Plight of Russians who are Catholic - Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph

Sacred Mysteries: Russians who sought reunion with Rome felt the pinch, by Christopher Howse, 14 Jun 2014
Vladimir Putin hardly seems a pattern of holiness, but he has aligned himself with the Orthodox Church as an institution. The Orthodox Church in Russia had a bad time of it under Soviet rule: mass executions, imprisonment in the Gulag, destruction of churches – a brutal history. Yet when the state has been friendly to the Church, the dangers have been different. Under the thumb of Caesar, or a tsar, the function of the Church is distorted.

Someone who felt the harm of that Erastianism, the subordination of the Church to the state, was Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900). Realising that the universal Church must be unified, he went as far as saying that, just as the Christianity that came to Kievan Rus in 988 was in full communion with the see of Peter in Rome, so Russians could continue to be Orthodox while restoring their own communion with the Bishop of Rome. He himself was received into such communion in 1896, by Fr Nicholas Tolstoy.

Fr Tolstoy had, three years earlier, sought and found communion with Rome. In Canon Law, I think he then came under the Melkite clergy, who follow a Byzantine liturgy and have historically lived in the Middle East. Tolstoy persevered in his ideal of a Byzantine rite Catholic Church in Russia, and was shot in 1938 after the NKVD secret police arrested him.

The bishops, priests and people who came after Soloviev and Tolstoy can best be called Russian Byzantine Catholics, or Russian Catholics for short. They still exist, against tremendous odds. They were encouraged by Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius X, who in 1909 famously (to them) insisted that they should follow the traditional Russian liturgy: “No more, no less, no other”. It has been said that, in the Eastern rites, doctrine is conveyed in liturgy, though I think this is seen more widely, too.

Of course, to many Orthodox, the Russian Catholics looked like agents of the Pope, even though the initiative had come in the opposite direction. The problem was made worse by people in Rome, good men no doubt, who did think that work with Russian Catholics was a preliminary step to turning Russians into Latin Catholics. Some even saw the Communist persecution as a providential opportunity.


Fortunately, the Russian Catholics numbered some saintly members, notably Leonid Feodorov (1879-1935). He was the first Exarch of the Russian Catholics and was incarcerated in the Solovki prison camp. There he continued to celebrate the divine liturgy publicly, then secretly. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Yet today the majority of Russian Catholics live in the diaspora, in the United States, Argentina, Australia and France. Their clergy feel sorely neglected, for no new Exarch has been appointed, and there is no help to support new vocations to the clergy. In Russia they have been put uncomfortably under the jurisdiction of the Latin-rite Catholic Apostolic Administrator of Siberia. Perhaps this was meant to demonstrate that Rome did not mean to poach on Orthodox territory, but it gives the false impression that the Russian Catholics adhere to the juridical structure of the Latin rite.

This lamentable settlement came to fruition just after the death of Pope John Paul II who, though Polish in culture, valued Eastern rites.

Pope Francis sees reunion with the Orthodox as an urgent practical imperative. During his visit to Jerusalem last month he knelt beside Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Bartholomew joined Francis at the Vatican last Sunday for prayers for peace with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The current disastrous violence in Syria and Iraq threatens to kill Eastern rite Christianity there. It would be a pity if the very people in Russia who first sought to heal schism with Roman Catholics should be squashed by efforts to align East and West in unity.

Source: Plight of Russians who are Catholic - Telegraph