UOC Legal Department explains why DESS experts' reasoning is unprofessional

Archpriest Oleksandr Bakhov, head of the UOC Legal Department. Photo: a screenshot from the UOC's YouTube channel

The head of the UOC Legal Department, Archpriest Oleksandr Bakhov, said that those who carried out the religious expertise of the Statute on the management of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church acted unprofessionally, they "could not define the main element – the church-canonical relationship”. He said this in an interview with the UOC Information and Education Department.

"They started with the fact that the purpose of the study is to establish the church-canonical relationship and then switched to dependence/independence, autocephaly/non-autocephaly. That is, the terms are constantly changing. Thus, the subject of the study is shifted," the priest added.

"In this religious expertise a lot of attention was paid to the ROC website and Statute, but, unfortunately, little attention was paid to the study of the Statute of the UOC. Although in accordance with the decision of the NSDC, the State Ethnopolitics Service had to examine the Statute on the governance of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for the presence of church-canonical connection with the MP. But we see that the experts have arbitrarily changed the object and subject of the study. Instead of studying the Statute of the UOC, they started to investigate other documents which have no relation to the Statute," the lawyer said.

"In the Statute of the UOC, there is a reference to the Letter by Patriarch Alexy II with the words 'The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is in communion with the Local Churches through the Russian Orthodox Church'. In this regard, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry gave appropriate explanations of how we understand this. The members of the expert commission ignored this," he said.

Archpriest Oleksandr Bakhov said that the experts of the State Ethnopolitics Committee interpreted it as dependence on the ROC, but this wording does not speak of any dependence. It says that through the ROC the UOC was given access to the Local Churches.

"There is similar wording in the Statute of the OCU, which is considered autocephalous and independent. It is written in the Statute of the OCU that it connects with the other Local Churches through the Church of Constantinople," Fr Oleksandr.

Experts in their research say that this wording in the statute of the UOC indicates complete dependence on the ROC, while the same wording in the statute of the OCU (which they consider autocephalous), but with a reference to another church, indicates its independence.

The head of the UOC Legal Department expressed surprise that the experts did not pay attention to the Statute of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC – it has important arguments for the defence of the UOC. It says that the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC by order of the Primate makes contact with other Local Churches. It says that the UOC exercises this contact directly. Ignoring this document, the experts took up the study of the Statute of the ROC.

Fr Oleksandr noted that there is also a question about the quality of the documents that the experts examined. "Why are they sure that the information which is posted on the ROC website is reliable?" - the lawyer said.

In addition, the head of the UOC Legal Department said that the persons who were part of the expert group are not qualified.

"Since this issue concerns canon law, in my opinion, it should be considered by specialists in canon law. But if we look at the specialisation of the scholars, they are historians and philosophers, none of them is suitably qualified in canon law," he said.

As reported, the head of the UOC Legal Department believes that the conclusions of the State Ethnopolitics Commission on the UOC split the Ukrainian society and, therefore, are beneficial to Russia.

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