www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News VATICAN TO CREATE NEW DIOCESES IN RUSSIA

Good.

It is a blessing for Ecumenical Orthodoxy that Rome is showing her true colors.

This is blessed good news for the Orthodox world; the blessed good news many of us have been anticipating for the last couple of years. Our integrity as a free and independent religious and spiritual culture is now assured.

Of course, we now know that our suspicions regarding the Unia were not unfounded, but entirely accurate.

Just as Jesus knew the heart of Judas, the Orthodox now know the heart of the uniates and their cynical masters in Rome.


FG

[ 02-08-2002: Message edited by: Free Greek ]

Many Orthodox would disagree with Free Greek.

I know Orthodox who are embarrassed by this attitude of `too bad a few Catholics survived the gulags and weren't totally wiped out by the Soviets.' They would be aghast. The Catholic Church is MUCH smaller than it was before the Revolution of 1917. (And we realize that the Orthodox Churches suffered enormously as well under the Communist era.)

Who complains that Orthodox have churches and are organized in traditional Catholic countries of Europe?

Perhaps it's time for Orthodox to adopt some sort of _Decree of Religious Freedom_.

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: DTBrown ]

I know Orthodox who are embarrassed by this attitude of `too bad a few Catholics survived the gulags and weren't totally wiped out by the Soviets.'

You are putting words into Free Greek's mouth. In his posting above he never gloated over the sufferings and murder of anyone. If anything he seems to be modeling himself after SS. Mark of Ephesus and Job of Pochaev, who said no union is better than false union. As jaw-dropping as it seems, I agree. I am Orthodox. His words can be read, however, as a gloating over schism as though it were an objectively good thing, which of course is wrong and is a most unattractive trait about some hardline Orthodox writing.

Who complains that Orthodox have churches and are organized in traditional Catholic countries of Europe?

Good point, Dave. I knew someone would bring it up — that and the overlapping Catholic and Orthodox dioceses/eparchies in North America.

The unpopular-here answer one likely would hear from Orthodox in Russia is, "We have the right because we are part of the Church and can't say that definitely by faith about any non-Orthodox group.' Both about the situation in Russia and about the diaspora Orthodox.

Perhaps it's time for Orthodox to adopt some sort of _Decree of Religious Freedom_.

Perhaps not.

In theory I can appreciate that decree, as someone who grew up with the American system and understands how freedom can help and protect the Church. See my page on religious liberty for more, including my conclusion on the subject.

But considering the damage that decree and much else of Vatican II have done — it was (mis)represented as relativism/indifferentism in many Catholic circles — I would rather not see such a decree in Russia.

Part of the miracle of Orthodoxy is that destructive Western movements have bypassed it. It was attacked from without, for example by Communism, but these foreign movements never corrupted it from within. Let's help keep it that way.

"O strange Orthodox Church, so poor and so weak, at the same time so traditional and yet so free, so archaic and yet so alive, so ritualistic and yet so personally mystical, Church where the pearl of great price of the Gospel is preciously preserved, sometimes beneath a layer of dust — Church that has so often proved incapable of action, yet which knows, as no other, how to sing the joy of Easter.' — Fr Lev (Gillet), "A Monk of the Eastern Church'

Preserve, O God, the holy Orthodox faith and Orthodox Christians for ever!

http://oldworldrus.com

You are off the wall. If the Greeks can set up a Metropolitanate in Italy, the Roman Catholics can make dioceses in Russia.

anastasios

Serge wrote:


I wholeheartedly agree! Nothing I wrote should suggest otherwise.

Perhaps I may be guilty of putting words in Free Greek's mouth. Usually this viewpoint is accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge any error of the Moscow Patriarchate for the events of that "sobor" of 1944 in Lviv.

As to religious freedom: Yes, some did misrepresent the Decree from Vatican II. But, that does not mean the concept is wrong. The Catechism explains:

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c1a1.htm#II


Religious freedom is, for me, an "inalienable right."

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: DTBrown ]

The historical role of the Church of Rome in Russia has been a subversive one: from the Teutonic Knights to Uniatism to Jesuit fifth columnists.

Only an ingenue would actually believe that Rome no longer is intent on subverting and destroying Orthodox Russia, her culture, and even her people. Rome's tactics have changed
(they are more subtle and covert.) But her ungodly intentions are just as evil and potentially destructive of Holy Orthodoxy on Russian soil.
After all, history is pregnant with the chronicles of Rome's attempts to subvert governments and overthrow nations and cultures, as well as religions.

Why should we believe she has changed?

Can we risk believing she has changed?

The Roman Catholic Church played a key role as a collaborator with Hitlersim and the occupation of Holy Russia during WWII. (As did Roman Catholics in Greece during the same war.) Of course, Hitlerism is a derivative of Catholicism.

And the Jesuits (with instructions from Rome and Germany) did collaborate and conspire with Lenin to topple the Romanoff dynasty and murder the Royal Family.

The situation of the Greek Orthodox Church in Italy is completely free of the subversive history of Catholicism and Rome's dark relationship with Holy Orthodox Russia. Greek Orthodoxy has never played a subversive role in Italy and is no threat to the Italian Catholic Church.

It is the duty of the holy hierarchs of Orthodox Russia to shield her children from the perverse and satanic influences of western culture, including that of the twin -sisters of schism and heresy,
catholicism and protestantism, which are merely opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin.


The Holy Mother of God turned back the barbaric hordes of the Teutonic Knights centuries ago. She has overthrown Communism in Holy Russia and she will turn back the neo-Teutonic Knights who come to Orthodox Russia as wolves in sheeps clothing.


Those who violate Her Domain shall suffer the severe consequences of their transgressions.

FG

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: Free Greek ]

The Roman Catholic Church played a key role as a collaborator with Hitlersim and the occupation of Holy Russia during WWII. (As did Roman Catholics in Greece during the same war.) Of course, Hitlerism is a derivative of Catholicism.

You lost me there. Hitlerism is part of a spectrum of sickness in Western thought, sure, but not a direct knockoff of Catholicism. Holy Russia in WWII? Sorry, sounds like Soviet propaganda.

http://oldworldrus.com

Our anonymous poster from Tampa states:


Scary stuff. I think if anything is an argument for religious freedom it is reading such diatribes as these. These are the sort that make "Grant Victory to Orthodox Christians!" sound like "Deutschland uber alles!"

"Free Greek": what is your take of the "Sobor" of 1944?

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: DTBrown ]

Both Catholicism and Hitlerism are the products of the West.

Just as Catholicism, throughout the majority of her history, has both proclaimed and practiced that it is her intention to bring all of mankind under the heel of the Vicar of Christ, she has also never denied the fact that her system is a totalitarian system which cannot tolerate opposition.

All of the totalitarian political and economic/social systems of the West have their origins in the totalitarian ideology of the Vatican.

Holy Russia certainly did not cease with the temporary ascendency of Communism in Russia.


Holy Russia lived on during those dark times in the hearts and lives of the millions of confessors, and multi-millions of simple Orthodox Christians, who were martyred by the Communist regime.

Communist propaganda? Absurd! That certainly is not the truth that the Communists would have felt comfortable "propagating."

Your feeble effort to slander the Holy Mother of God, Our Lady of Holy Russia, has failed.

FG

"Germany over all!"

Need I remind you that Hitler and many of the high officials of the Nazi Party were your Catholic confreres?

Hitlerism is a Catholic phenomenon, certainly not Orthodox.

The "sobor" of 1944?

My opinion of the sobor is the same opinion I share for the Council of Florence and the Union of Brest-Litovsk.

FG

There is no comparison of Florence or Brest-Litovsk. These had their problems to be sure but to compare the "Sobor" of 1944 with these has no basis in reality.

Your comparison of Florence: the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Bishops did attend and most signed (even if many later recanted).

Brest-Litovsk: these were the actual Bishops (not to deny some political influence in their appointment).

Again, no comparison. Even Bishop KALLISTOS recognizes the problem. Of course, he's just an "Ecumenist."

I never said Hitlerism was an Orthodox phenomenon. There is no basis in fact to claim it was Catholic.

From now on I will ignore our anonymous poster from Tampa. I disagree with the Forum's policy of allowing anonymous posters.

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Sobor of 1944?

Do you mean the pseudo-sobor of 1946 (in L'viv?) with no bishops, when the Soviet-controlled Moscow Patriarchate authorities* participated in the Soviets' official liquidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the USSR's newly acquired territory in Galicia and Ruthenia?

*For all its problems and untrustworthiness, the Soviet-era official Church in Russia never went into heresy or ceased to have grace. The Living Church movement of the 1920s, backed by the USSR, never caught on and was dropped after Met. Sergius' forced capitulation in 1927. I feel sorry for him. He literally was beaten into submission and had a gun to his head the rest of his life. A kind of hostage.

http://oldworldrus.com

Thanks, Serge.

I agree about Metropolitan Sergius. Even though I disagree strongly with some of the current positions of the Moscow Patriarchate on religious freedom I keep them in my prayers. Some deference must be given to them as the principal Apostolic Church in Russia. Nonetheless, other faiths have a right to exist and operate freely.

Dave Ignatius

[ 02-09-2002: Message edited by: DTBrown ]