52 Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 4 Was Soloviev a Catholic? After collecting all pieces of information regarding Soloviev’s attitude to the Catholic and the Orthodox churches in the final years of his life and his decisions in receiving sacraments, one can conclude the following: an interpretation of his ecclesial standpoint should undervalue neither Soloviev’s Catholic profession of faith in 1896 nor his decision to receive the last rites from the Orthodox priest. The detailed account of both events in the biography by Soloviev’s nephew supports the view that Soloviev carefully considered his steps in both situations. His premonition of approaching death intensified his quest for an inner reconciliation of his personal relationship to the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. The end of his life can be seen as a manifestation of this last achievement of reconciliation, hence Soloviev’s final statement, indeed, his religious testament, about the ecclesial question in his last work Three Conversations. Here the desired end of ecumenical reconciliation is in this work only accomplished by a handful of the Catholic, Orthodox and protestant believers in the face of an apocalyptic catastrophe at the end of times. Both sides in the argument on Soloviev’s ecclesial affiliation are thus partially true. The claim by Russian authors that Soloviev never left the Orthodox communion is valid, insofar as to the end of his life, Soloviev maintained his conviction about the Catholicity of the Orthodox Church. His profession of the Catholic faith followed by reception of the sacraments from an Eastern-rite Catholic priest was apparently the result of Soloviev’s attempt to practice his Catholic faith at a time when he was barred from receiving the sacraments by the official Orthodox leadership which he had defied. In this instance, Soloviev simply decided to ignore and circumvent the Orthodox clergy by receiving sacraments from a validly ordained Russian priest who had been accepted into the Catholic Church. According to Mastiliak (2003, 141–142), Soloviev was at the time even involved in discussions led by Catholic-oriented Orthodox priests and believers in Russia about the possibility of erecting a hierarchy of Russian Catholic clergy within the Russian Orthodox Church; these proposals bore no result, however. The Catholic authors, e.g., Glazov (1997, 129) are also right when pointing out that Soloviev’s profession of the Catholic faith can be recognized as making him objectively – canonically – a full member of the Catholic Church. This constitutes a fact even if Soloviev’s submission to Rome involved no abjuration of Orthodoxy on his part, and he personally believed in having maintained his place in the Orthodox Church as an Eastern-rite or Russian Catholic. It is likewise true that according to the Catholic discipline, the reception of last rites by the Orthodox priest would not impair the status of a member of the Catholic Church. Soloviev’s ecclesial position was shaped by his ecumenical work. He defined himself as a Catholic, a member of the universal Church, via the Russian Orthodox Church. This is apparently the content of what might be called his religious testament – the act of his Catholic profession of faith in conjunction with his reception of last rites from an Orthodox priest. If, in fact, the “dogmatic issue” that had cost Soloviev the sacraments in the Orthodox Church was based upon his conviction to remain eligible for receiving the Orthodox sacraments after his formal profession of Catholicism – as general speculation has granted, then his admission of being wrong during his last confession would contain a touch of irony. By having allowed as much as that he had erred about the possibility of intercommunion in the Orthodox Church, Soloviev surely did not retract anything from his Catholic beliefs. Rather, he merely indirectly confirmed that he was indeed a Catholic, which – as he was sure – was not to be an obstacle for receiving sacraments in the extraordinary circumstances of imminent death. Soloviev’s “religious testament” should be interpreted in inclusive rather than exclusive terms. It affirmed both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church in its fundamental unity of the Church universal. One then might agree with Ján Komorovský (2004, 462) that, in a sense, Soloviev succeeded in bridging the Catholic and the Orthodox churches in himself. Acknowledgement The study is a partial outcome of the projects VEGA no. 2/0015/22 Reception of Biblical Family Terminology and Motives in Slavic Cultural Ambience and APVV-20-0130 Biblical Text and its Terminological Discourses in Modern Colloquial Language: The Example of the Pauline Letters.
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