One Should Not Punish a Child About Whom He Never Cared

September 10

The ROCOR Council of Bishops rejected Metropolitan Sergii’s act of
suspension of the ROCOR hierarchy on this day in 1934.

Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodskii, d. 1944) was a great canonist and
ecclesiologist with a clear, logical thought process. He considered
himself a link preserving canonical succession within the Russian
Church. Therefore, he suspended those who disagreed with this role:
Metropolitans Kirill, Agathangel, and Joseph in Russia and
Metropolitans Anthony, Evlogy, and Platon in the diaspora.

However, the canonical situation both in Russia and in the diaspora
was unprecedentedly decentralized. In this situation, it would have
been better for everybody to “live and let live.” Interestingly, the
ROCOR hierarchs, who themselves had an unprecedented canonical status,
not only suspended Metropolitan Evlogii, but proclaimed in 1926 the
sacraments ministered by his clergy were void of salvific grace. In this
aspect, they were replicating Metropolitan Sergii’s approach abroad.
Nowadays, the Moscow Patriarchate is avoiding such steps regarding the
Ukrainian Orthodox, who broke away from it in May of 2022 (along the
lines of the ROCOR’s separation from Moscow in 1927).