Court Opinion

ID: 5481456
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-10 01:56:40.209768+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:33:37.217672
License: Public Domain

Fboessel, J.
(concurring). As I view this controversy, we have the rather unusual situation of a foreign government, which all of us agree is grossly antireligious, assuming domination and control over the Russian Orthodox Church,' leaving that *34church fettered, helpless and restrained of its freedom. Any other view, it seems to me, is to ignore stark reality. Under that domination, which is nothing less than plain duress, it seeks to reach out to the United States to assume control of church property within this State, title to which is held by plaintiff, a New York State corporation, and which property has been dedicated to the use of members of a parish and of a diocese.
The evidence in the records before us, and as outlined in the prevailing opinion, buttressed by facts of historical knowledge of which we may take judicial notice (Nankivel v. Omsk All Russian Govt., 237 N. Y. 150, 156), and as found by the Legislature of this State (East New York Sav. Bank v. Hahn, 293 N. Y. 622), leads inescapably to the conclusion that plaintiff is entitled to judgment.
Judge Cowway has sufficiently outlined in detail the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, so far as pertinent here. We are all in accord that the election of Patriarch Tikhon at the sobor of 1917-18, following the Kerensky revolution, had indisputable validity, and that Archbishop Evdokim was the duly appointed diocesan archbishop for North America in 1917, before he returned to Russia. It was he who held title to the property in suit for a short time (1916-17), and then voluntarily reconveyed it to plaintiff’s corporate predecessor. After Kerensky was overthrown and the Bolsheviks came into power, the patriarchal chain of succession was broken. The prevailing opinion outlines briefly what happened to the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia. When Patriarch Tikhon, the last duly elected Patriarch, was imprisoned, he issued his famous ukase to the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. In 1923, with the concurrence of the Sacred Synod, he designated Platon as ruling bishop of the North American church, who continued until his death in 1934, following his active participation in and approval of the American sobers, commencing in 1922, which invoked the ukase of. 1920.
The first sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church held since Tikhon was elected Patriarch was the pseudo-sobor of 1923, at which no Patriarch was elected, and which is now conceded to have been uncanonical. The only other sobor held since was the one at Moscow in 1945, when the American delegates, two clergy*35men, were met by a Russian airplane, but deposited in Siberia instead of Moscow in the month of January, rendering it impossible for them to complete their journey by train until ten days after the sober had adjourned, thus denying them representation though duly invited.
We do not have here any such situation as was presented in Watson v. Jones (13 Wall. [U. S.] 679) where the highest church body was concededly free. Here, the Russian Orthodox Church, as presently constituted and dominated, is not free, its administrative agency is not the true body of the church, and is compelled to demand loyalty to the Soviet Government from all the priests of the Russian church abroad.
By our decision, we are not intruding unlawfully into the internal affairs of a religious body, but rather refusing to sanction such intrusion by an atheistic foreign government, so far as it affects property within our jurisdiction. Plaintiff-appellant holds title to the property in suit, in trust, not for the Russian Orthodox Church, but rather for the use of the membership for whom it was dedicated, and, so long as it administers the property for the faithful of the church within the diocese, it is entitled to possession and control (Westminster Presbyt. Church v. Trustees of Presbytery of N. Y., 211 N. Y. 214.) As we there said (pp. 225-226), where the ecclesiastical governing body’s freedom of action was unquestioned, “ The error which, as it seems to me, pervades the disposition made of this case in the courts below, is the idea'that the Presbytery could take away from the Westminster Presbyterian Church of West Twenty-third Street all authority and control of its trustees over its real property, and by hostile action appropriate that property to such uses as it saw fit without any legal proceeding to that end, and wholly by the exercise of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Presbytery.” How much more so does this reasoning apply to the instant situation.
I concur in Judge Conway’s opinion.