Kedroff v. St Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church In North America, 3

Decision Date24 November 1952
Docket NumberNo. 3,3
Citation97 L.Ed. 120,73 S.Ct. 143,344 U.S. 94
PartiesKEDROFF et al. v. ST. NICHOLAS CATHEDRAL OF RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA. Re
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Mr. Philip Adler, New York City, for appellants.

Mr. Ralph Montgomery Arkush, New York City, for appellee.

Mr. Justice REED delivered the opinion of the Court.

The right to the use and occupancy of a church in the city of New York is in dispute.

The right to such use is claimed by appellee, a corporation created in 1925 by an act of the Legislature of New York, Laws of New York 1925, c. 463, for the purpose of acquiring a cathedral for the Russian Orthodox Church in North America as a central place of worship and residence of the ruling archbishop 'in accordance with the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of Eastern Confession as taught by the holy scriptures, holy tradition, seven ecumenical councils and holy fathers of that church.'

The corporate right is sought to be enforced so that the head of the American churches, religiously affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, may occupy the Cathedral. At the present time that head is the Metropolitan of All America and Canada, the Archbishop of New York, Leonty, who like his predecessors was elected to his ecclesiastical office by a sobor of the American churches.1

That claimed right of the corporation to use and occupancy for the archbishop chosen by the American churches is opposed by appellants who are in possession. Benjamin Fedchenkoff bases his right on an appointment in 1934 by the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, to wit, the Patriarch locum tenens of Moscow and all Russia and its Holy Synod, as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of North America and the Aleutian Islands. The other defendant-appellant is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, also acknowledging the spiritual and administrative control of the Moscow hierarchy.

Determination of the right to use and occupy Saint Nicholas depends upon whether the appointment of Ben- jamin by the Patriarch or the election of the Archbishop for North America by the convention of the American churches validly selects the ruling hierarch for the American churches. The Court of Appeals of New York, reversing the lower court, determined that the prelate appointed by the Moscow ecclesiastical authorities was not entitled to the Cathedral and directed the entry of a judgment that appellee corporation be reinvested with the possession and administration of the temporalities of St. Nicholas Cathedral. St. Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America v. Kedroff, 302 N.Y. 1, 33, 96 N.E.2d 56, 74. This determination was made on the authority of Article 5—C of the Religious Corporations Law of New York, 302 N.Y. at page 24 et seq., 96 N.E.2d at page 68, against appellants' contention that this New York statute, as construed, violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Because of the constitutional questions thus generally involved, we noted probable jurisdiction, and, after argument and submission of the case last term, ordered reargument and requested counsel to include a discussion of whether the judgment might be sustained on state grounds. 343 U.S. 972, 72 S.Ct. 1069. Both parties concluded that it could not, and the unequivocal remittitur of the New York Court of Appeals, 302 N.Y. 689, 98 N.E.2d 485, specifically stating the constitutionality of the statute as the necessary ground for decision, compels this view and precludes any doubt as to the propriety of our determination of the constitutional issue on the merits. Grayson v. Harris, 267 U.S. 352, 45 S.Ct. 317, 69 L.Ed. 652; State of Indiana ex rel. Anderson v. Brand, 303 U.S. 95, 58 S.Ct. 443, 82 L.Ed. 685. The case now has been reargued and submitted.

Article 5—C was added to the Religious Corporations Law of New York in 1945 and provided both for the incorporation and administration of Russian Orthodox churches. Clarifying amendments were added in 1948. The purpose of the article was to bring all the New York churches, formerly subject to the administrative jurisdiction of the Most Sacred Governing Synod in Moscow or the Patriarch of Moscow, into an administratively autonomous metropolitan district. That district was North American in area, created pursuant to resolutions adopted at a sobor held at Detroit in 1924.2 This declared autonomy was made effective by a further legislative requirement that all the churches formerly administratively subject to the Moscow synod and patri- archate should for the future be governed by the ecclesiastical body and hierarchy of the American metropolitan district.3 The foregoing analysis follows the interpretation of this article by the Court of Appeals of New York, an interpretation binding upon us.4 Article 5—C is challenged as invalid under the constitutional prohibition against interference with the exercise of religion.5 The appellants' contention, of course, is based on the theory that the principles of the First Amendment are made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth.6 See Stokes, Church and State in the United States (1950), vol. 1, c. VIII.

The Russian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous member of the Eastern Orthodox Greek Catholic Church. It sprang from the Church of Constantinople in the Tenth Century. The schism of 1054 A.D. split the Universal Church into those of the East and the West. Gradually self-government was assumed by the Russian Church until in the Sixteenth Century its autonomy was recognized and a Patriarch of Moscow appeared. Fortescue, Orthodox Eastern Church, c. V. For the next one hun- dred years the development of the church kept pace with the growth of power of the Czars but it increasingly became a part of the civil government—a state church. Throughout that period it also remained an hierarchical church with a Patriarch at its head, governed by the conventions or sobors called by him. However, from the time of Peter the Great until 1917 no sobor was held. No patriarch ruled or was chosen. During that time the church was governed by a Holy Synod, a group of ecclesiastics with a Chief Procurator representative of the government as a member.

Late in the Eighteenth Century the Russian Church entered the missionary field in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. From there churches spread slowly down the Pacific Coast and later with the Slavic immigration to our eastern cities, particularly to Detroit, Clevelant, Chicago, Pittsburgh and New York. The character of the administrative unit changed with the years as is indicated by the changes in its name. See note 2. In 1904 when a diocese of North America was created its first archbishop, Tikhon, shortly thereafter established himself in his seat at Saint Nicholas Cathedral. His appointment came from the Holy Synod of Russia as did those of his successors in order Platon and Evdokim. Under those appointments the successive archbishops occupied the Cathedral and residence of Saint Nicholas under the administrative authority of the Holy Synod.

In 1917 Archbishop Evdokim returned to Russia permanently. Early that year an All Russian Sobor was held, the first since Peter the Great. It occurred during the interlude of political freedom following the fall of the Czar. A patriarch was elected and installed—Tikhon who had been the first American Archbishp. Uncertainties as to the succession to and administration of the American archbishopric made their appearance following this sobor and were largely induced by the almost contemporaneous political disturbances which culminated swiftly in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Russian Orthodox Church was drawn into this maelstrom. After a few years the Patriarch was imprisoned. There were suggestions of his counter-revolutionary activity. Church power was transferred, partly through a sobor considered by many as non-canonical to a Supreme Church Council. The declared reforms were said to have resulted in a 'Living Church' or sometimes in a 'Renovated Church.' Circumstances and pressures changed. Patriarch Tikhon was released from prison and died in 1925. He named three bishops as locum tenens for the patriarchal throne. It was one of these, Sergius, who in 1933 appointed the appellant Benjamin as Archbishop. The Church was registered as a religious organization under Soviet law in 1927. Thereafter the Russian Church and the Russian State approached if not a reconciliation at least an adjustment which eventuated by 1943 in the election of Sergius, one of the bishops named as locum tenens by Tikhon, to the Patriarchate. The Living or Renovated Church, whether deemed a reformed, a schismatic or a new church, apparently withered away. After Sergius' death a new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexi, was chosen Patriarch in 1945 at Moscow at a sobor recognized by all parties to this litigation as a true sobor held in accordance with the church canons.7

The Russian upheaval caused repercussions in the North American diocese. That Diocese at the time of the Soviet Revolution recognized the spiritual and ad- ministrative control of Moscow. White Russians, both lay and clerical, found asylum in America from the revolutionary conflicts, strengthening the feeling of abhorrence of the secular attitude of the new Russian Government. The church members already here, immigrants and nativeborn, while habituated to look to Moscow for religious direction, were accustomed to our theory of separation between church and state. The Russian turmoil, the restraints on religious activites and the evolution of a new ecclesiastical hierarchy in the form of the 'Living Church,' deemed noncanonical or schismatic by most churchmen, made very difficult Russian administration of the American diocese. Furthermore, Patriarch Tikhon, on November 20, 1920, issued Decision No. 362 relating to church administration for troublesome...

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