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Regards from Gainsville, GA!
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I have prepared for you this post below about the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergii (Stragrodskii), which was published on this day in 1927, but it was blocked by a censor form SendPulse, a platform I have been using to deliver these daily reports to you. As will see in today's post I have been writing respectuflly, but critically about changing the attitude toward Metropolitan Sergii in Russia. SendPulse decided that I was promoting the Russian Federation and prevented this report from delivering to you. Now, I am using the ROCOR Studies platform and have to find another way to deliver you further reports.
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Thank you for your continuing interest,
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Protodeacon Andrei Psarev
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In August 2023, Patriarch Kirill opened the monument to Patriarch Sergii (Stragorodskii) in his native city of Arzamas. This May His Hollines mentioned that Western experts politicized historical perception of Patriarch Sergii. Will this trend lead to the full acquittal of the declaration in Russia?
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On this day in 1927, Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii), with his Synod, published the so-called declaration of loyalty to the Soviet government.
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The Russian Church had not had any legal status since the Bolsheviks’ revolution in 1917. St. Patriarch Tikhon wanted to negotiate with the godless regime’s conditions for peaceful coexistence of the church in the Soviet Union. As part of this normalization of relations Patriarch Tikhon condemned statements of the ROCOR’s Council about restoration of monarchy in 1921 and expressed in 1924 condolences on the death of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
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In his declaration Metropolitan Sergii continued this course of St. Patriarch Tikhon. Similarly, he had to respond to the struggle of the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Shortly before the declaration on June 7, 1927, the Soviet Diplomat Pyotr Voykov was killed in Warsaw by the White Russian terrorist Boris Koverda. In his declaration Metropolitan Sergii interpred the Soviet hostilities toward the Church through anti-Soviet acts of the White Russians. He did not mention in this document the Communist ideology, which objective was to destroy the Church. And at the same time Metropolitan Sergii did not factor in the rights of the Russian emigres to resist Bolsheviks’ regime. Even within the relatively liberal Soviet realities of the period of the New Economic Policy (1921-1928) Mertopolitan Sergii could not say that it was unfair to hold churchmen in Russia as hostages for the emigres activities.
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Those bishops who disagreed with Metropolitan Sergii in Russia did not realy to the declaration as to a significant divisive point. They would mostly question the right of Metropolitan Sergii and his Synod to make decisions that would have an impact on the entire Russian Church.
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At the same time in the Russian diaspora declaration came across as a marker of a no return point in the relations with Moscow Patriarchate. Therefore, the joint commissions on the restoration of the unity in the Russian Church, which took place in 2007, dedicated the special document to the declaration. It contains the following points among the others:
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"The patriotic stance expressed in part in the 'Declaration' resonated in the hearts of many members of the Russian Orthodox during the years of the Great Patriotic War. Orthodox Christians fought and struggled for the good of their homeland, as did Great Martyr George the Victory-bearer, St Theodore Stratilatos, and many holy warriors in the first centuries of Christianity, who fought to defend their pagan countries, as did St John the Damascene, who labored to benefit his country, then under Muslim control.”
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“At the same time, the Declaration' introduced a sharp rift within the people of the Church. There are known instances when during the interrogation of the 'non-commemorating' clergymen, the persecutors of the Church referred to the 'Declaration.' It was then, and is to this day, a temptation for many children of the Russian Orthodox Church."
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"Over the course of the two-thousand-year history of the Church, such compromises under conditions of persecution are known. But never did those people who made compromises for the sake of preserving the legal existence of the Church, nor, of course, those who disagreed with such a policy, ever deem the path of compromise as normal, as the only path or the as natural path of the Church of Christ.”
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“At the same time, a critical view of the above document does not equate to a condemnation of His Holiness Patriarch Sergius, and does not express an effort to besmirch his person and mitigate his First-Hierarchical service in the difficult years of the Church's life in the Soviet Union.”
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