Moscow, January 21, 2020
Photo: pravmir.ru
Despite repeated accusations from the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its supporters, the Russian Orthodox Church has never denied the primacy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Orthodox world, His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) commented recently.
“The Greek-speaking Church sphere has indeed recently accused the Russian Church more than once of supposedly denying the primacy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Orthodox world and of seeking to take its place. However, I haven’t heard a single convincing argument that would prove the validity of these accusations,” the Metropolitan told Interfax-Religion today.
Met. Hilarion is the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.
It’s not a matter of denying primacy, Met. Hilarion emphasizes, but a question of how to understand it. The Russian Church’s understanding of primacy can be found in the document, “The Position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the Problem of Primacy in the Universal Church,” which was officially adopted by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church in December 2013, Met. Hilarion notes.
“It is clearly stated there that after the Great schism of 1054, the primacy of honor in the Orthodox Church belongs to the Patriarch of Constantinople,” the DECR head said.
Moreover, the Russian Church is perhaps the only Local Church that confesses Constantinople’s primacy on such an official level: “By the way, the Russian Church is one of the few Local Churches, or maybe the only one that recognizes the primacy of Constantinople not only in words, but in a special document having a Synodal status.”
“However, over the past 100 years, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has developed a doctrine of primacy that actually copies the Roman Catholic model of the Church structure,” as most clearly presented in the report, “First Without Equals,” by Metropolitan Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis), now the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
“Of course, this understanding of the ‘primacy’ of the Constantinople Throne is rejected by the Russian Church as not corresponding to either the Tradition of the Church or Orthodox ecclesiology. But, unfortunately, this understanding of primacy prevailed upon the Phanar and led to the invasion of Ukraine. As a result, we were forced to cease communion with the Church of Constantinople,” Met. Hilarion concluded.
