Instead of introduction to the orthodox believers' page we decided to pubish Vsevolod Chaplin's open letter which answers 10 most common questions Russian Orthodox Church is asked. This letter was written in response to an accusing article by Mikhail Pozdniaev in one of Russia's respectable magazines. We hope that this will answer some of your questions as well. Fr. Vladimir is always glad to answer your questions and give necessary support. Here is the letter:

In Ogonyok no. 28 Mikhail Pozdniaev posed "Ten questions to the patriarchate," and declared right away that he could not hope to expect answers. It is sad that a journalist who, I know, has been occupied with church themes for several years has forgotten that the church has answered the majority of these questions many times fully and in public. Overlooking the superior, self-assured tone of Mr. Pozdniaev's article, I shall recall these answers briefly, for which I have the permission of the most holy patriarch who read the article in Ogonyok intently.

And so, the first question. Was the current patriarch freely elected? Unquestionably, yes. This is attested by the atmosphere and course of the local council of 1990. All bishops over the age of forty and resident on the native canonical territory of the Russian church were candidates in the first round. Many nominations received support from more than 100 members of the council. The second participant in the deciding round, Metropolitan Vladimir, received not very many fewer votes than Metropolitan Alexis. I never heard anything about a "secret KGB directive" that had been sent about the dioceses to vote for Metropolitan Alexis; if there had been such a thing, believe me, there would have been people at the council who would have published it. Each diocesan bishop can attest that there were no instructions about whom to vote for. It is possible that someone "awaited orders." To be sure there were even statements in oral form about the "wishes" of the staff of the Council of Religious Affairs of the time; incidentally, these were not in favor of the current patriarch. However there was nothing even close to a kind of unanimous "voting on command."

Then on the church commission which studied the documents about contacts of clergy and laity with KGB personnel. This commission was created not in order to condemn the incidents of contact with representatives of authority (which possibly had connections even to the KGB). Such contacts in and of themselves could be used either for both evil and good. Whether they actually were used to harm the church and people the commission was unable to determine inasmuch as it was hampered by anonymous sources including the once notorious "lists of agents with code names" and it did not receive a single reliable document.

The "affair" of former Metropolitan Filaret. Actually, at the first bishops' council in 1992 there was a possibility of immediately removing him from the position of metropolitan of Kiev and all-Ukraine. However one could imagine how negatively the deposition "in Moscow" of the Kievan metropolitan would be received by the Ukrainian public and even by many in Russia--I dare say that even Mr. Pozdniaev would not have approved at the time. The church nevertheless gave Filaret a final chance to get out of the complicated situation decently, the more so that he vowed before the cross and New Testament to resign his position. However, even the former metropolitan's violation of his vow was not by any means the decisive factor in the development of the schismatic movement in Ukraine. It had appeared long before Filaret and he and his folowers only continued the unholy matter that had been begun and the responsibility for the results lies exclusively on the schismatics themselves.

Fourth question: regarding the conversations in St. Daniel's monastery during the political crisis of the autumn of 1993. In fact they did not "run into a dead end" at all but they nearly reached a peaceful, compromise resolution of the conflict. But I submit that this fact did not calm the radical forces. Soon open calls for violence erupted after which it became extremely difficult to prevent the violent stage of the confrontation. However even at that moment the most holy patriarch Alexis II urged a cessation of the bloodshed. Meanwhile nobody but the church was able to get the opposing sides to sit down at the table and it is quite possible that without the dialogue in the monastic calm everything would have ended in greater bloodshed.

Fifth question, which is formulated in such a way that I don't wish to repeat it even in summary. The church stood on the side of the "leftist forces" and forgot the "anathemas of communism"? First, I would advise Mr. Pozdniaev to reread the official church documents of the period of the revolution and civil war. There is no anathema of any ideology, including communist. There is an anathema of those who were resisting God and hating people. Second, in the church documents of the present period you will not find a single word of support for any political party, "left" or "right." True, representatives of the church have met with politicians, including the "leftists." But after all probably even Mr. Pozdniaev also has met with them in his line of activity. If so, then is he apparently also for the "left"? Obviously the views of the church on individual problems of society sometimes coincide with the positions of the "left" now and the "right" later (I note that the "left" accuses us of supporting the "right" at least as often as the "right" accuses us of support of the "left"). But no political force has ever said that the church fully and exclusively supports it, because it is known that it isn't true. However priests and laity have their personal political convictions and no one is forbidden to have them.

The impossibility of the church's participation in the political struggle does not mean a refusal to have an active public position. It is impossible to accuse us of the absence of such a position: the events in Chechnia were the basis for at least six declarations by the primate of the church in which the error of a military approach was stated quite clearly, for example: "The bloodshed in Chechnia should be immediately stopped. . . . The church lifts its voice in defense of the innocent victims. . . . I ask and beg government leaders of Russia and the Chechen leaders, all whose hands are taking the sword, to cease immediately all military actions." Is this an "indistinct reference" (quoting Mr. Pozdniaev, seguing to his sixth point)? In recent years the church has expressed itself very clearly on many other problems of society. Indeed, its voice is not heard because it does not have its own information media and because other mass media do not attempt to report the decisions and declarations of the church hierarchy. But a reporter writing on religious subjects should be aware of the latest events in the sphere of church-public activity. I am profoundly convinced that participation of the church and clergy immediately in the political process is ruinous and dangerous. If in parliament and other legislative assemblies we had ten, twenty, or a hundred Yakunins, arguing among themselves for the interests of various parties, or if priests dispensed budgetary items, the unity of the church and then the unity of Russia would be threatened.

Mr. Pozdniaev's next question, about Hegumen Zinon Teodor. He really is rightfully considered one of the best Russian icon painters and it is no accident that he was the one commissioned to paint the copy of the Vladimir Mother of God for the six hundredth anniversary of its coming to Moscow. However one must not confuse the talent of an icon painter with church discipline. The imposition by the local bishop of canonical sanctions upon Fr Zinon happened because he committed a clear violation of church rules: he received communion during a mass conducted by priests of the Roman Catholic church, with which the Orthodox church does not have eucharistic fellowship.

Now I shall try to answer the eighth question, although this will be difficult since Mr. Pozdniaev placed together several completely disparate topics. The parishes of the Russian Orthodox church in Estonia have existed many centuries and nobody has committed there a "march," because there was no need. Quite the contrary: what was a relatively new phenomenon was the establishment in Estonia of a church structure under the Constantinople patriarchate. Now believers have gotten the chance to choose between two jurisdictions and one hopes that they will be able to live peacefully with one another. The church diaspora of the Moscow patriarchate in the far abroad also has existed for centuries. The transfer to it of the Trinity monastery in Hebron in Palestine, which was in no way "seized by force," is merely the restoration of justice inasmuch as the monastery historically belonged to Russian believers, the heirs of whom have the right at least to go there and conduct services there. They had been deprived of this right by the leadership of the Russian Church Abroad, whose ties with the country now are practically broken. The so-called Russian Orthodox Free Church which was created by it is, simply speaking, a religious novelty and thus in principle it cannot have any rights to property created by societies of believers or by the state before the revolution. It is completely incomprehensible what relation there is of these questions to the discussion of the possibility of a meeting between his holiness Patriarch Alexis II with the Roman pope John Paul II. This meeting now is premature because the crisis in interconfessional relations in western Ukraine has not been overcome. Our church also is concerned about Catholic proselytism, that is, the attempt to draw people who have been baptised and brought up in Orthodoxy into Catholicism, which does not square with the Vatican's declarations of recognition of the Orthodox church as a saving church and a church with grace, like the Catholic church. If this is so, then why receive people who are switching faith?

Further, regarding the so-called trade in tobacco and alcohol. Actually among the humanitarian aid sent from abroad over a number of years there were spirits and cigarettes which church organizations transferred into the secular trade network for cash and some of the funds received were used for the needs of the church. When the negative reaction to this arose among certain segments of society, the most holy patriarch addressed the prime minister with a suggestion not to view these wares as humanitarian aid any further. However, the indicated commercial operation never transgressed the bounds of legality and the ties of the patriarchate with the criminal world which the author of the Ogonyok article mentions, as far as I know, absolutely do not exist.

Finally, the last, tenth question, about the recent events in Ekaterinburg. In that place extra journals in the library of the Ekaterinburg ecclesiastical seminary actually were destroyed by burning. However this purely technical action attracted inordinate attention from the press and the most holy patriarch called to the attention of Bishop Nikon of Ekaterinburg and Verkhotursk that such a means for disposing of waste paper is viewed badly in contemporary society and thus is inappropriate. Nobody burned any books of famous Orthodox theologians, and certainly not publicly.

I shall also try to answer a question that is not on the list, but which appears in passing in Mr. Pozdniaev's article itself, regarding the attitude of the church on the "Ekaterinburg remains" and the canonization of the new martyrs of this declining century. The writer of the article states that the cause of the current situation is not at all in the clash of world views between materialism and idealism that divides the government and church in this matter. To be sure, any other versions are not mentioned in the article. But the essence of the misunderstanding is at a point where Mr. Pozdnaev does not wish to see it. I remind him that the isse is not about common people who have died but about the bodies of people whose possible canonization will be reviewed by the local council soon. That means that after the possible canonization of the royal family there cannot be two opinions in the church about the identification of the remains. This is why for the government, which is extremely distant from ecclesiastical concerns, the main thing now is the conclusions of a certain portion of the scholarly community, but for the church it is the will of God. If God himself by mysterious action reconciles the spiritual experience of the church with the conclusions of science, then all of the problems will vanish like smoke. Haste in making decisions on such an important matter, and more so under pressure from the state, has always harmed the church. We recall how the Church Abroad canonized along with the tsarist servants the Catholic Trupp and we recall how much misunderstanding was left when some people were included among the assembly of new martyrs, for example Fr Pavel Florensky, while others continue to argue over his ideas.

However, these really are questions upon questions which I hope to be able to put to Mr. Pozdniaev in a personal exchange of opinions so that the answers which the church has given once will not have to be repeated over and over.

Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, secratary for relations between
church and society of the Department of External Church
Relations of the Moscow patriarchate.