ROCOR Responds

Referring to its behavior while still enslaved by the Soviet state, she writes that “[t]oday’s Moscow Patriarchate is the as-yet-unrepentant inheritor of this legacy.” I would suggest Prof. Kizenko read the “Basic Social Concept,” adopted by the MP’s Council of Bishops of 2000, in which subservience by the church to a state hostile to Christianity is unequivocally rejected, and in great detail. As for repentance, that is a private Christian podvig, or spiritual deed, made before one’s spiritual father (as the daughter of a venerable ROCOR priest, Prof. Kizenko is certainly aware of this). Still, 16 years ago, Patriarch Aleksy performed an open act of repentance in an interview published many times since then: “It is not only before God, but also before all of those people to whom the compromises, silence, forced passivity or expressions of loyalty that the church leadership allowed themselves to make in those years brought pain that I ask forgiveness, understanding and prayers.” ~Nicholas A. Ohotin

Read the entire response.  It is good to see that the Church has challenged and corrected the misrepresentations of the earlier article.