DISPUTE
OVER NIGHT
SERVICE ON CIVIL NEW YEAR'S ARISES AMONG ADHERENTS OF R.P.S.Ts.
A night
service on
the occasion of civil (new calendar) New Year's was held on the
night from 31
December to 1 January in the Pokrov cathedral church of the
Russian Orthodox
Old-Believer Church (Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Staroobriadcheskaia
Tserkov—RPSTs)
in the Rogozh Cemetery in Moscow. According to the
ecclesiastical charter, on
that day (19 December according to the old style calendar) the
holy martyr Vonifaty
is commemorated, who in old ritualist circles is venerated as
"having
special grace to help [deliver] from wine drinking." As a
Credo.Press
portal correspondent reports, similar services were held on New
Year's Eve in
several other churches of the RPSTs, despite the fact that a
council of this
church in 2009 ordered holding them everywhere.
The
divine service,
which was led by the primate of the RPSTs, Metropolitan Kornily,
began on 31
December at 21:00 and finished in the morning of 1 January. This
practice
evoked a lively controversy among adherents of this church on
social networks,
with several bloggers pointing out that there is no tradition in
the RPSTs to
conduct even a Christmas worship service at night.
The
rector of a RPSTs
parish in Veliky Novgorod, priest Alexander Pankratov, noted
that
"according to the blessing" of Metropolitan Kornily, on New
Year's
Eve a midnight office is performed after the morning prayer,
which violates the
charter. Father Alexander says that the opinion that primatial
authority
"supercedes the charter" was the "beginning of
Nikonianism."
The
liturgist of the
Pokrov cathedral church, Vitaly Moskvichev, recalled that the
practice of a
nighttime service on New Year's in the Rogozh Cemetery arose in
2004 on the
initiative of students of the ecclesiastical school, who
gathered for the first
such service in the church of the Dormition beneath the bell
tower.
In the
opinion of
several bloggers, Metropolitan Kornily's popularity in the RPSTs
continues to
fall and he is being "rescued" from retirement mostly by his
regular
meetings with Vladimir Putin. The primate of the RPSTs puts out
his own
greetings on such "politically tinged" state holidays as Russia
Day,
Day of National Unity, and Victory Day, although he refrains
from greetings on
civil New Year's. (tr. by PDS, posted 4 January 2020)
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