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| (St. Theodore Andreyev with his daughters Anya and Masha, early 1920s) |
The text below is excerpted from a letter of Hieromartyr, Saint, Theodore (Andreyev) of Petrograd, dated November 26-28 / December 9-11, 1927, to Metropolitan Sergius of sorry memory:
"In fact, you know, your remit derives from the patriarchal remit and is defined by it; the Patriarch depends on the Local Council, and the Council expresses the voice of the whole of the Russian Church. These three grades of ecclesiastical authority were before your eyes when you composed your epistle. But how did you ascend on them to the primary source of your rights?
You began with the Patriarch. Here, on your way to him, there arose before you the figure of the locum tenens. He had already been deprived of his place of service and had been sent into exile by the same authority from which you sought new rights for the Church, and was silently witnessing before the face of the whole of the Russian Church that his sorrows were not the sorrows of this authority, as your epistle claims, but were the same as our common, Orthodox grief. You understood that you could not justify your way of acting in the name of him whose closest deputy you were; and so, passing by the locum tenens, you never even mentioned him in your epistle. You extended your hand to the Patriarch himself through his exiled head, as it were.
On the basis of certain unclear, as yet unconfirmed words of the reposed Patriarch concerning some 'three years' which he supposedly put forward as necessary for his completion of a work identical to your own, if death had not hindered him, you established this specious link of yours with him, at the same time that his nearest deputy, who was probably better initiated into the intentions of the reposed Patriarch, preferred to spend these three fatal years in exile, instead of working in the direction supposedly bequeathed to him by the Patriarch.
Having established in this way an artificial link with the Patriarch, you turn to the next step - the Local Council. But here, not finding anything in the most recent Council which would authorize you to create those relations with the civil authorities which were laid down in your epistle, but even finding a decision contrary to your own in the decree of August 2/15, 1918, you, of course, did not seek for confirmation in the acts of previous Councils but preferred to turn to a Council that was still to come. It, you claim in your epistle, will solve the question concerning the higher ecclesiastical administration and 'those who tear the robe of Christ' - that is, evidently, the most recent schismatics and heretics. Moreover, it will do a number of other things - but you did not say that it would review your own epistle [declaration] and everything done in the name of the council before its actual convening. It follows that there will be no proper Local Council, but only some new executive institution attached to your person. Moreover, in being called to establish a new form of higher ecclesiastical administration, it will evidently remove also that very patriarchate, on your links with which you have just tried to base your epistle. Don't you see the vicious circle you have fallen into?
Let us now turn to the third, highest step of ecclesiastical authority - the conciliar mind of the Church. Perhaps, in bypassing the Council and the Patriarch, you succeeded in making immediate contact with the Orthodox conscience of the Russian members of the Church, and your epistle appeared as the expression of their voice? No, this voice would have had to assure you that if you seek the true witness of the Christian conscience, you would first of all have to find out the opinion of those who especially bear the name of witnesses of the truth, that is, the confessors who have suffered for it. You not only did not do this, but, on the contrary, you completely swept them aside as have sinned against that very authority with which you have so ardently been concerned to establish better relations. You swept aside both the witnesses and those whom you simply supposed would not be on your side, considering them to be 'ivory-towered dreamers'. You even suggested that they depart from you altogether, whether temporarily or forever. You recognized what remained from this selection to be the true Russian flock and began to act in their name. It is not surprising that they turned out to be in full agreement with you.
And so the whole aim of the epistle was to give you the appearance of lawfulness, and yet it all stands on sand. Neither the Patriarch, nor the Council nor the conciliar mind of the Church is in fact in agreement with it. The epistle not only does not express their opinion: on the contrary, having first deviated from them, it substituted false likenesses of them and then clothed itself in its own fictitious rights. To put it bluntly, it is not the Russian Church that has drawn this epistle from her own depths; it is rather that the epistle, having been torn away from the historical Church, has itself been laid as the cornerstone at the base of the new 'church of the evildoers'. It has constructed new logical steps of representation in its own image and likeness: it has revealed to the world a deputy standing above and beyond the person he deputizes for; it has thought up a council with previously prepared acts; it has gathered to its advantage only those voices of whom it knew in advance that they would have to be in agreement with it.
And this 'shame of nakedness' (Revelation 3.18) which has been revealed by the epistle cannot be covered by the 'Temporary Holy Synod' attached to the deputy which has arisen with it. It is in vain that it tries to communicate the likeness of a Patriarch to its president, for in accordance with the conciliar decree it is conceivable only with a Patriarch; its claims to express the voice of the Church are crazy. The synod is only a kind of soft carpet that covers over the profanation of the steps of ecclesiastical authority. They are now so smoothed down that they have formed a single steep incline along which the Russian Church is bound to crash down into the pit dug for it by you and the synodical epistle.
But the abomination of desolation extends even further, it has been set up on the holy place, it penetrates into the very holy of holies of the Christian sacraments. Already the name of the patriarchal locum tenens is commemorated as if unwillingly, without calling him 'our lord'; already the deputy is sending out warnings that this commemoration will shortly cease because of 'the absence of canonical basis for it'; already the name of the deputy, which up to now has not been commemorated aloud in the churches, has been set next to that of the locum tenens and is about to crowd it out; already the names of the lawful diocesan bishops are being substituted with those of new ones forcibly imposed by the higher authorities in spite of the church canons; the commemoration of the very civil authorities who have rejected all faith is being introduced - a new phenomenon which disturbs the conscience of many; and many other anticanonical acts are also being carried out.
And so the unity of the Church, which, in the words of Hieromartyr Ignatius the Godbearer, has its external expression in the bishop, and so for the Russian Church as a whole - in the Patriarch, has already been shaken - as a whole, by your union with a synod that has exceeded its rights to the point of equality with you, and in individual dioceses - by unlawful transfers of local bishops and their substitution by others. The holiness of the Church, which shines in martyrdom and confession, has been condemned by your epistle. Her catholicity has been desecrated. Her apostolicity, as her link with the Lord and as an embassy to the world (John 17.18), has been destroyed by the break in hierarchical succession (the removal of Metropolitan Peter) and the movement of the world itself into her."
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| (St. Theodore Andreyev) |