Metropolitan Clement: Drabinko personally proved that OCU cannot be Church
The UOC hierarch reminded on the air of UA:Pershyi about Drabinko's thesis, where he defended the impossibility of such organizations as OCU to become Churches.
The chairman of the Synodal Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Clement (Vecheria) of Nizhyn and Pryluky, reminded "hierarch" of the OCU Alexander (Drabinko), who was present during the UA:Pershyi live broadcast, that the latter had defended his scientific thesis on self-consecration, which proves the impossibility for the UOC-KP and UAOC to create a canonical Church.
"We can learn from the dissertation of ‘bishop’ Alexander, where he very carefully and professionally explained that the Kyiv Patriarchate, the UAOC, and all others who founded the OCU are completely uncanonical and cannot be called the Church in the full sense of the word," he said. The UOC hierarch said that because those religious groups that are now part of the OCU, were not churches at all, then, according to the conclusions of Mr. Alexander's PhD thesis, they are "self-ordained".
Metropolitan Clement added that the UOC is the Ukrainian Church and has all the rights that define it as self-governing. Therefore, rant about the need to rename it is unfounded. Besides, associations or transitions to such OCU-type religious groups are impossible due to the non-canonicity of the latter.
As the UOJ reported, Drabinko offended the Bukovynians referring to them as "non-Ukrainian", according to the secretary of the Chernivtsi Diocese.
