Moscow views canons as masks and decorations, - the OCU speaker comments the reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church to the decision of the Church of Cyprus

Press secretary of the OCU Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya), wrote about this on his Facebook page.

"The key methodological error is typical for many of those faced with the position of the "only one canonical Church" is trust in the rhetoric of canonicity. They allege that as long as the MP and its satellites in local churches constantly appeal to the canons, one can convince them of falsity and fallacy of the path chosen by the Russian Orthodox Church proceeding from the canon law.

This is a great and fundamental mistake.

No canons, either individually or the entire canonical framework or ecclesiology itself with the whole of Orthodox teaching can in any way define the position of the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate. All this is just scenery for them. These are masks that are cynically used as needed," the hierarch said.

According to him, Moscow and its henchmen are now appealing to "conciliarity" and "Pan-Orthodox proceedings", but they opposed conciliarity, refusing to participate in the Council of Crete.

"It is not the approval of "synodality-conciliarity" that Moscow is seeking, but "sanhedrionality". To conceal the predetermined lawlessness with decorations of canons and meetings of obedient hierarchs.

If the fullness of Orthodoxy does not want to turn into an expanded version of the Moscow Patriarchate, where "they have the appearance of piety, but have renounced its force" (2 Tim 3:5), they must firmly resist its schismatic calls and actions.

True, there will be a struggle. Now all Orthodoxy experiences firsthand what Ukrainian Orthodoxy has been experiencing for more than a century.

But this struggle is the storm that should disperse the evil air of Moscow's "sanhedrionality" and Pharisaic legality and restore the spirit of true conciliarity and canonicity to Orthodoxy," the OCU speaker stressed.