OCA priest: Hopefully, AFU's spokesperson will repent of his slander

His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy and His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon. Photo by UOC

Priest of the Orthodox Church in America Nikolai Breckenridge from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to Andriy Kovalev, the former spokesman of the UOC KP, currently the spokesperson of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who called Metropolitan Tikhon of All America and Canada "a Kremlin agent in a cassock" after his visit to Ukraine and urged the Security Service of Ukraine to investigate the details of his trip.

We publish the full text of his letter.

Christ is risen! Христос Воскрес!

I’m thankful for this opportunity to write a response to Mr. Andriy Kovalov. As a Priest of the Orthodox Church in America since 2012, I have been following the visit of our Primate, His Beatitude, Tikhon of all America and Canada, on his trip to Ukraine with much excitement. Ukraine is a special place for me, as my Matushka, Liudmyla, is a native Ukrainian from a small village in Transcarpathia.

For more than a decade, I have been following the goings on in Ukraine both in terms of political change, and the goings on in the Church. The positive changes that happened in the wake of the Euromaidan and the movement closer to the EU, and further away from the sphere of influence of the Russian Federation are things that I was and am still happy to see. Seeing how strongly Ukrainians fight for freedom against the Russian aggression is inspiring to us in America, and my wife and I have personally sent financial support to the defenders of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Our Synod of Bishops and clergy stand resolutely against the Russian Federation’s war of aggression. Our Synod has been clear on this from the very beginning. His Beatitude, Tikhon issued a statement immediately at the start of Russia’s escalation of aggression on February 24, 2022, and our Holy Synod issued a statement condemning Russia’s aggression on March 26, 2022, and has continued to condemn the war since then.

Which is why it was incredibly upsetting that a spokesman for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine would make statements that distorts the reality, both of who the OCA is, and the motives of our Primate. So I would like to correct the record, so that the truth is made clear.

Mr. Kovalov is accurate in the origins of the OCA being originally in missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1794, and subsequently a fully fledged diocese in North America in the late 1800s. However, his understanding of what happened after that is distorted. I can only hope that he is not intentionally misinforming, but that he is simply not educated in the history.

He makes the contention that “In 1924, these communities were formed into the Russian Orthodox Church in America, which was part of the Moscow Patriarchate..” But in fact, after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, communication with the Russian Church was severely hindered, and Saint Patriarch Tikhon (who had formerly been the Bishop of the North American Diocese) sent an Ukaz telling the Churches in the Diaspora to govern themselves, until there could be a continuing of normal relations. For about the next 40 year, what later became the OCA existed as an independent Orthodox Church in North America and Canada, with the name of “The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America”.

Over that time, what had formerly been an ethnic Church made up of former subjects of the Russian Empire started to become one that followed the makeup of the country. Other Orthodox people from other Orthodox backgrounds came to call our parishes their spiritual homes, though even at that time, there was an overall abnormal Ecclesiastical situation in the US, with many of the worlds Orthodox Churches having parishes here.

Around the 1960s our parishes mostly stopped being distinctly “Russian” and became more American as the former immigrants had children who became assimilated. The Churches started serving in the
English language, and the clergy mostly became American born, educated in American Orthodox Seminaries. During this time, there were several remarkable figures in our Church (two especially among them being Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Fr. John Meyendorff) who saw that the future of Orthodoxy in America was not in preserving the “Russian” past, but in reaching out to the Americans around us in need of the Gospel of Christ, and bringing Orthodoxy to them.

During this time, our Church was somewhat uncomfortable with our status of independence, and knew it could not maintain this status forever, so we initially approached the Patriarch of Constantinople at that time, Athenogoras I, about regularizing our status. His response was that since we were originally a diocese of the Russian Church, it was appropriate for us to return to them. So in the late 1960s, we reestablished communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, but this was ultimately not what our leadership most desired. We no longer saw ourselves as being a “Russian” Church, but an American Church. So through presenting our position of wanting to build an American Church that could be the home of all sorts of Orthodox in America, and especially in the hopes of evangelizing and converting Americans, the Russian Church agreed to give us a Tomos of Autocephaly in 1970.

Within a year, the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America held the first All-American Council and officially changed our name to the “Orthodox Church in America”. This Autocephaly is officially recognized by the Russian Church, but also by the Georgian, Polish, and Czech/Slovak Church. Informally, our relations with the Churches of Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia are more on the terms of sister Churches, even if the Autocephaly is not officially recognized. And importantly, the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Greece and Albania all have communion with the OCA. Our Primate has concelebrated with their Primates directly, including Patriarch Bartholomew, at his invitation. Mr. Kovalev claims that Ecumenical Orthodoxy considers the OCA to simply be the Russian Church in the United States, but in practical terms, our communications with these sister Churches are not connected to Russia at all. If his All-Holiness considers us to be part of the Russian Church on paper, he still treats us as independent in regular communications.

In the 50+ years since the Tomos was issued, the OCA has become more and more a Church of Americans of all walks of life. As an example, my rather small parish of 100 members is made up of Ukrainians, Russians, Georgians, Romanians, and Americans of Italian, English, French, and Polish backgrounds. Many of them were not born into Orthodox families but became Orthodox as adults. I myself only became Orthodox at 18, along with my parents and two sisters. More than half of the clergy in the OCA (including Met. Tikhon, and most of the Bishops of our Synod) are also converts to the Orthodox faith. Our Church is distinctly American, and the Orthodox faith comes above any ethnic or national consideration. Our Church is not “the Russian Church in America”.

It's understandable that Mr. Kovalov has a very cynical view of Met. Tikhon’s visit to Ukraine. He already has a conclusion in his mind, so he makes connections where none exist so that he can support his conclusion. He has seen the horror of Russian aggression up close, I don’t blame him for seeing it at times when he should not. I pray God will soften his heart and open his eyes. Hopefully he will repent of his slander that Met. Tikhon is an “agent of the Kremlin in a Riassa”.

As for why Met. Tikhon made this visit, I can’t say for sure, but I do know that we see His Beatitude, Onufriy of Kyiv and All Ukraine as an old friend. He was the guest of honor at the OCA’s 18th All- American Council, in Atlanta, Georgia, during July of 2015, but we have had a relationship with him since his time as Bishop of Chernivtsi and Bukovina. I can even offer a personal anecdote of my first encounter with His Beatitude that I think reveals what a man your Primate is. The OCA’s main monastery, of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk has a formal pilgrimage every year on the American holiday of “Memorial day”, where we remember our military members who have died. In 2005, the then Metropolitan Onufriy of Chernivtsi was a guest at this pilgrimage. I was with a small group, and several hours after the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy had ended, we saw Met. Onufriy walking toward us, as a normal pilgrim. None of us really knew who he was, but he was walking in the direction of the Bishop’s house, about a kilometer down the road, all by himself. We saw his Panagia, so we knew he was a Bishop, and so we offered a ride in our car, as it seemed wrong to make the Bishop walk. His response was that it was “good to walk for his sins”. Such was his humility.

We know that your Primate is the real deal. He is a man who is concerned with the Kingdom of God above all else. We know that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a sister Church who seeks the same Kingdom we do. Right now I, and many others in America are weeping and praying for you, as we weep and pray for all who struggle against ungodliness. We pray that your fight against the ungodly Russian aggression will end soon with Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity preserved! We pray that the defenders who have died will find rest in the Kingdom of God, and that those suffering and displaced
will find comfort in our Lord, Jesus Christ. And we pray that the Ukrainian government will stop the attacks against your God-preserved Church, and honor the values of freedom, democracy, and religious liberty that Free Ukraine stands for!

In the risen Christ,
Priest Nikolai Breckenridge Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

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