Hieromonk Herman: The State Service Replaced Theology with Legal Manipulation

Hieromonk Herman (Kovach), secretary of the Synodal Theological and Canonical Commission of the UOC and associate professor at the Kyiv Theological Academy, has criticized the new study used by the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (SSEFC) to conclude that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is allegedly affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. He shared his reflections on Facebook.

The priest emphasized that the study was conducted with a low level of expertise and repeats the key mistakes of the SSEFC’s previous conclusion: “The quality of the study was not significantly affected, because the level of competence of the research group remained the same.”

In his opinion, the authors of the study fail to distinguish between legal and canonical concepts, leading to incorrect conclusions: “The Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC in this study is considered as a religious organization – a legal entity… However, in a secular court, the concept of ‘canon law’ simply does not exist.”

Fr. Herman also accused the researchers of manipulating sources. He noted that SSEFC refers only to select tomoses, ignoring documents that contradict their pre-determined narrative: “Regarding the tomos of the Serbian Church, it would likely have disrupted the artificially created structure of SSEFC in defining autocephaly… So SSEFC simply did not figure out how to use it.”

According to Hieromonk Herman, the main goal of the state agency is to force the UOC to officially call itself autocephalous: “SSEFC believes that once a Church calls itself autocephalous, it automatically becomes autocephalous.” However, he pointed out that the ROC itself does not have a document containing the word “autocephaly,” yet its status is not questioned.

He concluded that by recognizing only autocephalies granted by Constantinople, SSEFC effectively denies the right of other Churches, including the ROC, to grant autocephaly: “Moscow does not grant ‘true autocephaly,’ but merely recognizes ‘genuine independence.’”

Earlier, it was reported that Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy head of the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate for Church Relations with Society and the Media, stated that peace in Ukraine is impossible without ending the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.