From Diocese of Sourozh
Metropolitan Anthony as Shepherd - The Statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh
Talk given by Bishop Basil of Sergievo at a conference to celebrate the life and legacy of Metropolitan Anthony, Paris, November 2005.
Your Eminence, reverend Fathers, brothers and sisters, it is both a pleasure and an honour to have been invited to speak to you this afternoon about the pastoral work of Metropolitan Anthony in the context of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Podvorie of the Three Holy Doctors here in Paris. This event took place at almost the same time that Metropolitan Anthony experienced the presence of Christ in his life in way that marked him forever, and led ultimately to his being one of the most outstanding figures of the Russian diaspora of the 20th century and the founder and first bishop of the Diocese of Sourozh.
I have been asked to speak on 'The Spirit of the Pastoral Work of Metropolitan Anthony'. This is a fascinating subject, and one that could be developed in several different directions. This afternoon, however, I shall be concentrating on only one aspect, the one that I consider will have the most lasting effect in the Diocese of Sourozh - and perhaps in the wider context of Orthodoxy in Western Europe.
Pastoral work is the work of a pastor, a shepherd. Each bishop is a shepherd of his flock, the diocese that has been entrusted to him. One mark of the respect that Metropolitan Anthony enjoyed within the Patriarchate of Moscow is the fact that the Holy Synod was willing to create a diocese for him in Great Britain in 1962, within the framework of the West European Exarchate, when there were only a handful of clergy there and a relatively small flock. In 1963, with the retirement of Metropolitan Nikolai (Eremin), Metropolitan Anthony was put in charge of the Exarchate, a position he held until 1974, when he resigned after the expulsion of Solzhenitsin from the Soviet Union. The official reason given for his resignation was his desire to devote himself entirely to his flock in Great Britain. It is probably no coincidence that in the following year Metropolitan Anthony convened the first annual Diocesan Conference, held at Effingham in Surrey in May 1975, with the specific intention of forming a body of laity who were conscious of the true nature of the Church and were willing to work for her well being together with the clergy.
On the basis of the first two very successful conferences Metropolitan Anthony appointed a Diocesan Assembly, which met for the first time in February 1977. It was composed of all the clergy of the Diocese, representatives from each of the local communities, and certain other specially chosen individuals. At Metropolitan Anthony's suggestion, the Assembly appointed a Statutes Committee, consisting of myself, then an Archpriest, Costa Carras and Dr Andrew Walker. Our brief was to prepare statutes for the Diocese that would reflect Metropolitan Anthony's constantly repeated position that the provisions drawn up by the Moscow Sobor of 1917-1918, though inapplicable for obvious reasons in what was then the Soviet Union, were the basis on which the life of the Russian Church in the diaspora should be organised.
The Statutes Committee went to work and drew up draft provisions that were then, section by section, submitted to the Assembly for scrutiny and ultimately for approval. The basis of this work was the Sobor of 1917-18, but we were helped by the fact that the so-called 'Metropolia' in the United States had carried out a similar task at an earlier stage. The Statute of the 'Metropolia' was adopted in 1955 at the Ninth All-American Sobor and modified subsequently in the Sobors of 1959, 1963 and 1967. It is important to note that the internal governance of the 'Metropolia' was in effect approved by the Patriarchate of Moscow when, in 1970, it granted autocephaly to what had until then been officially called 'The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America', thereby turning it into 'The Orthodox Church in America', the 'OCA'. After the grant of autocephaly further necessary changes were introduced into the Statute of the new Church, which were ratified at the All-America Council of October 1971 and continue to be used, with additional modifications, until this day.
The political background for the work of the Statutes Committee was the 'period of stagnation', the 'Brezhnev years', when the Soviet Union was enjoying very bad press in Britain and elsewhere, and the persecution and arrest of dissidents was probably the most frequently reported aspect of Russian life in the British media. The stance taken by Metropolitan Anthony during these years was that his Diocese was in some sense the voice of the 'free' Russian Church, the Russian Church as it would be if it were not being suppressed by the Soviet regime.
Basic principles
From the very beginning the work of the Statutes Committee was based on the 'eucharistic ecclesiology' developed by Father Nikolai Afanasiev at St Serge in Paris and carried forward by such notable figures as Father Alexander Schmemann, Father John Meyendorff and Professor John Zizioulas (now Metropolitan John of Pergamon). This meant in practice that the Committee sought to bear in mind at all times the liturgical structuring of the Divine Liturgy when this is celebrated fully by a bishop surrounded by his people.
In this model, according to current practice, the bishop enters the church, is vested in the midst of the people, and is then joined by the rest of the celebrating clergy. The local Church, the diocese, is formed before our eyes: the bishop in the centre, surrounded by his flock in a structured and ordered form, each member with a task to fulfil and each member making his or her contribution to the fullness and completeness of the whole.
At the time of the Little Entrance the bishop then proceeds into the sanctuary, following the Gospel borne by the deacon, and there he is joined by the rest of the clergy. The Epistle and Gospel are read, and the bishop preaches the Word of God as teacher of the flock. Then, after the dismissal of the catechumens, the clergy bring to the bishop the bloodless offering of bread and wine. He receives them and proceeds to their consecration, after which the Holy Doors are opened and he and the deacon come out to distribute the Holy Things to the people. When communion has been received, the people are dismissed with the words, 'Let us depart in peace', and in the hearts of the people the peace of God, the peace of Christ, is borne out into the world.
In the Statutes developed in the Diocese of Sourozh the roles of the bishop, presbyters, deacons and laity are ultimately derived from the part they play in the Divine Liturgy, where the bishop is surrounded by a college of presbyters or 'priests', assisted by deacons, subdeacons and readers, and confirmed in his role by the 'Amen' of the faithful. Thus in the diocese the bishop is the heart of all that is done. 'It is his task to ensure the unity of the community around himself as an image of Christ. Nothing should be done without his knowledge and his blessing. It is the task of the presbytery . to advise and assist the bishop in his task, maintaining unity among themselves and thereby fostering unity among the faithful. Finally, it is the particular task and vocation of the faithful, in their oneness with the bishop and the presbytery, to contribute to the building up of the Local Church, the Diocese, . and to bear the message of Christ throughout society in all that they say and do' ( Diocesan Statutes , Introduction, pp. viiif.). The Church as a whole is a priestly body, the Body of Christ, in which each has his or her role to play.
Local conditions
In Britain, as elsewhere, the concrete realisation of the Church is conditioned by the local situation, by local culture, and in particular by local legal constrictions. In Britain one of the most important factors has been the nature of English trust law. This provides for the establishment of legal entities whose purpose and manner of working are determined by Trust Deeds whose provisions are enforceable by the State, while any derogation from the terms of the Trust is subject to serious penalties.
English trust law has been developing steadily over the past five hundred years or so, and has recently been the subject of considerable expansion and codification. The British government gives certain significant tax privileges to what are called 'charitable trusts', but only on condition that the activities of a charitable trust are a matter of public record. At present the accounts of any charitable trust are available to the public, as are the names of the trustees who are responsible for fulfilling its provisions. Each year the trustees must prepare a written report on the trust's activities, and this is also available to the public. The effect of this is that every penny spent in carrying out the activities of the trust must be accounted for under conditions of complete transparency. Any member of the public is entitled to approach the Charity Commission if he or she thinks that things are not being done properly. This fact of contemporary British life has had considerable influence on the development of the Statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh.
General characteristics of the episcopal office
In the Statutes the role of bishop is set out under three headings: the bishop as president of the eucharistic assembly, the bishop as teacher, and the bishop as pastor. The heading I wish to treat today is the third: the role of the bishop as pastor, as this was defined under the guidance of Metropolitan Anthony.
This role can be considered from a number of different points of view. In the Statutes as they stand one of these is the fact that the bishop exercises the power 'to bind and to loose', whether this be personally or through the presbyterate. This could easily be thought of as linked more closely to his role as president of the eucharistic assembly than to his role as pastor, since it concerns primarily the ability to grant permission to partake of communion and thus to refuse communion. I myself would prefer this understanding, but it was not the one chosen at the time.
He is also required to prepare and ordain candidates to the priesthood. The Statutes indicate that this should be done, where possible, when someone has been proposed by the local community. In any case it should be done after consultation with the presbytery and the local community. Note that only consultation is required, and that the hands of the bishop are not tied. In the case of deacons, sub-deacons and readers, consultation with the local community is all that is required, the implication being that the presbytery is a collegial body, and that new members should not simply be forced upon it without previous consultation. The transfer of clergy also should take place only after consultation.
Experience thus far has shown the value of these procedures. At the current stage in the development of the diaspora, it is extremely important that the local community feel itself responsible for encouraging suitable candidates to make themselves available for service to the Church. The Mother Church cannot provide them, though it can help to train them.
The bishop also acts as judge in the Diocese, an onerous task that corresponds in some ways to that of Christ on the Last Day. To assist the bishop the Statutes initially provided for a Panel of Mediators and a Tribunal, but after a period of some ten years during which these bodies were not used, it was decided to amend the Statutes and simplify them, providing only for a Diocesan Court whose members, two clergy and two lay, are chosen by the Assembly from among its members and approved by the bishop.
This body too has never been convoked, and it is not clear that the diocese at present has sufficient competent clergy and lay members to carry out court procedures properly. For this reason it would seem best now to adopt the pattern recently established by the Russian Church and to use the Diocesan Council as the body that would consider disciplinary cases and submit its opinion to the bishop. In any case, the bishop remains the ultimate authority, and he must approve and confirm the Court's decisions. Provision is made for appeal when necessary to the Holy Synod as the next higher instance. Interestingly enough, an appeal procedure is now also required by British employment law.
Further straightforward aspects of the bishop's pastoral activity are the establishment of parishes (after consultation with the Presbytery), and the supervision of monastic life. And of course he is expected to visit regularly the local communities.
The bishop as chairman of the Presbytery
The relationship of the bishop to his presbyters is perhaps the most important aspect of the diocesan structure as developed under Metropolitan Anthony. The term 'presbyter', from which we get the English word 'priest' and the French word pretre , originally meant simply 'elder'. Not an elder in the sense of age, but elder in the sense of someone who has lived, who has acquired the wisdom that comes with experience, someone who has outgrown the foibles and inconstancy of youth. This is the ecclesial wisdom that lies behind the Orthodox requirement that a priest or 'elder' normally be a married man, in other words, that he have already taken upon himself responsibility for others - for wife, for children, for ageing parents - before he takes on responsibility for his wider family, the Church.
As a result, the Presbytery is a body that by its very nature is well placed to advise the bishop, to share with him responsibility for the pastoral guidance of the Diocese. When Metropolitan Anthony first began to meet with his presbyters, there were five of us. For me personally it was an extremely profitable experience. To begin with, of course, all the other priests were my seniors, and I absorbed what I could from what they said, the stories they told, the comments they made on the life of their parishes - and simply from the way they behaved. What was most striking about our meetings was the way in which Metropolitan Anthony was able to listen. He made no effort to dominate the Presbytery. But what he said always had great weight. In fact, what any one of us said had weight, but it was a weight that was given it by the person who uttered it. And after discussion it was generally clear to everyone what the answer was, and what direction we should take.
As the size of the Presbytery grew over the years the need began to be felt for a smaller group of people around the bishop who could meet more easily and provide the same sort of support in parvo . As a result a section was introduced into the Statutes providing for a Bishop's Advisory Council, whose clergy and lay members were to be appointed by the bishop from the members of the Assembly with the intention that they should help him particularly with outlying communities.
In the end this proved unfeasible, largely because of Metropolitan Anthony's inbuilt resistance to meetings of any kind. Since the parishes and communities of the Diocese were organised into deaneries a year and a half ago, however, it has proven possible to provide this function by holding meetings of the five deans, together with the Dean of Presbyters, on a regular basis. This has now been shown to be an effective way of providing a smaller group of advisors capable of assisting the bishop in specifically pastoral matters.
The bishop as president of the Diocesan Assembly and Diocesan Council
The primary means provided by the Statutes for the creation of a group of clergy and laity able to transcend the purely parochial level of Church life was always the Diocesan Assembly. From the beginning its members were provided in a variety of ways. All bishops and presbyters were automatically members, while deacons were entitled to attend, but without a vote unless specifically elected in their own right. Then there was a single member elected from and by each parish, and a member appointed by the bishop for each Local Congregation with a right to be present and speak but not to vote. Finally, from the Diocese as a whole twenty-eight additional members are chosen in an election held throughout the Diocese. Seven members are chosen each year for a four-year term. At present there are some forty full members of the Assembly, plus about twenty members with the right to speak but not to vote.
The Assembly elects from among its members the Diocesan Council, which should have between ten and sixteen members, of whom six must be lay persons (among them the Diocesan Secretary and Diocesan Treasurer). The task of this smaller body is to prepare the agenda of the Assembly, to draw up the annual budget, to appoint committees at the request of the Assembly, and to implement the Assembly's decisions.
The person who will serve as Chairman of both the Council and the Assembly is proposed by the bishop and approved by the Assembly. The purpose of this is to free the bishop, as President, from the task of conducting the business of these bodies, and at the same time to ensure that the person carrying out this task has his complete confidence.
In any case, all decisions of both Council and Assembly must be approved by the bishop before they are put into effect. In this way the bishop remains in ultimate control of the activities of the Diocese. Without his blessing, no programme can be carried out. It is a negative control, however, and one that invites and requires of the bishop positive leadership if anything is to be done.
In outlining the relationship between the bishop and the Assembly the drafting committee had in mind the 34th Apostolic Canon, very dear to Metropolitan Anthony, which describes the relationship between a metropolitan and the other bishops of his 'metropolia'. The text reads: 'It behoves the bishops of every nation to know the one among them who is the chief, to recognise him as their head, and to refrain from doing anything with effect outside their dioceses without his advice and approval. Instead, let each of them do only what is necessitated by his own diocese and by the territories belonging to it. But let not even the first [among them] do anything without the advice and consent and approval of all; for thus will there be concord, and God [the Father] will be glorified through the Lord in the Holy Spirit, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.'
It is worth noting that in normal secular conditions the 34th Apostolic Canon would be a recipe for paralysis in those areas of Church life in which the Assembly is involved. In the Church, however, as the Body of Christ made up of individual members related to one another personally and united in a bond of love, it provides a context in which true pastoral leadership can be exercised - and is needed. The Eastern shepherd does not drive his flock, but leads it from the front, going before and inviting the flock to follow. During the almost thirty years during which the Council and Assembly functioned on these principles, there was never an occasion on which Metropolitan Anthony had to countermand even one of their decisions.
Various other aspects
One of the most onerous tasks of the Diocesan Secretary is the preparation of the Diocesan Electoral Roll and the conduct of Diocesan Elections. The roll is drawn up on the basis of lists sent in by the Secretaries of the different parishes and local congregations. It is also the responsibility of the local Secretaries to see that in their communities the elections are properly carried out.
In the 70s and 80s it was envisaged that the choice of a candidate to be proposed to the Holy Synod for consecration as diocesan bishop would be made by the Diocese as a whole, but with the passage of time and the growth in number of parishes and local congregations, it was accepted that this was impracticable, and in the latest version of the Statutes the Assembly itself proposes a candidate for the Synod's approval.
The Statutes also provide for the appointment of an Audit Committee. This has now fallen into abeyance, since new government legislation requires that the accounts of charities of our size be audited professionally. My own feeling is, however, that the Audit Committee could be brought back to life with the broader task of considering in general the administration of the Diocese's activities and making suggestions for its improvement.
The presentation of the Statutes to the Patriarch
After the collapse of communism in 1991 and the resultant opening up of Church life in the countries of the Former Soviet Union, Metropolitan Anthony suggested that the Diocesan Statutes be presented to the Patriarch and Synod as our contribution to the process of revision of the Statute of the Russian Church that was taking place in the run-up to the Council of 2000.
In June 1998 the Diocesan Statutes were produced for the first time in printed form. A Russian translation was also prepared, and both texts were taken to Moscow by myself and Irina Kirillova, the chairman of the Assembly, in September of that year. In our audience with the Patriarch we asked if the Statutes could be approved by the Synod. The Patriarch smiled and said: 'Well, you're living by them, aren't you?' From this we understood that they would not be officially approved, but that that their use was tacitly accepted. In the end, the Statute of the Russian Church adopted in 2000 was drawn up with the conditions of Church life in the Russian Federation very much in mind, and almost no attention was paid to the experience of the Russian Church in the diaspora. This was probably both necessary and inevitable.
The current situation
The situation changed dramatically, however, two years ago. On 1 April 2003 Patriarch Alexis published an open letter to the hierarchs and parishes of the three branches of the Russian diaspora in Western Europe inviting them to overcome their differences and join together to form a single self-governing metropolia in Western Europe under the Patriarchate of Moscow. Not only would this, he said, help to consolidate the excessive number of different jurisdictions present in Western Europe, but it could serve as a model for similar moves on the part of other jurisdictions in the area, thereby facilitating the eventual creation of multi-national Local Church in Western Europe.
The Patriarch pointed out that the various different Russian jurisdictions in the West had, over the course of some seventy years, developed their own ways of administering their flocks, and accepted that there would be many who would like to preserve these practices, when it came to determining the internal structures and procedures of the proposed metropolia. He noted that these practices even included the election by the dioceses of their bishop.
The Patriarch specifically asked Metropolitan Anthony to act as the head of the new metropolia on an interim basis until such time as provisions for the election of a successor could be put in place. The appointment of Metropolitan Anthony was justified by the great respect in which he was held by all, but behind this respect there must also have been the knowledge that he had been successful in guiding the Diocese of Sourozh along a path that had enabled it to find its natural place in Britain while remaining faithful to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
When Metropolitan Anthony received the Patriarch's letter, his response was quite simply: 'Well, at last they've listened to what I've been saying all along.' He was already seriously ill with cancer, however, and died just four months later. There was never any real chance that he could carry out the task that the Patriarch had entrusted to him. It might have seemed, therefore, that nothing would come of the Patriarch's suggestion.
In May of this year, however, Archbishop Innokentii of Korsun returned to the idea of a metropolia for Western Europe in an important paper entitled 'The Unification of the Russian Diaspora: A Step towards the Creation of a Local Church.' In it he went back over the Patriarch's letter of April 2003 and spelled out in some detail its implications, placing its proposals in the context of world Orthodoxy and the consistent position of the Russian Church as regards the future of the worldwide diaspora. Bringing his presentation to a close, Archbishop Innokentii called upon the different jurisdictions of the Russian Diaspora in Western Europe to work together on a detailed framework within which unity might be achieved.
During the past two months I have had a chance to go over this paper in detail, first with the heads of the various deaneries of the Diocese, then in a meeting of all the clergy, and most recently with the Diocesan Council. The general thrust of Archbishop Innokentii's presentation has been very well received indeed, though there are no illusions about the complexity of the task he has set before us and the barriers that exist to its successful completion. But the proposal to create a metropolia is seen as a natural outgrowth of all the work the Metropolitan Anthony put into bringing the Diocese of Sourozh into existence and providing it with the structures by which it now lives. It was particularly encouraging to find in Archbishop Innokentii's paper a specific reference to the Statutes of the Diocese and the acknowledgement that the Diocese 'is in practice governed by an internal statute that has been significantly altered [by comparison with that of the Patriarchate], being in some respects close to the Statute of the Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and linked to the Moscow Sobor of 1917-1918.'
Conclusions
The conclusion I draw from all of this is that Metropolitan Anthony was far ahead of his time in his understanding of where the Orthodox of Western Europe should be going and what they should be doing in order to get there. In his letter to Patriarch Alexis of 22 June 1998, in which he commended the Statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh to the consideration of the Patriarch and Holy Synod, he declared, speaking of the process by which the Statutes came in being: 'These Statutes began, in our eyes, to be a theology of the oneness of the Church, manifested anew in - an indeed potentially, by - the Diaspora, which then ceases to be nothing more that the presence in 'non-Orthodox' countries of the representatives of the Mother Churches, but THE CHURCH, alive, both in the process of becoming and already one in God.'
What seems to me very significant here - and it is echoed in the letter of the Patriarch and in Archbishop Innokentii's talk - is the expression 'Mother Churches', in the plural. The point he was making - and the point that was made by both the Patriarch and Archbishop Innokentii - is that all the ethnic diasporas are called to follow the same path as followed by the Diocese of Sourozh. In other words, they are called to convert political and economic emigration into what it really is in the eyes of God: an opportunity, an invitation, a vocation - to incarnate the Orthodox Church in Western Europe and throughout the world in the forms called for by the Holy Canons, accepting that this means embracing wholeheartedly the process of acculturation in new lands and new cultures in the knowledge that Orthodoxy is now not an 'Eastern' phenomenon, but a far-flung presence as a leaven in the world.
