The radical contestation of the "catacombs"

This article presents excerpts from an anonymous study entitled "Russia and the Church Today," devoted to the situation of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. It is a critical and documented testimony, written from the inside, on the relations between the Patriarchate of Moscow and Soviet power. The central idea is that the submission of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the atheist state has led to a profound disorganization of ecclesial life, a growing gap between the hierarchy and the faithful people, and a retreat of true religious life into the "catacombs." On the theological level, the text examines the notion of the Church, the legitimacy of an alliance between the Church and a regime militating against the faith, and the role of the people of God in the face of a hierarchy deemed compromised and cut off from pastoral realities.