The Russian Orthodox Observers at Vatican II in the Context of Soviet Religious Politics

Wooden, Anastacia

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-98581-7_15

Anastacia Wooden⁶

Part of the book series: Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue ((PEID))

287 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the observers from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) at Vatican II. Special attention is paid to the process of sending out invitations, treatment of observers at the Council, tensions in relations between ROC observers and other observers, and personalities of two ROC observers—Fr. Vitalij Borovoj and Fr. Vladimir Kotliarov. Besides the value of historical reconstruction of the events surrounding Vatican II, this paper sheds light on the complex interplay of ecclesiastical and secular political factors involved in having non-Catholic observers at the Council. As such, it gives a telling example of the multifarious nature of concrete ecumenical engagements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 109.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 139.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
“Non Possumus!” Zhurnal Moskovskoj Patriarchii [Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, in Russian Журнал Московской Патриархии] 5 (1961): 73–75.
2.
Illustrating this concern of the Orthodox churches, Charles Napier speaks of “the genuine confusion which existed for a time as to whether the Council was to be a “Council of Union,” to which all would be invited, or not.” Charles Napier, “The Orthodox Church and the Second Vatican Council,” Diakonia l, no. 3 (1966): 175–93.
3.
Alexander Schmemann, “Russian Theology: 1920–1972: An Introductory Survey,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1972): 172–94, 173.
4.
George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Orthodox Naming of the Other; A Postcolonial Approach,” in Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 12.
5.
Adriano Roccucci, “The Experience of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet Regime,” in The Holy Russian Church and Western Christianity, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Oscar Beozzo (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 60.
6.
Here I follow the way the Russian version of his name Виталий Боровой (Віталі Баравы in his native Belarusian) is transcribed in the entry “Borovoy” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1991), 109. The World Council of Churches spells his first name as “Vitaly.” Other spellings such as “Vitalij Borovoj ” or “Borovoi” are also acceptable.
7.
Dom Emmanuel Lanne quotes Borovoy’s words at a meeting in Moscow: “Non possumus voulait simplement dire ‘On ne nous permet pas.’” See Emmanuel Lanne, “La perception en Occident de la participation du Patriarcat de Moscou à Vatican II,” in Vatican II in Moscow (1959–1965) (Leuven: Bibliotheek van de Faculteit Godgeleerdheid, 1997), 112.
8.
S. Bolotov, Russian Orthodox Church and Foreign Policy of the USSR in the 1930s–1950s (Moscow, 2011), 50. In Russian. [С. В. Болотов. Русская православная церковь и международная политика СССР в 1930е - 1950е годы. Москва: Издательство Круцитского подворья, 2011.]
9.
Ibid., 143.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid., 126.
12.
The anti-uniate campaign in Ukraine was personally coordinated by the future leader of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, who reported directly to Stalin. See ibid., 135.
13.
Jurij Karlov, “The Secret Diplomacy of Moscow and the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,” in Vatican II in Moscow (1959–1965), 296–97. As Melloni points out, “the illusion that the Vatican could be used by Communist diplomacy to ‘divide’ the West was an approach which changed only as a result of contacts and the experience of the Council.” See Alberto Melloni, “Between Ostpolitik and Ecumenism,” in The Holy Russian Church and Western Christianity, ed. Alberigo and Beozzo, 93.
14.
Bolotov, Foreign Policy, 200.
15.
Ibid., 145.
16.
Ibid., 197.
17.
Roccucci, “Experience,” 51.
18.
Aleksij Marchenko, Religious Politics of the Soviet State in the Years of Rule of N. S. Khrushchev and Its Influence on the Church Life in the USSR (Moscow, 2010), 264. In Russian [Протоиерей Алексий Марченко. Религиозная политика советского государства в годы правления Н. С. Хрущева и её влияние на церковную жизнь в СССР. Москва: Издательство Круцитского подворья, 2010.]
19.
Mikhail V. Shkarovskii, “The Russian Orthodox Church in 1958–64,” Russian Studies in History 50, no. 3 (2011): 94.
20.
Bolotov, Foreign Policy, 87–88.
21.
Krassikov’s essay provides many more colorful expressions that were used by the Soviet propaganda.
22.
See entry “Ватикан” [Vatican] in Bolshaya sovetskaya enciklopediya, [in Russian Большая советская энциклопедия] 2nd ed., vol. 7 (Moscow: BSE, 1951), 53–55.
23.
For example, Moscow Patriarch Alexij was personally attacked in Pius XII’s encyclical Orientales Omnes Ecclesias of December 23, 1945, following the arrest and sentence to forced labor camps of the Ukrainian Catholic bishops in April of 1945. Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Orientales Omnes Ecclesias, AAS 38 (1946): 33–63, no. 57.
24.
Shkarovskii, “Russian Orthodox Church,” 88.
25.
Karlov, “Secret Diplomacy,” 297.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Roccucci, “Experience,” 57.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Karim Schelkens, “Vatican Diplomacy after the Cuban Missile Crisis: New Light on the Release of Josyf Slipyj,” The Catholic Historical Review 97, no. 4 (2011): 692.
30.
Roccucci, “Experience,” 55–56.
31.
Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, “Nikodim (Rotov), 1929–1978,” in Ecumenical Pilgrims: Profiles of Pioneers in Christian Reconciliation, ed. Ion Bria and Dagmar Heller (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1995), 161.
32.
Shkarovskii, “Russian Orthodox Church,” 90.
33.
Ibid., 89–90.
34.
Vitaly Borovoi, “The Second Vatican Council and its Significance for the Russian Orthodox Church,” in Alberigo and Beozzo, The Holy Russian Church and Western Christianity, 135.
35.
Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P., “The Foundation of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity ,” in Vatican II by Those Who Were There (London: Chapman, 1986), 78.
36.
Stransky, “Foundation,” 79.
37.
Adriano Roccucci, “Russian Observers at Vatican II. The ‘Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs’ and the Moscow Patriarchate between Anti-Religious Policy and International Strategies,” in Vatican II in Moscow (1959–1965), 69.
38.
The ROC’s representatives were not the only Orthodox at the first session of the Council: there were also present as guest of the SPCU Bishop Cassien from St. Sergius’s Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris and Fr. Alexander Schmemann from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York; observers from the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia included Bishop Anthony of Geneva, Fr. Troyanoff from Switzerland, and Prof. Grotoff from Rome; the WCC sent Greek Orthodox Nikos Nissiotis as a representative. However, the ROC was the only Orthodox church to send its observers. After Paul VI’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he acknowledged nostra culpa of the RCC in the relationships with the Orthodox churches, the Greek Orthodox Church finally consented to sending observers. So at the third session of the Council there were observers from the Greek Orthodox Church as well as the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
39.
Melloni, “Ostpolotik,” 100, Note 33.
40.
Roccucci, “Russian Observers,” 52.
41.
Ibid., 67.
42.
Ibid., 66.
43.
Stransky, “Foundation,” 80.
44.
This is how the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk described it in his diaries of the Council. See The Second Vatican Council Diaries of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk, C.SS.R. (1960–1965), trans. Jaroslav Z. Skira (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 71–72.
45.
Schelkens, “Vatican Diplomacy,” 692.
46.
Theoretically the observers at the Council did not need interpreters as they were provided by the Russicum.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Slipyj was granted an amnesty but was not fully rehabilitated. He forever remained an enemy of the Soviet state and could not return to his beloved Ukraine. Ibid., 707–8.
49.
Peter Galadza, “The Council Diary of Metropolitan Maxim Hermaniuk and Turning Points in the History of the Catholic Church: An Interpretation,” in Vatican II: Experience canadiennes/Canadian Experiences, ed. Michael Attridge, et al. (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011), 237–38.
50.
Schelkens, “Vatican Diplomacy,” 705–6, Note 83.
51.
Radu Bordeianu offers reflections on how the manner of their initial participation still affects the state of the Orthodox unity today. “Orthodox Observers at the Second Vatican Council and Intra-Orthodox Dynamics,” Theological Studies 79, no. 1 (2018): 86–106.
52.
For more on Borovoy, see my publication dedicated to the 100th anniversary of his birth titled “‘The Agent of Jesus Christ’: Participation of Fr. Vitali Borovoy in the Second Vatican Council as an Observer from the ROC.” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, 36 (2016). http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol36/iss4/2/.
53.
See for example, “What is Salvation?” International Review of Mission 61, no. 241 (1972): 38–45; “Life in Unity” Ecumenical Review 36, no. 1 (1984): 3–10.
54.
Borovoi, “Second Vatican Council,” 130.
55.
Ibid., 137.
56.
“Ecco il motive per cui molto della riccezza teologica e dell’esperienza conciliare del Concilio Vaticano II ci può essere utile nella fase preparatoria dei nostril Concili e del nostro aggiornamento .” Vitalij Borovoij, “Il significato del Concilio Vaticano II per la Chiesa ortodossa russa,” in Vatican II in Moscow (1959–1965), 90.
57.
In Russian: Отдел внешних церковных связей Московского Патриархата (ОВЦС).
58.
This reasoning is taken from the presentation by Fr. S. Movsesyan, Assistant Rector of the School of Theology of the Belarus State University.
59.
The full text can be found at: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/928446.html. Last modified August 31, 2015.
60.
An inclusion of Ukraine and Belarus into the “Russian World” is made in the perspective of the Rus’ of Kiev, of which modern Russia sees itself an heir. Hence is the title of the patriarch “of Moscow and all the Rus’” adopted by the Moscow Council in 1917.
61.
John XXIII, alloc. Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, AAS 54 (1962): 786–96; for an English translation, see “Pope John’s Opening Speech to the Council,” in Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott (New York: America Magazine, 1966), 710–19.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
Anastacia Wooden

Authors

Anastacia Wooden
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Vladimir Latinovic
Department of Theology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
Gerard Mannion
Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Rome, Italy
Jason Welle, O.F.M.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Wooden, A. (2018). The Russian Orthodox Observers at Vatican II in the Context of Soviet Religious Politics. In: Latinovic, V., Mannion, G., Welle, O.F.M., J. (eds) Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98581-7_15

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98581-7_15
Published: 09 January 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98580-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98581-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics