Controversy in the UOC: Metropolitan Luke criticizes Archbishop Sylvester's position on Filaret Denisenko's "legacy"

Metropolitan Luke of Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol (UOC) has sharply criticized Archbishop Sylvester, accusing him of «semantic equilibristics» and attempts to moralize the church split. The subject of the dispute was the assessment of the personality of Filaret Denisenko; according to Metropolitan Luke, attempts to present the actions of the schismatic leader as the result of «intuition» replace theological canons with categories of political compromise. Metropolitan Luke wrote about this in his Telegram channel.

In a detailed analysis of the situation, Bishop Luke points out that praise for Filaret’s «political sense» in the official obituary looks like a recognition of his historical correctness. The Metropolitan emphasizes that it is impossible to separate the fruits of a person’s activity — in this case, the destruction of church unity — from his personal qualities. «If intuition led a person to create a schism, then praising this intuition looks like recognizing the rightness of the schismatic,» the hierarch says, insisting that it is inadmissible to blur the boundaries between the Church and self-righteousness.

The publication pays special attention to historical facts, in particular, Filaret’s letter to the 2017 Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Luke accuses his opponent of ignoring Denisenko’s public refusal to repent, which, according to him, is a direct deconstruction of Orthodox ecclesiology. He also disputed the attempt to equate the decisions of the Kharkiv Council of 1992 with the actions of Filaret, since the former outlined the canonical path, while the latter chose the path of pride.

Concluding his address, Metropolitan Luke recalls the tragic consequences of the schism for ordinary believers. He calls on the clergy to pray first of all not for the «persecutors» but for the flock that suffered from church seizures and physical violence. Referring to the Gospel of John (John 17:9), the bishop emphasizes that the pastoral duty is to protect the «little flock of Christ» that has remained faithful to the canonical truth, and not to follow the norms of dubious etiquette to the detriment of the truth.

Earlier, the rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Sylvester (Stoichev), presented a detailed reflection on the ninth day since the death of Filaret Denisenko. In his address, the hierarch analyzed the «historical role» of the deceased, his contribution to the «struggle for autocephaly,» and revealed the reasons for the failed attempts to overcome the church division in Ukraine, placing the responsibility on the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.