Religious scholar Oleksandr Sagan believes that the appeal of individual priests of the UOC-MP to the Ecumenical Patriarch requesting special status for their parishes as stauropegion or temporary exarchates during the transitional period is a common desire to maintain the status quo and ensure a peaceful transition without disrupting their way of life.
He wrote about this on his Facebook page.
The religious scholar noted that the priests who seek the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch are not in the diaspora but on the territory of the OCU defined by the Tomos. According to him, a correct diagnosis of the situation is needed for understanding:
"They cannot recognize the Tomos at the moment because, as stated in the appeal, a 'transitional period is necessary for educational work among parishioners and their preparation for accepting what they have been biased for several decades'."
I can agree: many of the believers traumatized by Moscow ritualism need such a transitional period with a defined deadline. But before that, we need to find out who made these believers hostile towards the Tomos and Ukrainian Orthodoxy in general, who gave them a false history of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, twisted the canons to suit their own purposes, baptized people multiple times, etc.
We need to ask them why they did it so that it doesn't turn out that the same people who have been talking for decades about the "Moscow Mother Church," the "Kyiv Metropolia as an integral part of the Moscow Church," the "schismatics," the "Istanbul Patriarch," and later - about the "wrong" Tomos and so on, nonsense, will now start (or not start, and pretend that nothing happened) to conduct "educational activities" for their parishioners.
Can this entire "years-long burden of mutual hatred" be attributed solely to the actions of the "scheming" bishops who "instigated" it and now remain silent? Let's talk about it and name these hierarchs.
And another thing. How do the fathers imagine this "enlightenment" process under the omophorion of Constantinople? Will there be lectures on the topic of "I lied to you because I was forced to" or "I ignored the canons because the bishop told me to"?
Will brochures be written that present a truthful, non-Moscow version of the development of Orthodoxy in Ukraine? Was this truth not available before, or is it simply not being made widely available now?
How much time will be needed for this "enlightenment," and who will determine this timeline?
Without understanding what will happen after Constantinople fulfills their request, all these initiatives look like a simple desire to not change anything and to peacefully "live out" their time. And then, " After us, the deluge."