ecumenical Christianity”. And sure enough: when an attempt was made to condemn communism, Archbishop Nikodem immediately proposed a resolution listing the vices of capitalism, as a result of which both resolutions were withdrawn.²⁹⁹
The KGB-enforced entry of the MP into the WCC, which was followed by the entry of the Romanian Church (in 1961) and of the Georgian Church (in 1962), had a devastating effect on the Orthodox position. For the Soviets not only constituted numerically by far the largest single Church in the WCC; they also controlled, through the KGB, all the other delegates from behind the iron curtain. Communism and Ecumenism therefore met in an unholy union which has been called “Ecucommunism”.³⁰⁰ As Deacon Andrew Kuraiev writes: “Sergianism and Ecumenism intertwined. It was precisely on the instructions of the authorities that our hierarchy conducted its ecumenical activity, and it was precisely in the course of their work abroad that clergy who had been enrolled into the KGB were checked out for loyalty.”³⁰¹
The Orthodox delegates at New Delhi signed a summary statement which declared, among other things: “We consider that the work of creating the One, Universal Church must unfailingly be accompanied by the destruction and disappearance of certain outmoded, traditional forms of worship”. The idea of “creating” the One Church was blasphemous, and the idea of destroying certain “outmoded” forms of worship - an outright challenge to the Holy Tradition of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church! And, having delivered it, the Orthodox delegates seemed to lose all restraint; for within a decade or two of the New Delhi congress, the ecumenical movement had climbed into the realm of “Super-ecumenism” – relations with non-Christian religions. It was therefore the Congress of the WCC in New Delhi that marked the decisive dogmatic break between “World Orthodoxy” and True Orthodoxy. If, until then, it could be argued, albeit unconvincingly, that the “World Orthodox” had not apostasised, and that only a few of their leaders were ecumenist heretics, this could no longer be maintained after New Delhi.
The General Assembly of the WCC in New Delhi was closely followed by the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, an event as important for ecumenism in the West as had been the founding of the WCC. Vatican II opened the floodgates to Ecumenism in the western world. For, as Malachi Martin writes: “Before the end of the fourth and final session of Vatican II – presided over by Pope John’s successor, Paul VI – some bishops and Vatican personnel had already adopted entirely new and innovative meanings for the idea of ecumenism. The powerful Augustin Cardinal Bea, for example, was a leading figure at the Council and a close adviser to Paul VI, as he had been to Pope John. Bea was seen as the Vatican’s own spearhead in what came to be nothing less than an ecumenical revolution. The Cardinal organized ‘ecumenical gatherings’ that included not only Roman Catholics and Protestants as usual, but Jews and Muslims as well. In time, as was only logical, Buddhists, Shintoists, animist and a host of other non-Christian and even non-religious groups would find a place in the poorly and broadly defined new ‘ecumenism’.”³⁰²
During the New Delhi Assembly, Nikodem announced that the Vatican had invited the MP to send observers to the Second Vatican Council; but that the MP had laid it down as a condition that there should be “no declarations hostile to our beloved country”. So for most of the next year, the MP chose to emphasise, albeit in a gentle way, the dogmatic differences between the two Churches. ³⁰³ However, in September-October, at the Second Pan-Orthodox Conference on Rhodes, it was decided to begin a theological dialogue with the Catholic Church. Moreover, - still more importantly, - at the beginning of October the Council for Religious Affairs told the Central Committee that the participation of observers at the Second Vatican Council would assist the establishment of useful contacts with the Vatican and would bind the Vatican in its promotion of hostile activity against the USSR. This official address of the Council to the Central Committee completed a process of change in attitude towards the Catholic Church and the question of the presence of observers at the Vatican Council from originally negative to a positive recognition of benefit for the Soviet government and for the MP of an improvement in their relations to the Vatican. The decision to allow the sending of observers to the Second Vatican Council was taken at the highest level of Soviet power, the Politburo, on October 10, 1962 (N 58/30).³⁰⁴
The arrival of Russian Orthodox observers at the Council produced consternation in French Catholic circles, which accused the Vatican of “selling out” to communism. But the French communist press was delighted: “Since the world socialist system shows its superiority indisputably and enjoys the approval of many hundreds of millions of men, the Church can no longer rest content with crude anti-communism. She has even given an undertaking, on the occasion of her dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church, that there should be no direct attack on the communist regime at the Council.”³⁰⁵
Why did the Vatican accept this condition, which so damaged her standing in the anti-communist West? Probably for the same reason that the MP-KGB agreed to send observers – to infiltrate the camp of the enemy. And the possibility exists that their main agent of infiltration was precisely the MP’s Metropolitan Nikodem…
This at first sight unlikely hypothesis gains credibility from the career of Fr. Michael Havryliv, a Russian priest who was secretly received into the Catholic Church in 1973. Fr. Serge Keleher writes: “The Capuchin priest told Havryliv that Metropolitan Nikodem [of Leningrad] was secretly a Catholic bishop, recognized by Rome with jurisdiction from Pope Paul VI throughout Russia. This assertion is not impossible – but neither is it entirely proved.
“On September 6 1975 Havryliv made a sacramental general Confession before Metropolitan Nikodem, who then accepted Havryliv’s monastic vows and profession of Faith to the Apostolic See and the Pope of Rome. Kyr Nikodem commanded Havryliv to order his monastic life according to the Jesuit Constitutions, and presented him with a copy of this document in Russian. This was all done privately; four days later the Metropolitan tonsured Havryliv a monk. On 9 October Kyr Nikodem ordained Havryliv to the priesthood, without requiring the oaths customary for Russian Orthodox candidates to Holy Orders.
“In 1977 Havryliv was reassigned to the Moscow Patriarchate’s archdiocese of L’viv and Ternopil… In Havryliv’s final interview with Kyr Nikodem, the Metropolitan of Leningrad ‘blessed me and gave me instructions to keep my Catholic convictions and do everything possible for the growth of the Catholic cause, not only in Ukraine, but in Russia. The Metropolitan spoke of the practice of his predecessors – and also asked me to be prudent.”³⁰⁶
These words indicate the truth behind the mask of the Vatican’s ecumenism; and the fact that Havryliv was reordained by Nikodem show that Rome accepted the sacraments of the Orthodox for only as long as it suited her. The Orthodox were, from Vatican II, not heretics, but “separated brethren”. However, the “separated brethren” still had to return in repentance to their father, the Pope…
The Vatican also decided to invite ROCOR to send observers to the Council. This decision, writes Andrew Psarev, “was a precursor to a lively discussion of the [ROCOR] council session in 1962, where the so-called defensive point of view collided with the ‘missionary’ point of view. An ardent advocate of the ‘defensive’ point of view was Archbishop Averky of Syracuse and Holy Trinity Monastery, who saw the Second Vatican Council as a step in the direction of global apostasy. An opposite point of view was expressed by Bishop Savva of Edmonton, who saw declining the invitation as a loss of an opportunity to bear witness to the truth using a forum provided an opportunity to talk about Orthodoxy, the situation in the Orthodox world, and about the persecuted Russian Church. The support given by Metropolitan Anastasii to the missionary point of view regarding the sending of representatives to the Vatican was the last major influence he had on relations between ROCOR and the non-Orthodox world during the period of his service as the first hierarch.”³⁰⁷
And so when the Second Vatican Council opened on October 12, 1962, the only Orthodox present were the MP delegation headed by Metropolitan Nikodem, and the ROCOR delegation headed by Archbishop Anthony of Geneva…