Russian Church becomes closer to People

Milena Faustova
28/1/2011

The dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church and the public is receiving new forms. The Moscow Patriarchy has formed a body which had never existed anywhere in the whole history of Christianity – the Interim Council of Bishops.

In the Orthodox Church, a council of bishops is the supreme ruling body. The Interim Council was formed because, as the Church’s hierarchs believe, today, many questions occur that must be solved without waiting for another council of bishops, which takes place once in several years. Thus, the Interim Council will be something like a council constantly in session.

On January 28, the Interim Council of the Russian Church gathered for its first session in Russia’s main Orthodox cathedral – the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

The Interim Council is formed not only from bishops and priests, but some public figures, writers and business people are also represented. The topics which are being discussed at the session are acute not only for the Church hierarchs, but also for people who consider themselves to be far from religion.

The idea to form some body for the Church’s broader dialogue with public appeared already in the early 20th century. Moreover, it was even formed and received the name “The Supreme Church Council” – but very soon it was dismissed by the atheistic Bolshevik regime.

Today’s Interim Council is a consultative body. Its aim is to give assessments to the main events and trends in today’s Russia’s public life. At the first session, about 100 topics are being discussed. One of them, for example, is whether priests may be elected to parliament – an issue which is now widely discussed in Russia. Another is interesting probably only to theologians – working out the procedure of restoring people in the Church who once separated from it. This issue is very acute in Ukraine. The split between the Russian Church and a part of the Ukrainian Church, which appeared soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been overcame by now, and many Ukrainians now want to reunite with the Moscow Patriarchy – but they don’t know what church procedure they must undergo for this.

The documents which are being discussed by today’s session of the Interim Council have been made available for public discussions on several Web sites. Some Church hierarchs have had doubts whether they must be publically discussed, but the idea, as the head of the Russian Church Patriarch Kirill believes, has proven its worth.

“People actively discussed these materials,” the Patriarch said at the Council’s session. “We’ve received 54 responses from dioceses and over 500 from individuals – both priests and lay people. This is evidence that Russians have great interest to the life of our Church today.”

Some skeptics say that discussing instantaneous political issues is not the matter of the Church and that this may modernize the Church so far that it withdraws from its traditional canons. Still, the Church’s top leaders don’t share their fears.

“The Church must not be separated from the society,” Patriarch Kirill says. “It must discuss every trend in today’s life.”

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