Solidarity and Justice in the Baltic Countries[1]

When a Roman Catholic missionary, the priest-monk Vassiliy, left Estonia for Russia in spring 1946, an Estonian peasant said to him[2] with a deep significance:

« We are a so small country […], which wanted nothing from anybody only asking to remain free »…

…« So, I ask you, when you see these free people,

tell them what we suffer here;

we were happy, free,

we never demanded anything from anybody

and now we are deprived of everything,

unable to make our voice heard… »[3].

Dear colleagues,

I wish to consider my present paper only as a transmission of the voice of this Estonian peasant, the Estonian consciousness, history and the Estonian time, just to be able to hear this voice in reality unheard until this day…

* * * * *

I am here as a representative of the Autonomous Orthodox Church of Estonia. I would like to present the situation in respect to solidarity and justice in the Baltic countries and especially in Estonia.

As you know well, the Baltic States are independent now for fourteen years. As you also know, before the collapse of the Soviet Union they saw a long period of Soviet rule. The Baltic Countries were part of the Soviet State in 1940-1941 and again between 1944-1991. Especially in 1940, the State of Estonia, recognised by Soviet Russia in 1920[4], was abolished. However, after 1991, Russia has accepted the independence of the Baltic countries on an international level. But this is not the case with the Russian Orthodox Church.

The matter reminds us of the ancient Greek “Fable of the Big People and the Little People”.

It is significant that religious communities deal with this situation in different ways depending on their actual status. On the one hand, if they are minorities in a different cultural environment they outwardly preach tolerance and religious freedom, while on the inside, they congregate the group members around symbols and other particularities (“canonical territory”, antiquity on the territory, exclusive and traditional sovereign rights, and so on) in order to reduce the possibilities of desertion. In fact, their purpose is to be given, by their members, an anachronic power, in the traditional understanding of the word. On the other hand, if they are relatively “dominant” within a local society or in broader geographic formations, they disregard the positions they would take if they were minorities, and instead seek to impose upon all an objective which would be beneficial to them, ignoring everything about tolerance, respect for others, and the freedom of conscience. Of course, if these demands were accepted, it would exclude from «the whole» those of different culture, i.e. those who for various reasons have distanced themselves from – or maintain only formal relations with – these communities. As examples of these situations we can mention the position of the Orthodox Church of Greece, which ideologically insists that being Greek can be identified with being Orthodox, or the case of Catholicism in the European Union, which alleges that Christian identity must be considered a constitutive element of European identity, despite the fact that a «re-evangelisation» had to be started in the 1990s, or even the case of the Orthodox Church in Russia, who seeks to restore the sovereign rights it held during the time of the tsars[5]. Through these claims, religious organs seek to once again become constitutive elements of the public sector and to reclaim the possibility of intervening institutionally within it. Put more simply, they reminisce about old glories and seek to gain a share of power. In such cases, the fictive argument of defending the rights of a «majority» group is used, though it does not correspond, indeed, to reality. Most important of all, though, is that if these claims were satisfied, it would constitute a violation of human freedom and of the human right of self-determination.

An important question relating to our issue is whether the declaration of human rights is broad enough to ensure the recognition of every kind of rights, or, if it is not, whether it is necessary to institutionalise or recognise certain collective or group rights. On the one hand, human rights encompass individual and collective rights, and imply the obligation to respect them. On the other hand, the recognition of collective or group rights can present some dangers. To be sure, there are no general formulas for these issues; they need to be examined on a case-by-case basis. However, group rights can bring about a grave danger. By claiming to speak for a specific group, under the pretence of acting in the group’s best interests, and using the protection of the group’s rights as justification, someone could attempt to secure for themselves a leading position within the group. The Russian Orthodox Church provides a characteristic example: she demands the recognition of her traditional sovereign rights over the Russian people, even pretending to represent the will of that people, without the corresponding consent of the latter. In this way she seeks to bring back pre-modern structures and conceptions. In expressing this demand, she uses the concept of «multipolarity»[6] instead of multiculturality, either on the political level, or on the panorthodox one. Of course, there is a large gap between the meanings of these two notions. Multiculturality expresses the existence of cultural plurality in our current societies. On the contrary, the concept of «multipolarity» has recently been used in the domain of geopolitics to express the need for the recognition of the existence of different poles of power on a global level, thus avoiding the single/unique pole of power held by the USA. The Russian Orthodox Church adopts the same concept within the ecclesiastical domain: she wishes the recognition of the existence of different poles of ecclesiastical authority on a global level, thus avoiding the single/unique pole of authority held by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and specifically as well as Primus inter pares (First among equals). Consequently, by using the term «multipolarity», the Russian Orthodox Church affirms that she respects «the rights of other people», as long as her own «sovereign rights» over the regions where she exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction through a Russian concept as well as over the Russian people and the regions they inhabit, are recognised (see infra). In fact, in this way, she lays claim to the representation of a people by enforcing a traditional religious “leadership” that uncontrollably wants to impose its views upon all.

* * * * *

Let us further examine this issue from two perspectives: the ecclesiastical and the political.

A. The ecclesiastical level

Since the further object of this meeting is Solidarity and Justice, it would be constructive to carry out a comparative study through examples. Such will show that contemporary orthodox ecclesiology is an ecclesiology with stratifications and symmetrical deviations, revealed not only in orthodox ecclesiological practice across the world today, but also in the statutory practice of the National Orthodox Churches, as we shall see immediately below. Just one double example of statutory dispositions with non-ecclesiological content suffices to highlight the enormity of the existing ecclesiastical problem. To this end, it would be useful to recall just one article from the Statutory Charters of a hellenophone and of a slavophone Church, i.e. the Statutory Charter of the Church of Cyprus and the Statutory Charter of the Church of Russia, in order to put them in the perspective of our problematic.

• «Members of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus are:

- all Cypriot Orthodox Christians, who have become members of the Church through baptism and who are permanent residents of Cyprus, as well as

- all those of Cypriot origin, who are currently residing abroad» (Article 2, Statutes of the Autocephalous Church of Cyprus-1980).

• «The jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church extends to:

- people of Orthodox confession residing in the USSR [1988]; living on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church [2000], as well as

- people who reside other countries and who voluntarily accept her jurisdiction» (Article I, § 3, Statutes of the Church of Russia-1988 and 2000).

These articles are representative of Statutory Charters with three main and common non-ecclesiological properties[7]:

a) The jurisdiction of these Churches extends itself, deliberately and principally, to people and not exclusively to territories. In other words and without further analysis, the exertion of ecclesiological jurisdiction on people simply means that this single statutory fact gives these Churches the right to penetrate, by definition, into the canonical bounds of other locally established Churches… While we all know that Autocephaly, according to Pauline Ecclesiology, is granted on a given location, to a territory with explicit boundaries and on purely geographic criteria – nowadays usually geo-state – and not to a nation. So the notion of Autocephaly is essentially that found in New Testament ecclesiology, in contrast to the Old Testament insofar as the latter identifies the chosen people with the Nation. Consequently, the jurisdiction of a locally established Autocephalous Church is exerted on a specific territory and never on an entire nation, much less on scattered people. On “people” therefore, and not on “canonical territory”, which a Church invokes only in self-defence against “intruders” who, conforming to their Statutory Charter, plan to instate an exterior (hyperoria) co-territoriality on its “canonical territory”. This is done to prevent external ecclesiastical interventions on its own ecclesial territory on the part of some other jurisdiction (or some other “confession”) acting according to the same principles, since this Church itself statutorily practices such ecclesiastic interventionism on the canonical territory of other Churches.

b) The Churches in question statutorily declare that they are unwilling, for any reason, to limit the exertion of their jurisdiction to territories situated within their canonical boundaries (as they should ecclesiologically since, not only are they both locally established Churches, but also because of the principle of Autocephaly, which determines their ecclesiological and institutional existence, demands it), and insist on expanding beyond their canonical boundaries, since their Statutory Charters gives them this right. In ecclesiological practice, this is called institutional interference and, most of all, institutional and statutory confirmation of co-territoriality. In other words, this is an institutional ecclesiastic attempt to reinforce co-territoriality within ecclesiology.

c) Most importantly, these Churches, when referring to territories outside their boundaries, knowingly and purposely make no distinction between territories plainly of the “Diaspora” and principal “canonical territories” of other locally established Churches. By extension, this particular statutory reference to people obliterates the elementary canonical distinction of “canonical territories” and “territories of the Diaspora”, thus creating not only the definition of internal co-territoriality – this time founded on a statutory base with the consequences of multilateral hyperoria multi-jurisdiction – but also another anti-ecclesiological phenomenon and characteristic: the notion and practice of global ethno-ecclesial jurisdiction. This newly formed idiom starts founding a global Ecclesiology, limited to a national(ist) level this time, or, better yet, brings about the formation of numerous global orthodox national Ecclesiologies.

Consequently, the Statutory Charters of the Churches of Cyprus and Russia introduce a dual ecclesiological-canonical system for the exertion of their ecclesiastic jurisdiction, a system which bears, ecclesiologically speaking, on in inherent contradiction:

• Internally, within the boundaries of the body of the locally established Church, they ecclesiologically exhibit “canonical territory”, i.e. territoriality and mono-jurisdiction.

But

• Externally, outside the boundaries of the body of the locally established Church, they statutorily claim “hyperoria jurisdiction”, i.e. co-territoriality and multi-jurisdiction.

This fact in itself, by definition, constitutes a corruption and an alteration of the Ecclesiology of the Church and, in two words, causes an ecclesiastical case with full of canonical contradictions and ecclegiological difficulties, or, if I may, an ecclesiological hotchpotch… In fact, a National Church cannot exercise ecclesiastical dominated rights within the territory of another state – unless it is asked to do so –, that is different than the one in which she exists. This is because the principle of the Autocephaly presupposes as a condition of constitution of an Autocephalous Church the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the boundaries of the state of which she has the geo-ethnic name. Even more so when within the other state exists a locally (indigenous) established Autocephalous or Autonomous Church[8]. Because of this persistent ecclesiological problem which nowadays increases more and more, our opinion is that when a National Church behaves in such a way and exercises ecclesiological imperialism, her Autocephalous rights have to be conciliarily revoked temporarily due to abusive behaviour and due principally to the causing of ecclesiological confusion among the locally established Churches.

B. The political level

There exists a problem between the Churches in the Baltic countries with the Russian Orthodox Church on a political level, too, especially in the domain of international public law. Clause 3 of the Statutes of the Russian Orthodox Church states that:

«The jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church shall include persons of Orthodox confession living on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Latvia, Lithuania, Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan and Estonia, and also Orthodox Christians living in other countries and voluntarily joining this jurisdiction» (Article I, § 3, Statutes of the Russian Orthodox Church-2000).

As we see, Estonia is not an independent State, but part of the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church. That means that other Orthodox Churches beside her do not exist and do not have right to exist there any more. Through this position we can understand the problem we have concerning justice, as the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognise as a religious entity any other Orthodox Churches and, by extension, Catholic nor Protestant Churches in this region. All these Churches exist on a Russian “canonical territory”. Also, it is a problem from the point of view of the international public law, as these Russian Statutes do not recognise Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as independent States, because they constitute part of “all Russias” of the ecclesiastical domain. In other words, the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognise the independence and self-government of these States as the Russian State do. And this is recorded within her Constitution. In this case, how it is possible to have a National and Autocephalous Church which declares the territories of different independent States as her “canonical territory” and uses official constitutional Statutes to revendicate these territories and to refuse at the same time the existence of the other indigenous homodox Churches?

The result of this problematic position is very negative on the level of solidarity and justice as well as on the practical level.

The reactivation of the Autonomy of the Orthodox Church of Estonia in 1996 resulted in a temporary break of communion between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church. It was solved by the Zurich agreement on April 22, 1996, by which the existence of the Autonomous Orthodox Church of Estonia as well as the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia were recognised. The Russian Orthodox Church, however, has never applied this agreement. This is why I remembered the fable about the Big People and Little People – the big ones may disregard any agreements. As the Autonomous Church of Estonia does not exist for the Russian Orthodox Church, the agreement counts for nothing.

The Orthodox Church of Estonia exists as an Autonomous Church since 1923 and her Tomos of Autonomy was reactivated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate after the Soviet parenthesis, again, in February 1996. So, until now, for almost ten years, the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognise us according to her Statutes, because Estonia is regarded as her cultural “canonical territory”.

However, the small countries and “little people” have a right to exist in their countries and consequently the right of the indigenous population must be acknowledged. The Autonomous Orthodox Church of Estonia does recognise the diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate in Estonia and maintains the justice vis-à-vis that diocese, but in return we do not receive a similar treatment. So, the dialogue between these two ecclesiastical entities does not exist. We wish to have this dialogue so much, but the Russian diocese constantly refuses, because we do not exist… However it is a demand for dialogue between “Sister Churches”, between Orthodox “Sister Churches”, and between brothers of the same Church. In fact this refusing is the total confirmation of the fable of “the big and the little”…

The problem does not stop there. The Russian Orthodox Church has blocked the participation of the Autonomous Church of Estonia and any relations with her in international ecclesiastical institutions as well as KEK, WCC and other ecclesiastical and political organisations. All these organisations know that we are “little” and not “big”… It must not be forgotten that before 1940s, 25 % of the population of Estonia or some 230,000 belonged to the Orthodox Church, and now only some 25,000, i.e. 2,9 %, are left (1/10 !). Here we have a question about solidarity and justice for the conscience of History and the conscience of human society, if these consciences …“exist”!…

* * * * *

The question that has already arisen concerning the situation of the Baltic States and especially the Baltic Churches vis-à-vis the Russian Orthodox Church is this: What is it that expresses the Church’s consciousness of herself? What also is it that expresses the society’s consciousness of itself?

It often happens in History that the osmosis of actual conditions and human aspirations obliges us to ask ourselves about the nature of the ideal on the one hand and the practicable on the other, and about the limits of each. To what extent does the absolutism of the ideal drive us to escape from History, and to what extent does idolising the attainable lead to a life without meaning? In the best case, both those who make some compromise and their successors do have the necessary realism to act within particular historical contexts, but also have the invaluable awareness that they have deviated from what they themselves have accepted as an ideal. In the worst case, this awareness is lacking, with the result that every choice is made into an absolute, every action is justified ipso facto, and there is a refusal to submit choices or actions to the test of ecclesial criteria and sometimes to the test of human rights criteria. Our degree of proximity to the best or worst case indicates the degree to which that blessing called the critical faculty – our capacity to look critically at the course of life even as we are in the midst of it – is bearing fruit or withering[9].

In her effort to realise her churchliness, also on the socio-political level, a Church sometimes falls away from the invariable ecclesial teaching and practice and does not accord totally with that. In this case, it is better and much more honest to declare: “Church for us is only a socio-political Body and not the Body of Christ”. For many contemporary churchmen, this declassification would have a liberating effect: all the difficulties and contradictions would automatically become less important, because they would no longer relate to the eschatological character of the Church and hence be binding on the Church’s consciousness. This declassification is indeed legitimate in itself; it is not, however, legitimate to use it as a way to evade the questions that have been raised. If it is discovered after the fact that, unbeknown to us, the gun we were firing at someone was empty, this establishes that commission of murder was precluded from the beginning; but it does not answer any of the questions related to pulling the trigger[10]…

Highlighting these issues does not mean that we are demanding answers to hypothetical questions; for many of the conjectures about how differently History might have turned out, there is not even an answer. But what we can do with these questions is to try to throw some light on the ways in which the Church’s self-awareness is formed and progresses within History. The main thing, in our view, is not that we should never lose our way, but that we should never lose our compass…[11].

The question, then, that should trouble us in response to these positions is the same one we posed previously, only in different words. So what is the answer? What is tragic for the self-awareness of the Church, and for her freedom to submit everything to the test of her unshakeable theological criteria, is the fact that the fate of the Russian Orthodox Church is repeated in the case of some contemporary Statutes: National Churches who (doubtless with the best of intentions), in order to demonstrate their abhorrence of anything they regard as an attempt to distinguish essential from inessential or to add or subtract anything to or from the God-given deposit, trumpet their faithfulness to the Ecclesiastical Tradition. By contrast, an indication of a sensitive theological attitude is the stance taken by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Yet the inspiration of the Canons by the Ecumenical Patriarchate did not ultimately drag her down the path of ecclesiastical conformism. In collaboration with the Church of Russia, the Ecumenical Patriarchate took part in a critical appraisal to seek out the essential. The reason for this, however, seems to us both clear and significant. To their consciousness, attuned as it was to the Church’s self-awareness, it was patently obvious that this was in truth… They are able to do this, it seems to us, not only because they never take their eyes off History, but precisely because of their intention to focus not on every detail, but specifically on the criteria of their ecclesial faith. This intention, unfailingly coupled with discernment, is the ‘valve’ preventing the invaluable critical view from slipping into a realm of arbitrary subjectivism.

I think, however, that this is not the only point being made here. I have the impression that in referring to the Ecclesial and Canonical Tradition, we are aiming obliquely at restricting the use of force by the Church, even that indirect and necessary force which we have outlined.

* * * * *

Through this often labyrinthine interweaving of historical conditions, the formulation of interpretations, it is possible to make out an unceasing effort to remain faithful to the Church’s criteria, an effort not always totally successful, but still has to be endeavoured because we are human.

According to the “axioms” formulated by the Canonical Tradition as to the way the sacred Canons are composed and function:

«Any acts that are rare, a matter of economy, a result of constraint or of some evil custom or, simply put, contrary to the Canons, are not to be taken as a law, canon or example for the Church... Rather, once the economy or the constraint is past, the Canons are once again in force. Anything that is wrongly decided and printed cannot be confirmed by canon or law or time or custom...»[12].

These axioms, which are obviously a distillation of the Church’s consciousness, experience and perspective on the canons, are set out epigrammatically without further theoretical probing and examination, but they succeed nevertheless in pointing to an important obligation: the duty to approach the ‘mind’ of the Canons, to ascertain the historical matrix of each one and to distinguish between what is temporary and what is enduring in the life of the Church. If the scholar wants to accept the challenge offered by the Canonical Tradition and penetrate more deeply into this logic, he will be called to see that the distinction made by the axioms just laid out is not between, on the one hand, arrangements connected with History («rare, a matter of economy, a result of constraint or of some evil custom»), and on the other hand those that are timeless, untrammelled by History and its constraints («law, canon and example for the Church»). For the Church, History is not a fall, but rather something that has been assumed by the Logos-Word, the field in which divine economy is active and humanity responds. Nothing that the Church does or creates is unhistorical. The distinction lies, then, between two historicities: between regulations relating to the normal course of events, and those relating to extraordinary circumstances. The task of both is to give a clear orientation to the People of God (which ceaselessly journeys through History, often encountering unforeseen territories), and to serve to establish that pace which will help the People progress as a Body, rather than being dismembered into various private pathways. Sensitivity in pinpointing what is ‘rare’, ‘a matter of economy’, ‘resulting from constraint’, etc., is invaluable, not in order to show History as something negative, but precisely in order to make us realise that if the particular historical conditions of the various arrangements (the temporal element) are ignored or played down, the clarity of the orientation (the enduring) is thrown into question. The Canons ‘are in force’ when the extraordinary circumstances no longer apply, not because we are then restored to a historical vacuum, but because we are returning to what is normal and expected in History.

* * * * *

The ecclesiastical practice tried to show that the restriction of freedom – even when it appears to be inevitable – is a temporary, transient element in the life of the Church. The correspondence between historical reality on the one hand and ecclesiastical arrangements on the other is really of vital importance (since the adjustments made on various occasions have the aim of ensuring that the Church is properly orientated in time and space). To what extent, and under what conditions, is it possible for our hermeneutic to degenerate into a matrix for ideologies – mental constructs which are fabricated in the absence of any reality and are, furthermore, unable to understand that they are divorced from reality? In other words, is there a hidden danger of nurturing a false consciousness, a consciousness that fails to correspond to what actually is?

First of all, such lack of information and having no way of knowing the actual circumstances obviously cannot be blamed. Such a lack of information may be culpable also if it is the result of a particular theological attitude (cf. the choice of the Russian Orthodox Church) – an indifference to History on principle, or a conviction that the Church’s pronouncements bear no relation to historical circumstances. This sort of attitude corresponds to the type of ideological false consciousness according to which – to borrow Mannheim’s typology – the subject is truly and genuinely unable to see the discrepancy between his ideas and reality, precisely because the whole makeup of his way of thinking precludes the discovery of this discrepancy[13].

Questions particularly troubling to the Church’s self-consciousness arise later on, once the historical mosaic has been reconstructed. What attitude should the Church member take when it becomes apparent that what we had accepted as the historical basis for our conclusions is not in fact the case? This question confronts us, as we have already seen, from the moment we discover that in the Baltic Area the real situation is different from that which we gather from the Fifty years parenthesis (1940/44-1991). This question is not raised – far from it! – in order to pass judgement on the churchmen before us who became the cause for this situation, or in order to guess what they would have said if they were alive today, but in order to invite us to think about the way in which our present ecclesial consciousness deals with reality.

So it seems to us that there are two possibilities, without a definitive solution. Either prepare the way for a solution that takes into full consideration the actual, that is, post 1991, socio-political reality in Estonia as well as in Baltic Countries. This would entail that the “big man” (of our fable) calmly accept the ‘new universe’ unfolding before him, without panicking at the change in his familiar world, and launch into a creative work of encounter between the criteria of his faith and the new reality. The other possibility is that the “big man” may develop a consciousness that has characteristically been called “pharisaical”[14]. This means that, although he has the possibility of discovering the discrepancy between his ideas and this actual socio-political reality, yet he draws a veil over his eyes.

In real life, of course, it is doubtful how far these possible reactions manifest themselves in a clear-cut and unalloyed form. What matters, however, is the readiness to meet the reality that obtains at any given time, an attitude that takes as its model the very Incarnation of the Word in the actual conditions of the world, and in the present in which man lives at any given period of History. The historian John Lukacs has expressed a view that could be characterised as creatively optimistic in its blunt realism:

«Contrary to the ‘scientific’ illusion, in the research and the writing of History there are no final results. And the purpose of History is often not so much the definite accounting of the events of a period as it is the historical description and understanding of problems... – because while a perfect completion of our knowledge of the past is not possible, a reasonable and proper understanding of it is within our powers»[15].

It seems to be a dynamism of this sort that inspired the perspective of the questions in the large area of Baltic.

If I may repeat myself, let me state once again this proverbial expression[16]: the main thing is not that we should never lose our way, but that we should never lose our compass…

Dean of “Saint Platon” Orthodox Seminary of Theology, Tallinn

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NOTES

[1] See the same texte “Solidaarsusest ja Õiglusest Baltimaade shutes (Solidarity and Justice in the Baltic Countries)”, in Usk ja Elu, t. 1 (1/2006), p. 43-57 (in Estonian).

[2] See Archim. Grigorios D. Papathomas-R. P. Matthias H. Palli (sous la direction de), The Autonomous Orthodox Church of Estonia/L’Église autonome orthodoxe d’Estonie (Approche historique et nomocanonique), Thessaloniki-Katerini, “Epektasis” Publications (series: Nomocanonical Library, n° 11), 2002, p. 13 and 15.

[3] See Vassily (Hieromonk [Charles Bourgeois, s. j.]), Ma rencontre avec la Russie (Narva-Esna-Tartu-Moscou) 1932-1946, Buenos Aires 1953, p. 101 and 146 and the following).

[4] Treaty of Tartu (2nth of February 1920) ; see Archim. Grigorios D. Papathomas-R. P. Matthias H. Palli, The Autonomous Orthodox Church of Estonia…, op. cit., p. 281.

[5] See J. S. Petrou, Multiculturality and Religious Freedom, Thessaloniki, ed. Paratiritis, 2003, p. 42-43 (in Greek).

[6] See again ibid., p. 24-25.

[7] See our article entitled “The oppositional relationship between the locally established Church and the ecclesiastical ‘Diaspora’ (Ecclesiological unity faced against ‘co-territoriality’ and ‘multi-jurisdiction’)”, in Synaxis, vol. 90 (4-6/2004), p. 37-38 (in Greek). Also, “The oppositional relationship between the locally established Church and the ecclesiastical ‘Diaspora’ (Ecclesiological unity faced against ‘co-territoriality’ and ‘multi-jurisdiction’)”, in L’Année canonique [Paris], t. 46 (2004), p. 88-89, in Contacts, t. 57, n° 210 (4-6/2005), p. 111-113, in Ast. Argyriou (Textes réunis par), Chemins de la Christologie orthodoxe, Paris, Desclée (coll. Jésus et Jésus-Christ, n° 91), 2005, XX, p. 362-364, and in Archim. Grigorios D. Papathomas, Essays on Orthodox Canon Law, Florence, Università degli Studi di Firenze Facoltà di Scienze Politiche “Cesare Alfieri” (coll. “Seminario di Storia delle istituzioni religiose e relazioni tra Stato e Chiesa-Reprint Series”, n° 38), 2005, chap. II, p. 36/12-37/13 (in French).

[8] See especially the Canons of the Church: 14 of Apostles (2nth-3rd centuries), 15 of the Ist Ecumenical Council (325), 11 of the Local Council of Sardica (343), 2 of the IInth Ecumenical Council (381), 5 and 12 of the IVth Ecumenical Council (451).

[9] For the approach which follows, we have used as primary text of inspiration the trilingual very interesting book of Ath. N. Papathanasiou, Canons and Freedom, Thessaloniki-Katerini, “Epektasis” Publications (series: Nomocanonical Library, n° 15), 2005, 185 p. ; mainly p. 102 (p. 46 [in Greek] and p. 159 [in French]) and ss.

[10] Ibid, p. 103-105 (p. 46-48 [in Greek] and p. 159-161 [in French]).

[11] Ibid, p. 105 (p. 48 [in Greek] and p. 161-162 [in French]).

[12] Pidalion, (The Rudder), p. xix, note, §§ 9 and 14.

[13] See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (trad. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, London, ed. Routledge and Kegan Paul, no date, p. 175-176. Mannheim’s three types of ideological distortion have to do specifically with the ‘defection’ of historical activity from the ideology which would normally determine it. They do, however, throw light on the broader question of how a false consciousness is formed. See also p. 84-86 and 94 ; cited by Ath. N. Papathanasiou, Canons and Freedom…, op. cit., p. 123 (p. 67 [in Greek] and p. 179-180 [in French]).

[14] Cf. Mannheim’s ‘cant mentality’…, op. cit., p. 176.

[15] John Lukacs, The Hitler of History, New York, ed. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, p. xii ; cited by Ath. N. Papathanasiou, Canons and Freedom…, op. cit., p. 125 (p. 69 [in Greek] and p. 181 [in French]).

[16] Ibid, p. 105 (p. 48 [in Greek] and p. 161-162 [in French]).

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