Bohdan: DESS examination will lead to an absurd situation

In an interview with Viche, the ex-head of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Olena Bohdan, said that the conclusions of the DESS examination on the discovery of church-canonical relations between the UOC and the ROC are unsubstantiated and full of assumptions.

Olena Bohdan criticized the composition of the specialists invited by the State Service for Ethnopolitics, as at least four of them have a conflict of interest.

The former head of the DESS said that the examination proceeds from the fact that the decisions of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church are binding on the UOC in accordance with the letter of Alexy II. Although, in her opinion, this issue is polemical, since the letter says that the Russian Orthodox Church hopes that this will be the case.

“Further on, given the aforesaid, the experts take the papers of the ROC and conclude on their basis that all this is now in the UOC. However, a simple question arises: what are the decisions that the UOC is now making not in Kyiv, but in Moscow? No one can name such a decision. In response, we can hear only speculation about ROC’s secret coordination. These assumptions should be dealt with by the SBU, if it seems that there may be some kind of secret coordination of Ukraine on the RF’s part. If it is true, then we must specifically find out what is being coordinated and how it has harmed Ukraine. Instead, the state says, ‘Stop being coordinated secretly,’ to which the religious organization replies, ‘We are not coordinated.’ All this eventually appears as some kind of absurdity,” she said.

According to Olena Bohdan, another part of the examination suggests that the UOC did not proclaim autocephaly. But the UOC never spoke about this, since this immediately entails the problem of its recognition by other Local Churches.

“I don’t understand why there is a political course in the state now to force the UOC to proclaim autocephaly,” concluded Bohdan.

As the UOJ reported, Olena Bohdan noted that the situation when the state dictates to religious associations with whom to have or not to have a canonical relationship is futile.