Debauched Politics is the Worst Disaster for a Nation
(a Letter to Exarch Joseph I, of December 1887)
Your Grace!
Your cable #642, by which you prescribe me to hand affairs of the Delegation and of the Sofia diocese [over] to Most Eminent Kiril and [for me] to go [back] to my diocese – I did receive and have complied with its contents. Tomorrow, God willing, I am leaving Sofia and head to my diocese, but shall I see that diocese of mine and – weather if I see it, shall I not be forced again to leave it soon, God only knows. There is no guarantee that the same Your Grace found in accordance with the Church rules and interests to prescribe me to leave Sofia to please God-knows-what fancies, you shall not be just as well forced – again to please those same fancies – to prescribe me to remove myself also from the diocese.
Anyway, but I deem it to be my duty – with all due sincerity to express to Your Beatitude my great regret for your yielding – in such important and crucial for the Fatherland and for the Church times and circumstances – to God-knows-what influences and aspirations and thus have provided the right and the opportunity for all to believe that our church is subservient, that in such critical and dangerous for the nation’s very existence time and circumstances, it – instead of lifting up high and fearless its voice in exposing the deceived, in encouraging the frightened and in defense of the Fatherland – it proved to be so weak that it allowed its independence and rights – guaranteed by its founder himself, as well as by the fundamental law of our country – to be trampled down by irrational whims and aspirations of people who have always been hostile to the Church and to Orthodoxy.
The fighting, Your Beatitude, was not between me and the government. That fight, whatever it was in its beginning, turned into a fight for either preserving or ruining the future of the Fatherland. Church could not but take part in this fight. And it would have betrayed this high calling of its, was it to not participate. There are circumstances in peoples’ lives when we, the officers of the Church, are obliged to strictly comply with the commandment: “It behooves rather to submit yourselves to God, to to man”. Bringing a nation to ruin is bring also the Church to ruin. National, public disasters are – especially when they also bring into society moral corruption – disasters for the Church as well. The Church is obliged to stand up against these disasters and to mercilessly castigate their authors [causes]. Debauched Politics is the Worst Disaster for a Nation as such a policy tucks debauchery in society and thus undermines its future existence – as a society without strong moral foundations cannot possibly have and expected a steadfast future. A policy advocating its principles with terror, with cursing and opprobrium against faith and the Church and against all that is fair and reasonable, such a policy is the most debauched and therefore the most devastating and ruinous to the nation, no matter how high its principles .
The Church is obliged to stand up against such policy, because in difficult and dangerous times – when society is either deceived or intimidated and terror imposes on it silence and blind – albeit unwitting – obedience, it is the Church’s lot - such is its calling – to lift up high its voice against evil, even though it can foresee major disasters for itself because of that.
Our church has not stood up, Your Beatitude, with all due fearlessness against such a debauched and ruinous for the nation policy. Who has the blame [for this], I forbear to pronounce. It may be Your Beatitude was right when you said to friends of mine and yours, that Clement has not shown himself at the height of his position; that he has not justified your trust and your hopes by not having invited the other hierarchs and all the clergy to declare themselves against such a policy and to urge population to do likewise; perhaps your regret that you did not find me in Sofia in these crucial and dangerous to the people and the Church times – so you might have done what was needed – is fully justified by my erstwhile behavior; perhaps the message His Right Rev. Archimandrite Methodius Kusev delivered to me soon after his arrival here last year as Secretary of the Holy Synod on your behalf that I should either alone or jointly with the Holy Synod elders send out circular epistles to all the priests so they would read them out in the churches, and with those circular epistles the population is to be invited to oppose evil, was not done with the aim only to “test and learn something else” ... ...
Notes:ABAN f. 54 arch, unit 242 copy.This unfinished draft letter was written in late November or early December 1887The copy shows a note: “Unfinishedin the The original”.Extracted from: Literary Archive vol. V, From the Archive of Vasil Drumev – Clement of Tarnovo. Manuscripts, materials and documents. Selected and prepared by Docho Lekov. S. 1973. Published by BAS, P 216-217.
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