Orthodox Schism, Orthodox War
I have written a great deal on this blog before over the Orthodox Schism between Moscow and Constantinople, which was for several years one of the biggest Christian news stories in the world and one of the least reported on or discussed. In the last year, however, this story has mutated in ways that would have been impossible to predict, entirely because of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
(If you have no idea what I'm talking about in regards to an "Orthodox Schism," I suggest you go and read this helpful explainer I wrote at the time of the initial break).
Put simply, the war has transformed the schism and now looks to extend it so far that global Orthodoxy is now perhaps on the verge of dissolution.
As I chronicled here, the early years of the Schism--once the OCU had been formed and Moscow had broken all communion and ties with Constantinople--featured increasingly extreme and increasingly ineffective efforts by Moscow to gain the allegiance and support of other autocephalous churches in the presumed hope of some form of sanction or excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople. After the general failure of these efforts and increasing successes by Constantinople in getting autocephalous churches to recognize and enter into communion with the OCU, Moscow shifted tactics decisively towards aggression and attempts to divide the other churches from within.
Even in the first phase, Churches that entered into communion with the OCU saw the ROC break off all ties with them--increasingly, though, Moscow began to aim at internal division of these Churches, selectively breaking communion with some bishops while retaining others. This culminated in the decision in January of this year to create an entirely new schismatic offshoot of the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria under Russian control--an act without precedent in modern Orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, however, while Moscow had largely failed in its efforts to gain the support of other autocephalous churches out of Eastern Europe, it had succeeded within Ukraine to a much greater degree than most observers would have predicted. The new independent, Constantinople-sanctioned "Orthodox Church of Ukraine" had suffered from significant growing pains, including problems caused by its relatively young and inexperienced leadership, the loss of its main political sponsor Petro Poroshenko, disappointment with the merely metropolitan and not Patriarchal status granted by Constantinople, and a painful internal schism that drew away many adherents. The old Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, meanwhile, had reasserted itself strongly thanks to its seasoned episcopal leadership, the loyalty of its believers, and a massive infusion of cash from Moscow, challenging the transfer of parishes, making the government step back from open support for the OCU, and rapidly building new parish buildings to replace their losses.
By earlier this year, then, the Schism seemed to be cementing a new longterm status quo, ending in what was more or less a draw on the initial terms of the conflict. Constantinople had succeeded in retaining its position as primary leader and point of contact for most autocephalous churches, fending off the clumsy Russian attempts to claim the status of alternative leader of global Orthodoxy; the ROC, meanwhile, had succeeded in retaining the key dioceses and parishes in Ukraine necessary for it to continue being the dominant force by population in Orthodoxy. Both had suffered significant losses--Constantinople in the loss of its ability to speak for and act in relation to the roughly half of all Orthodox believers in the ROC and in the dividing and diminishment of already-weak autocephalous Churches in the Middle East and Africa and Europe, Moscow in the halving of its parishes and population in Ukraine and the loss of positive contacts with most of the rest of global Orthodoxy--but both had retained the things most essential to their continuing existence. So it seemed it would proceed for the foreseeable future.
Then, of course, the Russian government invaded Ukraine.
