UAPTs NAMES GUILTY PARTIES IN DISRUPTION OF UNIFICATION PROCESS
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church accused the Kiev patriarchate of disrupting the negotiation process and the unification of the two churches. The UAPTs thinks that the UPTsKP leadership did not agree with any suggestion advanced by the bishops' council and patriarchal council of UAPTs, and thereby it brought dialogue to a stalemate. This was said in a statement from the UAPTs press service of 14 July.
"Having failed to achieve its established aim of swallowing UAPTs, the Kiev patriarchate halted the negotiating process, as it did in 2011, after accusing our church of disrupting unification. But churches are not united by such methods," the authors of the document note.
Reflecting on the unsuccessful course of negotiations, representatives of the UAPTs, once again note that the retention of the word "autocephalous" in the name of the united church, to which UPTsKP has not agreed, is extremely important, because the movement for the independence of the church, they affirm, began "100 years ago with the UAPTs and not with the Kiev patriarchate."
Also, supporters of the word "autocephalous" in the name stand firmly on the conditions of equal numbers of representatives from both churches at the joint council.
"Nevertheless, despite the uncompromising positing of the UPTs of the Kiev patriarchate, which brings destruction to the dialogue, the bishops' council instructed the Commission for Dialogue between the Churches for Unification to continue conversations with the aim of agreement on proposals, since the commission was created for this purpose of discussing and agreeing upon final options," the statement says.
To be sure, now the commission of the UAPTs is instructed to conduct unification negotiations in an expanded form—UAPTs, UPtsKP, and UPTsMP—since only the unification of all branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy will end the division, the authors affirm.
In their statement they also do not agree with the claims that in rejecting unification with the UPTsKP the UAPTs actually rejected the advice of the ecumenical patriarch: they say that His Holiness Bartholomew will decide for himself with whom to deal and with whom not.
In their document, representatives of the UAPTs also mention data of a sociological investigation that also was published by the Kiev patriarchate, according to which support for their church in Ukrainian society is extremely low. The UAPTs called this survey made to order and thus subject to doubt. On the whole, the UAPTs thinks their church now is in a state of prosperity and "it has received a second wind."
"The UAPTs does not think that the church is in a state of decline. On the contrary, new dioceses are being created and the number of parishes in all dioceses is steadily increasing. It is evident that this alarms the Kiev patriarchate, which wants to dominate Ukrainian Orthodoxy single-handedly.
The UAPTs has now received a second wind and the provocative calls by the leadership of the Kiev patriarchate to the Autocephalist clergy to abandon their native church and transfer into the KP will not work out. As the meetings held in all dioceses and deaneries have shown, the bishops, priests, and believers of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church have rallied as never before and are united in their attempts to build and develop their own church. No processes occurring in Ukraine should stop the development of the structures of Orthodox churches, because this will only harm Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
At the same time, the UAPTs is not stopping the process of uniting Ukrainian Orthodoxy into a single local Orthodox church, and it is devoting for this all efforts that depend upon it. But the UPTs of the Kiev patriarchate must reject the politics of diktat and aggression, and conduct a dialogue by civilized methods," the representatives of the UAPTs warn. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 July 2015)
Editorial disclaimer: RRN does
not intend to certify the accuracy of information
presented in articles. RRN simply intends to certify the
accuracy of the English translation of the contents of the
articles as they appeared in news media of countries of
the former USSR.
If material is quoted, please give credit to the
publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit
this Web page. If material is transmitted electronically, please
include reference to the URL,
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.