Russian Orthodox choose nationalism.

Moscow -- For the second year in a row, Moscow Orthodox Patriarch Alexey II cancelled a projected meeting with Pope John Paul II. Scheduled for June 21, the meeting was to have laid the groundwork for closer cooperation between the Latinrite Catholics of the West and the Orthodox Church in Russia. It would have been the first meeting between leaders of the two Churches in over a millennium, an event frequently prayed for by Pope John Paul.

Patriarch Alexey told Russian television that he blamed Rome for the cancellation because of not agreeing to a joint statement drafted by him. This included his objections to the expansion of the Latin-rite Catholics within Russia and the claims of Byzantine-rite Catholics in Ukraine and Russia to many church buildings expropriated from them by Stalin in his 1946 suppression of the Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church. They were given to the (then) Russian, now Ukrainian, Orthodox Church in that territory. The Patriarch did send a letter to the Vatican calling for continued dialogue.

Behind the cancellation lies a reality which does not bode well for the immediate future, a reality of rising Russian chauvinism, a renewed alliance between Orthodoxy and Russian statism, and an unwillingness to recognize new states such as Ukraine as fully autonomous from Russian Orthodox control. Indeed the Ukrainian Orthodox are divided between allegiance to a Ukrainian elected Patriarch and one appointed by Moscow.

Moscow continues to attack the Byzantine-rite Catholics whom they call "Uniates" and treat as deserters from Orthodoxy when in fact their origins go back to the time from before the great Schism in 1054.

Within a few days of Alexey's cancellation, Russia's parliament enacted harsh new restrictions on all minority faiths (June 18) taking away the 1993 constitution's guarantees of religious freedom for everyone. Except for Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, established in their respective regions, all other religious organizations would be characterized as "groups" without traditional rights to organize themselves as they see fit.

The Patriarch sees the Russian Orthodox Church as the chief beneficiary of this new repressive policy, which may still be vetoed by President Boris Yeltsin. In the long run he may well be mistaken in this belief.

The Holy Father, meanwhile, on June 18, recalled his apostolic letter Orientale lumen, underlining the Catholic Church's concern for all the Eastern Churches and the importance of their continuing fidelity to their own traditions. That fidelity, he said, is essential if the Eastern churches are to have the courage to confront the challenge of ecumenism -- as he has repeatedly asked them to do. (CWN, Globe and Mail, Keston)