www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Russian Orthodox Met. approves Stalin's liquidation of UGCC

Absolutely agree. Church attendance is higher in Ukraine per person than in Russia. Most Orthodox Ukrainians would rather belong to Orthodox Churches (KP, UAOC, noncanonical) than they would to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarch. Last I looked 14 million Ukrainians belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyivan Patriarchate) as opposed to the UOC (MP) which has about 9 million.

The Orthodox Church under the MP in Ukraine is viewed as a tool of the Kremlin by many Ukrainian faithful, and not without basis. Ukraine is the largest predominantly Orthodox country in the world without its own Autocephelous Church (or Patriarchate for that matter). Countries with faithful many times smaller have their own Orthodox patriarchs.

Why doesn't Ukraine? Because of Moscow's imperial ambitions, imo. Heck, the MP could have long ago granted Ukraine's Orthodox an Autocephelous Church but it will not even grant it true autonomous status. Instead, the MP visits Ukraine and tells the people they belong to the Russian world (mir) and should be loyal (meaning to the Kremlin in effect).

If Moscow could remove itself from empire building in Ukraine and allow a truly Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church canonically recognized, I have no doubt the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church would quickly engage such a Ukrainian Orthodox Church in ecumenical talks with a view to reestablishing a united Kyivan Church (Rome and Moscow should be left out of such talks imo). As it is, in Ukraine unfortunately, the second most populous Orthodox country on earth, it is a foreign capital that calls the shots on Orthodoxy, not Ukrainians. How can the UGCC engage in talks with a Russian Orthodox Church which holds the same view of it as did its Russian Orthodox predecessors in 1946 under Stalin?

As for people saying this talk only opens up old wounds; well, there would be no reopened old wounds had the ROC left the Stalinist synod of 1946 alone but to this day it views it as legitimate. Is it really that difficult to condemn Stalinist orchestrated synods in today's day and age, never mind approve?

AMM, I'll ask you what I asked Hetman. Were those Ukrainian Catholic bishops, priests, tortured to death by the Soviets martyrs for Christ? To me it seems important. I consider the ROC Patriarch Tikhon a martyr for Christ under the Soviets. What say you about Ukrainian Catholic martyrs?

I'll throw a little kerosene on the fire. In 988, at the Baptism of Rus, St. Volodymyr, and all of those baptized became Greek Catholics! They were in communion with the Pope of Rome!

Have a Great Fast!

Dn. Robert

Of course they were. As were Protestants thrown in the Gulag or who died of famine.

Thanks.

The point that is missed is that at the Lvov Sobor the populace of Galicia was given the choice of becoming fully papal, Roman Catholic, or returning to Russian Orthodoxy, and the majority clearly (over 90%) clearly chose the ancestral faith. What the Lvov Sobor liquidated was Byzantine Rite papal communities on the territory of the Soviet Union, but not the Roman Catholic church. While there were indeed some who, rather than return to Orthodoxy, became Roman Catholics and were ministered by the Archbishop of Vilnius. At least in nascent stages.

How can the Russian Orthodox Church maintain imperialism in the place where it was founded? Doesn't add up. Nor do the documents of ANY of the major brotherhoods nor do ANY of the treaties of ANY of the Cossack governments, prior to the twentieth century (But even the Hetmanate did not interfere with the Russian Orthodox church not did Hetman Skoropadsky join with the self consecrated "sobor" of Lipkowsky at first and he condemned the martyrdom of St. Vladimir of Kiev), recognize anything but the Russian Orthodox Church as the native and state church of the Little Russian and Rusin peoples.

I condemn the L'viv Synod of 1946 and uphold the Orthodox Synod of Brest held in 1596 in the Protestant school (the Polish King having shut all the Orthodox Churches, except the one put at the disposal of those creating the UGCC).

Check your Code of Canon Law (in Latin, of course)

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/j...19901018_codex-can-eccl-orient-1_lt.html
The UGCC has no authority, as the UGCC sui juris, to leave Rome out of any talks with anyone. Kiev (and Moscow) cannot unite with someone outside of the Catholic communion of the Orthodox Church without leaving it and being struck from its diptychs. If the UGCC wants to become an Old Catholic Church of the Ukrainian rite, and wants to join a primate deposed by the Orthodox and stricken from all the diptychs of the autocephalous Churches, and form a Ukrainian version of the Polish National Catholic Church, they are free to do that now. They do not need to wait for Moscow, or for that matter, for the Vatican.

I would never go on record to justify ANYTHING that Stalin did.

It seems that Moscow is not the only one feeling the need to "prevent confusion among the faithful":

Hetman Vygovsky rebelled at Konotop because the Western Ukraine and Vohlynia and Galicia were not included in the Russian empire and were ceded back to Poland by a "diplomatic arrangement." He then proceeded to negotiate the Treaty of Hadiach with Recz Pospolita which established the "Principality of Russia" within its boundaries WHICH HE HEADED. He wrote his correspondences, not in Mova, nor is the treaty penned in it, but in Literary Russian. Nor did he or his Cossacks EVER call themselves ethnically "Ukrainian," but specifically Russian. Indeed, the remnant of what was left of his Cossacks on those territories founded the Gaidamak movement which was militantly Russian Orthodox in form and, most curiously, Taras Grigorovich Schevchenko was very much in sympathy to it having written a poem in praise of one of its principle martyrs Ivan Gonta. These Gaidamaks resisted the Galician and Transylvanian and Carpatho Russian unias. Indeed, what some call nascent "Ukrainianism" was nothing more than disaffection with Russian imperial society which was seen in their eyes as having abandoned the religious and political aspiration of Little Russians and Rusins, as having betrayed "Rus'". That was Schevchenko's point.

In this, I tend to concur and have little sympathies for many imperial policies. Thus, I see Hetman Vygovsky as a Russian Cossack hero, and Hetman Vygovsky called himself Russian. So did Gonta. So did Schevchenko.

Now in the thirteenth century, the Metropolia of Kiev had been relocated to Vohlynia. Polish conquest was certain and the prospects for free action were ever more dubious, nor was patronage from the Lithuanian Russian state anything that seemed stable; therefore, St. Peter of Vohlynia transferred the Cathedra of Kiev and All Rus', what became titled by CONSTANTINOPLE, the "Great Russian Metropolia of Kiev," to the North where it eventually rested in Moscow and for a time the Metropolitans of Moscow were titled the "Metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus'." This was recognized by Constantinople and the entire Orthodox world. The Metropolia went on to become the Moscow Patriarchate. Thus the lineage is direct BEGINNING IN 988 and the Little Russian Metropolia of Kiev abolished in 1686 HAS NO DIRECT LINEAGE FROM IT, that is why it was called "Little Russian" to distinguish it, but, no, the Russian church began as a missionary church of Byzantium and only achieved autocephaly and the status of Patriarchate centuries later, where the Patriarch of Constantinople himself was one of the first Patriarchs of All the Russias for a brief time.

Eventually, this unsettled the Lithuanian crown, for it undermined its claims on the territories of Rus' so Constantinople established for them the Little Russian Metropolia of Kiev anew. That Metropolia effectively became defunct with the Brest synod of 1596, and was only nominally and illicitly (in terms of being outlawed by Recz Pospolita) maintained (primarily by the strength of the Russian Brotherhoods and the Kiev Caves monastery who campaigned for REUNIFICATION WITH RUSSIA AND THE ALL RUSSIAN IDEA. Indeed, the modern word "Russia" first comes into being from their schools and that Holy All Russian monastery) by brave Greek (and other Orthodox) hierarchs and priests who conducted their activities in secret and amid the worst of persecutions. Recz Pospolita captured, imprisoned and starved to death the Partriarch of Jerusalem who consecrated Priests and aided in the Kheiritonias of Bishops he labored to reestablish to Little Russian sees. Then the Cossack uprising of Khmelnitsky occured. The Russian Orthodox church was again proclaimed the state church. The unia was abolished. The Perejaslavl Pact reunited some of Little Russia with the rest of Rus'.

Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich began linguistic, cultural and literary reforms placing in prominence members of the Russian Brotherhoods, especially from Kiev but also from other Russian Brotherhoods, and they occupied the highest strata of the emergent All Russian empire as that was the Tsar's purpose, and they quickly dominated the upper echelons of the Russian church's hierarchy being the engines for the Nikonian reforms and chief implementers of them after +Nikon's fall from grace and then subsequent condemnation.

Little Russians "Ukrainians" dominated the hierarchy and upper echelons of the Moscow Patriarchate and subsequent "Synodal period" into the 1850s. Thus, by 1686, they simply reunited an ailing structure from which they originated and administered it themselves having gained control for over one and a half centuries of the ENTIRE Russian church. Indeed, the Little Russians were the catalysts behind a new All Russian identity and empire which they labored to create and in which they and their descendents enjoyed the prosperity at the expense of the Great Russian culture of Moscow WHICH THEY SUPPLANTED. Simply ask an Old Believer or read any of their tracts from these eras.

Likewise, the imperial culture of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and subsequently of Peter was established on standards imported principally from Northern Europe and, especially, the Little Russian territories and reflected their sensibilites and culture. The shift from Moscow Tsardom to St. Petersburg empire in many ways was the shift from Great Russian (old Kievan Russian) culture to an All Russian cultural transformation heavily influenced by the Kiev Russian Brotherhood and the nobles and scholars and churchmen it produced. Even modern literary Russian has as one of its parents the Middle Ruthenian it used. That is clearly seen by cursory reading of it. The Imperial era then was in all actuality a Kievan era.

Now, St. Alexander Nevsky's grandson founded the principality of Moscow. He earned the title of Grand Prince of Kiev and All the Russias. Eventually his direct descendents came to bear that title and through his line Kievan Rus' NEVER passed out of existence but became the Moscow Tsardom. That is an unbroken line from Rurik himself, who first came to Rus' by arriving in Novgorod. Thus, the legitimacy of all other claimants falls when one considers that Rus' was principally the Varangian title of themselves and their retinues initially and that the Ruriks were the legimate historical legacies of it. Thus, Rus' faded in the West, triumphed in the East, which later liberated and reunited most Western territories to Rus'. No Western territories can claim anything but subjugation and either the betrayal of their Rurikid princes or their murders and suppression, while Moscow and the North emerge from the Mongol yoke into freedom having preserved Kievan Rus' in continuity and the heirs preserve that continuity unto this day. That is the modern state of Russia.

I do realize that all the politicos of the post Soviet Ukraine are nothing but the remnants of a Soviet aristocracy which rose to power by gaining control of whatever state resources it could. That being said, the neo Nazi tendencies of the Yuschenko regime along with the open embezzlements of Madam Timoshenko (along with those of Kravczuk and Kuchma) in no way create a paradigm of political purity for this mire of post Soviet politics.

However, in a democratic election monitored by Western authorities specifically tasked with rooting out all attempts on Yanukovich's part "to steal the election," Yanukovich resoundedly won the majority of the vote and enjoys the confidence and support of the population. He is not their ruler, but, rather their elected president.

They are political martyrs, for in all cases, they were given the option of becoming Roman Catholic prelates or returning to the Orthodox Church, and both options they declined for political reasons.

There has been a longstanding denunciation by groups in the Jewish community who castigate the Vatican for at least initially blessing Hitler and it is clear that some Catholic activity was manipulated by him in his ostpolitik, but it is clear that the Vatican has disassociated itself from it, at least in part as all the circumstances of that ostpolitik become known and internationally recognized.

Fr. Chaplin is one man whose words and methods have come under fire in the past and does not speak for the Patriarchate but for himself, irregardless of what Interfax may report.

Stalin promoted the modern "Ukrainian" ethnic identity and worked to suppress the native and historical Rusin identity by creating schools and chairs of "Ukrainian" studies.

He also liberated Galicia after over 700 years of Polish and Austrian domination and reunited it with its historical brothers in a "Ukrainian" territory consonant with the hopes dreams and ambitions of the "Ukrainian" activists.