Total subordination to Phanar: Mass media report details of “SLC” statute
According to media reports, the head of the new Church will be metropolitan, not patriarch, while SLC "bishops" will have to ask for Phanar’s permission on all issues.
From the content of the main points of the SLC statute, it follows that the new structure will be a metropolitanate that is completely subordinated to Constantinople, reports Vesti.
By all accounts, the main nine points of the document, which the Patriarchate of Constantinople prescribed for the new church structure, contain the following provisions.
1. The Ukrainian Church is “inextricably linked” with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the first line, and through it with all other Churches.
2. A particular emphasis is placed on the fact that the autocephaly is bestowed by the Throne of Constantinople. And it has the sole right to decide the future destiny of Ukrainian autocephaly.
3. The head of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine can only be the metropolitan, not the patriarch.
4. The Church’s Bishops’ Council is prescribed to request instructions from the Ecumenical Patriarch on all global issues, and the latter, in response to the appeal, will inform the Council on what is “necessary”. There is also a reservation in the paragraph that Constantinople should not explain its decisions.
5. The Phanar also takes on the issue of approving the statutes of ecclesiastic units. This item empowers the Phanar to get under their control Lavras and monasteries, turning them into stavropegia, i.e. having a direct supervision over them.
6. The new Ukrainian Church will receive myrrh only from Constantinople.
7. The Church will not be able to independently canonize its saints, but will submit them to Constantinople for approval.
8. In the event of problems with the election of the Metropolitan of Kiev, which “may affect the unity of the Church,” the Patriarch of Constantinople will be informed about this, and he must “take steps to resolve the situation".
9. The Patriarchate of Constantinople becomes the highest appellate structure. The statute foresees that a bishop, who was banned in the ministry, or deprived of the arch-see, or facing other sanctions, has the right to appeal to Phanar.
As the UOJ reported, the Holy Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate, which ended on November 29, did not grant any Tomos to the Church in Ukraine and did not publish its text, having confined itself to the creation of its statute.
Protopriest Nikolai Danilevich, deputy head of the UOC DECR, explained: he considers it strange to draw up a statute for the Church which does not exist. “This indicates a certain dependence or lack of independence in this process of the Ukrainian side. Because all the Churches that previously received autocephaly, wrote their statutes on their own. And now they write it for Ukraine and say what it should be like,” explained the priest.
