Trevino calls me a “fan of Esphigmenou die-hards,” for which he has no proof, and I never said that I was “immunized” from anything. It was Trevino’s baseless accusation that I had endorsed schismatics that led me to point out just how wrong he was. Once again: I do not “endorse” the monks at Esphigmenou. I object to the way they have been treated, as do many of the monks on Mt. Athos. Since they have been making their protest against Constantinople for four decades, during which time the Patriarchate has not seen fit to expel them, it seems strange that it has suddenly become a burning issue that now must be resolved with coercion and force. His parting insult against Patriarch Alexei is typical of those die-hards who would rather go into schism than see the Russian Church united. Were I to follow his rather dreary reasoning, I suppose his remarks would make him a “fan” of the opponents of reconciliation. That would be absurd, but that is the sort of argument that Trevino has been making. If insults against hierarchs and slanders against fellow Orthodox represent Trevino’s style of representing Orthodoxy in the public square, I’m not sure how it helps.
Update: As Trevino must know, the criticism against Patriarch Alexei for his alleged past KGB associations is revived and kept alive by those who would like to keep demonising the Moscow Patriarchate and who sought to prevent the reconciliation that was already long overdue. Insulting a hierarch of the Church is all well and good, provided that it isn’t a hierarch whom he likes. The monks’ ecclesiological protest at least has some rationale behind it, whether you think them to be in the right or not.
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November 30th, 2007 at 5:05 am
ducinaltum
It seems that you are sidestepping an important question.
Did the Patriarch assist the KGB?
This would not on its own perhaps disqualify him, but surely you this is a question that should be answered.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Daniel Larison
There are several people who have claimed this, and there is supposed to be documentary evidence to support it. It appears that it is probably true. As the article from the National Catholic Reporter relates, this connection to the KGB was not exactly the sinister thing that Trevino makes it out to be:
“He was a young man with a future: In 1990 he was elected patriach of Moscow and of all Russia. After the ousting of Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, there was a brief period of glasnost in which the KGB archives were opened. Among the documents that tumbled out was the report “Blackbird”/Alexis wrote on his 1968 visit to Rome. It was published last year in the Italian geopolitical review Limes.
As he wrote it, he must surely have felt confident that it would never see the light of day. There is no need to be shocked by the fact that he wrote a report that today seems embarrassing. Only the super-high-minded judge him severely. His motive was to “save the Orthodox church.”
“We knew they had to do this,” Jesuit Fr. John Long, now rector of the Russicum, told NCR, “and sometimes when safe from bugs, say in a train; they would talk about this chore.” ”
*”Only the super high-minded judge him severely.”* That seems to be the right conclusion here. Trevino brings this item up to obscure or distract from the fact that the protest against Constantinople is based on an ecclesiological disagreement over the legitimacy of ecumenism. The Patriarch’s past associations have no real relevance to the restored unity of the Russian Church, as we know perfectly well. To resist or criticise the reconciliation because of such things is a mistake. For the sake of the pastoral good of a fully united Russian Church, oikonomia in such things is clearly preferable to misguided resistance over genuinely minor obstacles. The significance that one attaches to the report seems to be directly proportionate to one’s hostility to the Moscow Patriarchate as an institution. If our bishops did not regard this as any sort of impediment to reconciliation, I’m not sure why it is still an issue for anyone else.