Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (Also called the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, ROCA, ROCOR, or the Synod) was a Jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church formed based off of Saint Patriarch Tikhon's Blessing and Ukaz 362 which was in response to the Chaos of the Russian Civil War and against the Policy of Bolsheviks with respect to Religion in the Soviet Union soon after the Russian Revolution. It went on to first Headquarter just outside of Serbia in the 1920s and 1930s and then in Germany, during the later half of the 1930s and until the early 1950s, and then moved its Headquarters to Jordanville Monastery in the Village of Jordanville in Upstate New York. During the time from the 1920s to the early 2000s, ROCA considered itself the continuation of the Russian Orthodox Church and remained in opposition to the Moscow Patriarchate stemming from Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky's Synod and his Successors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of Bishops and Clergy within ROCA became more aspiring to have a Union with the Moscow Patriarchate while others remained Anti Union seeing as it was premature and the Moscow Patriarchate still needed some work to do in the form of formally rebuking Metropolitan Sergius and making a commitment to Anti Ecumenism and declaring the New Calendar Change a bad Decision and reframing from Formally communing with New Calendarists. After the 1990s then the Election of Archbishop Laurus Škurla to First Hierarch of ROCA, the interactions and dialogue towards Union was gaining more traction which ended up with the Acts of Canonical Union in 2007 which caused a number of Anti Union Clerics and Monastics of ROCA, if not before the Election of Archbishop Lauras in 2001, to become Non Commemorators and then sever Communion and shift over to other Orthodox Synods such as ROCOR-Agafangel, and GOC Kallinikos, and the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church.

History

Formation and Early Years

In 1920, the Bolshevik Government had revealed that it was quite hostile to the Russian Orthodox Church. Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, issued an Ukaz (decree) that all Orthodox Christians currently under the authority and protection of his Patriarchate seek protection and guidance elsewhere.

Among some Russian Bishops and other Hierarchs, this was interpreted as an authorization to form an emergency synod of all Russian Orthodox hierarchs to permit the Church to continue to function outside Russia. To add urgency to the synod's motives, in May of 1922, the Soviet government proclaimed its own "Living Church" as a "reform" of the Russian Orthodox Church.

On September 13, 1922, Russian Orthodox Hierarchs in Serbia established a Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad; The Foundation of ROCOR/ROCA. In November of 1922, Russian Orthodox in North America held a synod and elected Metropolitan Platon as the Primate of an Autonomous Russian Exarchate in the Americas. This led to a three-way conflict in the United States among the Exarchate, ROCA (Sometimes known as the Karlovci Synod in this period), and the Living Church, which asserted that it was the legitimate (i.e., Russian-government-recognized) owner of all Orthodox properties in the USA.

The Church of the Refugees (1922-1991)

In 1927, ROCA declared "The part of the Russian Church that finds itself abroad considers itself an inseparable, spiritually united branch of the Great Russian Church. It does not separate itself from its Mother Church and does not consider itself autocephalous," indicating that ROCA considered itself to speak for all of the Russian Orthodox outside of Russia.

After the end of World War II, the Patriarchate of Moscow broached the possibility of reunification between Moscow and ROCA, presumably at the behest of the Soviet government, which had adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards religion during the war and was presumably trying to capitalize on its wartime alliances to win a more respectable position internationally. This was not deemed possible at that time by ROCA, given that Russia was still under communist dictatorship.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery and ROCA

In the late 1970s, ROCA took under its care Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Brookline, Massachusetts) (today the principal monastery of HOCNA) after the latter had broken communion from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America following sexual abuse scandals regarding the monastery's leadership. At some point later, the members of this monastery were given responsibility for much of ROCOR's external communications and publication.

It is believed by many that the alleged sectarian spirit of ROCA came into its flowering during this time and under the influence of this monastery, which has subsequently broken communion with ROCA (again regarding allegations of sexual abuse by the monastery's leadership), styled itself the Holy Orthodox Church in North America, and became affiliated with the True Orthodox Church of Greece, a Greek Old Calendarist group which broke from the Church of Greece. According to Fr. Alexey Young (author of The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia: A History and Chronology), the association of ROCA and Holy Transfiguration Monastery resulted in deep damage to ROCA.

After the Soviet Fall

Since the end of the Soviet Union, ROCOR struggled to remain apart from the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate. However, sympathies started to grow for Union with the Moscow Patriarchate towards the end of the 1980s and beginnings of the 1990s when the Soviet Union fell, which eventually culminated to the Acts of Canonical Union between ROCOR under First Hierarch and Metropolitan Laurus Škurla and the Moscow Patriarchate under Patriarch Alexey II Ridiger on May 17th of 2007 where ROCOR became an Autonomous Jurisdiction under the Moscow Patriarchate.

Since the 1990s and before the 2007 Acts of Canonical Union, a number of Russian Synods have sprouted from ROCOR with a number of them bringing in Clergy, Monastics, and Laity from a great deal of Catacomb Churches scattered throughout the former Soviet Union, particularly in Modern Day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia.

Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC/FROC) Synod in Suzdal under Met. Theodore (Gineyevsky)

RTOC – Synod under Met. Tikhon Pasechnik

ROCOR – Synod under Met. Agafangal Pashkovsky

ROCANA – Synod under Archbishop Andronik Kotliaroff

ROCiE-A – Synod under Metropolitan Anthony Orlov

ROCiE-A-D – Synod under Metropolitan Damascene Balabarov

ROCiE-V/A

Ecclesiastic Status

As a legal entity, ROCOR was administratively subsumed under the Moscow Patriarchate in the ROCOR-MP Acts of Canonical Union of May 17th of 2007. As a result, it is no longer Truly Orthodox but rather Global Orthodox or now a Ecumenical Church Jurisdiction and communes with the other Global Orthodox Patriarchates that Moscow communes with in exchange for losing it's formal relations with True Orthodox Synods in Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. In the lead-up to the union there were Schisms as watchful Hierarchs preserved the flock by severing communion with those false shepherds in the Synod who made clear their intent to place ROCOR under the Global Orthodox Patriarchate.

In terms of civil law it may be said that the ROCOR-MP as the main body and with administrative continuity, is the continuation of Old ROCOR. Spiritually, however, those True Orthodox bodies who severed communion with them contain the remnants of Old ROCOR while ROCOR-MP was a newly created Schismatic body becoming an Autonomous Synod under the Moscow Patriarchate.

References

• The initial version of this article was derived from material in the corresponding article on Orthodox Wiki, itself derived from the Wikipedia article.