Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church

“ The object of this Synod will be to reform the discipline of the Church, a matter which is engaging, I understand, the sincere attention of the devout Christians of Russia. Few things bear truer witness to the weakness of the Church in Russia than the low moral tone which exists, as all witnesses aver, in every grade of Russian social life. The outward observance of the fasts and feasts and ceremonies of the Church, though admirable in itself, is perfectly consistent with a great deal of scepticism with regard to the truths of Christianity. ”

“ To whom will they refer the latter to authenticate the validity of their mission, to propose objections, or to lodge complaints? If we except Russia, Turkey, the Hellenic kingdom, Roumania, Servia, and some provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the rest of the world is missionary ground for the Orthodox Church, just as much as is China for the Catholic Church. Let us suppose the Russian Church wishing only to undertake the conversion of France. Paris already possesses a Russian temple; it is now the Synod, in concert with the government, which nominates the persons attached to this temple. ”

“ The sacred treasure is then removed to a church, and the news spreads like wildfire through the district. Thousands flock to prostrate themselves before the heaven-sent picture, and some are healed of their diseases—a fact that plainly indicates its miracle-working power. The whole affair is then officially reported to the Most Holy Synod, the highest ecclesiastical authority in Russia, in order that the existence of the miracle-working power may be fully and regularly proved. ”

“ English Churchmen will be glad to hear that there is some prospect of a Synod of the Orthodox Church being held, independently of the existing Holy Synod—a council which may rank as a General Synod of the Greek Communion, if other branches of the Orthodox Church are invited to join in its deliberations, of which there is some prospect. ”

“ The synodical, or federative form, of government is the natural and logical one for churches of the Orthodox communion, as it adapts itself equally well to all political constitutions. In democratic Greece the Church has followed the example given by the Church of autocratic Russia, and its organization there, while differing in detail, is similar in principle. Whatever form among Orthodox Churches the higher, or governing power may have assumed, it has never made any pretence to be of divine origin, but, whether patriarchate or synod, has always been, and been held to be, of human institution ”

“ The Holy Synod takes precedence over all the other great bodies of the State; it replaces the patriarch, with all his rights and privileges; originally, it was more of a representative assembly, comprising the different ranks of the clergy, and bishops were in a numerical minority; now, in accordance with the practice of the early Church, which placed authority in the hands of its bishops, the episcopal element predominates. ”

“ At this time there were 110,000 white clergy, 5,700 black clergy, and 5,300 nuns; 27,000 churches, including 450 cathedrals (sobors) and about 500 chapels, 377 monasteries and 99 nunneries. The annual expenditure of the Church was about 900,000 roubles. [3] A contest now arose between the Holy Synod and the government. The Church authority was desirous of making itself independent of control by the State. In this movement the synod was led by Seraphim, archbishop of Tver, afterwards of Moscow, and later of St. Petersburg, where he became also president of the Holy Synod. ”

“ Scepticism, in modern days, may be rampant, self-asserting, and widespread, but the Church is never assailed; its children may have lost faith in its teachings, it still retains its hold upon their affection and their sympathies.
As in England, the Church in Russia is a national Church; it is also a member of a great Christian communion, which rises above kingdoms and nationalities, and claims universal homage as the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Orthodox Church. ”

“ Those we have sketched are but a few specimens of the long catalogue of sects who disavow the dogmas of the Church of St Petersburg, and denounce its Holy Synod. There are others that work in obscurity, but with perseverance, and gradually, but steadily, sap its foundations. Most of those doctrines lead to the complete disruption of all moral bonds, and the dissolution of society; and sensuality, plunder, and cruelty seem to pervade the gloomy reveries in which the Russian peasant indulges. ”

“ At the consecration of a church at Bethlehem in 1672 he announced his intention of summoning a synod; [53] it met in the same year at Jerusalem. About seventy members attended, among others, Nektarios, ex-Patriarch of Constantinople, six metropolitans and two representatives of the Russian Church; Dositheos presided. The synod, of course, in the first place insists on all the Orthodox doctrines denied by Lukaris's Confession—free will, the seven Sacraments, "adoration (προσκύνησις) " of images, &c.; Protestants are "patently heretics and leaders of heresy" (Kimmel, p. 330) . ”

“ Although the Orthodox Church is magnificent in its equipment, and its priests most richly caparisoned, yet it offers a marked contrast to the aristocratic system of the Roman Catholic Church. The Russian most devoutly takes off his hat in passing a church or holy image, but he keeps it on when passing the priest, and he kisses the priest on the cheek rather than the hand. ”

“ The chief of this monastery is a great man; one of the greatest men in the Russian Church; higher, as some folks say, than many a man who calls himself bishop, and even metropolite. Since the days of Peter the Great, the monastery of Solovetsk has been an independent spiritual power; owning {69} no master in the Church, and answering to no authority save that of the Holy Governing Synod. ”

“ No clergy of our Church have ever gone to Russia to learn what they could for themselves, or give lectures, or act as members of deputations, and come into touch with the Orthodox clergy and been disappointed with their reception ”

“ In the more important causes, as divorce (i.e. a vinculo) , it only gives a provisional decision, which is reported by the bishop, with his own opinion, for final judgment, to the Most Holy Governing Synod.
The governing synod is the final court of appeal. It consists of a small number of bishops and priests nominated by the tsar, and is assisted by a “procurator,” who is a layman, who explains to it the limits of its jurisdiction and serves as the medium of communication between it and the autocrat and secular authorities. ”

“ Composed of many men holding, with few exceptions, their positions by the will and at the pleasure of the sovereign, severally liable to the influences of different, and possibly conflicting, motives, with a representative of the emperor, source of all power, in their midst, the Synod no longer possessed the singleness of purpose and the unity of action inherent to the authority of one supreme pontiff. ”

“ The Russian government since the time of Alexander I. has sought amid many difficulties to advance the education and enlightenment of the people, and to elevate the orthodox church by securing a more highly cultured clergy, and to increase its influence upon the life of the people ”

“ A report presented by the Holy Synod to the Tsar stated that defections from the "Orthodox" faith were growing more and more numerous, and that the Socialists and others, dreaming of a new revolution, were sapping the foundations of the Church. The seceders were mostly Baptists, Stundists, Old Believers, Flagellators, and Atheists.
The cordiality of the reception on June 24 of the officers of the British First Battle Cruiser Squadron at Tsarskoe Selo was somewhat marred by the unfavourable impression produced at St. ”

“ The radical distinction between the two is marriage; the monks take vows of celibacy, but the popes must marry before they can have charge of a parish. In the Russian, as generally in Orthodox Churches, the episcopate and all offices of authority are reserved for the unmarried clergy, who are comparatively few in number, while the subordinate and more laborious positions only fall to the lot of the married clergy. ”

“ On the other hand the growth of Russian power throughout the nineteenth century, combined with the immense influx of Russian pilgrims to the Holy Places, gave the Orthodox Church a prestige that it had never before possessed. The interest of Protestant nations has also steadily increased. ”

“ The canonisation of a saint, for instance, is not a matter of mere administration. When a subject is proposed for that distinction—and the Russian Hagiology is more scandalously filled than the Roman in the worst times of the Papacy—it is the Synod, that is, the Emperor, who decides on the claims to worship of the unknown candidate, whose remains may have been previously sanctified by the gross superstition of a barbarous peasantry. ”

“ One of the greatest things the clergy has done for the Russian people is the creation of a wonderful church music. The singing and intoning is all by male voices and in some of the churches, as for example, St. Isaacs at Petersburg, or the Synodal Church at Moscow, surpasses in dignity and grandeur any church music in the world. ”

“ Christianity lacked the full amount of power necessary to accomplish a perfect work in Russia, because the source whence it was derived could not give it. The Russian Church has never had its golden age. There are many reasons why it seems fitting and probable that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit should be imparted to it at this late day in much greater fulness than they were in the beginning, making it flourish suddenly and beautifully, like its own artificial gardens, out of the long, bleak winter. ”

“ Converts are admitted into the pale of the former from other communities, when they have been already baptized, without the obligation of again receiving the sacrament; while the Church of Constantinople makes the repetition of the sacrament indispensable in similar cases. The difference of church government is of the greatest importance: the Greeks have never admitted that the Holy Synod of St Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, represents in any sense the spiritual authority which he forcibly overthrew. ”

“ Their religion appears to be a Protestantism of a very decided type, and in the few church ceremonies which they retain, such as a second baptism for adults, they resemble the Anabaptists and Mennonites of Germany. They reject external observances, fasts, images, the invocation of the saints, and all the rites of Orthodox worship as simply useless and unnecessary; they seem to be animated more by a spirit of calculation and of economy, of indifference to outward form, rather than by religious scruples or any deep-seated repugnance to church ceremonies ”

“ To-day more pilgrims come to Jerusalem from the land of the Czar than from any other nation. Literally by shiploads, in caravans of hundreds, they come to worship at the holy places. There are many large and spacious establishments where the pilgrims are sheltered, and their management and operations require the oversight of a capable man. The Holy Synod therefore maintains an Archimandrite, who, without interfering in the least with the Patriarch, looks after the detail of things Russian, and a capable man is His Excellency Monseigneur Leonidouff. ”

“ Lastly, Emperors have summoned and declared as œcumenical such heretical synods as the Iconoclast one ordered by Constantine V in 753 at Hieria. The theory that would find most favour with other Christians would doubtless be that it is the general acceptance of the Church that makes a council œcumenical. But the Church, that is, the great body of the faithful, and their bishops, want to know first whether a synod is œcumenical before they can tell whether it is their duty to accept it. ”

“ He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he [pg 412] possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.
The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar's chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. ”

“ As a result of the frequent application of this principle the Orthodox Church has shared the fate that never fails to overtake schism and heresy. In consequence of political and ecclesiastical jealousies and antagonism; of excommunications and counter-excommunications by rival bishops; of divisions and subdivisions, the once great and powerful Orthodox Communion now finds itself divided into sixteen independent Churches whose jurisdiction ranges in extent from that of the Independent Church of the monastery of Mount Sinai to that of the once great Empire of Russia. ”

“ Protestants and rationalists are, then, common adversaries of the Russian and also of the Catholic Church. Common adversaries also, on doctrinal grounds, are all those who cannot be exactly classed with either Protestants or rationalists, but against whom the Russian Church will no less have to defend herself—Jews, Mahometans, and, lastly, the Raskolniks also, unless, indeed, a portion of the latter should not prefer to ally themselves to the Catholic Church rather than to the Synod, if only they can be persuaded that in becoming Catholics they do not by any means cease to be Russians. ”