www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Putin Gives Jaw-Dropping Defense of Christian Values

Lol, sure, like the middle of the desert and other uninhabited regions. Show me a major metropolitan city with a relatively diverse group of people - like Chicago or Detroit or DC - in Iraq and how "peaceful" it is.

You don't think Baghdad and Mosul are major metropolitan cities? Look up the geography, these cities have over a million inhabitants and include Christians of every branch as well as Jews.

Sure, how does it compare to Detroit or Chicago sociologically, financially, demographically, etc? I've read these before - statements like a city in Afghanistan, Iraq, or "fill in the blank" warzone city is safer than "fill in the US city", but are they really comparable? Would you be afraid that the average Chicago or Detroit policeman might try to kidnap you for ransom, perhaps a non-denominational or Baptist might plant a roadside bomb on the route to your local Eastern Church, or that the current local government supports enforcing the equivalent of anti-Catholic/Orthodox protestant 'sharia', and will turn a blind eye if the neighbors take everything worth a dime in your church and possibly rape your wife and daughters for being Christian? Which prelates from any Church - Eastern, Western, Greek, Assyrian; heck protestant, pentecostal, or Muslim, Jew or otherwise - have been kidnapped and whereabouts unknown from Chicago or Detroit?

Seriously, you don't think the latter has taken a stand?

P.S. Knowing the internet, I'm willing to bet that at least one person will read that and think I'm praising him.

I am not one who will judge his spiritual state.

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/01-07-2013/124992-russia_christianity-0/

[img]http://oneway2day.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/czar-vladimir-putin-2_thumb.jpg?w=388&h=486[/img]

I think the only 5 places left on earth where you can be a Christian, without persecution will be Russia, Greece, Georgia, Ukraine & Romania. All Orthodox countries I might add!

All the predominately Catholic Countries (Europe/USA) - these are gone to the dogs. Its over. I've met more Christians leaving Catholicism than actual catholics. When I say "leaving Catholicism" - I mean they've gone to the point to demand that their names are erased from baptism registers.

Easy come -easy go.

Very strong and well said, well worth reading. Thank you Alexandr. Here is an excerpt:

Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and rightly so. "The Soviet Union was the Russian people held hostage by the Communists"- Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn wrote about those evils in many of his books, which Reagan was well aware of. On May 30, 1988 in Moscow, President Ronald Reagan was at the Danilov Monastery. He said,

"There is a beautiful passage that I'd just like to read, if I may. It's from one of this country's great writers and believers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the faith that is as elemental to this land as the dark and fertile soil. He wrote:

"When you travel the byroads of central Russia, you begin to understand the secret of the pacifying Russian countryside. It is in the churches. They lift their bell-towers-graceful, shapely, all different-high over mundane timber and thatch. From villages that are cut off and invisible to each other, they soar to the same heaven.... The evening chimes used to ring out, floating over the villages, fields, and woods, reminding men that they must abandon trivial concerns of this world and give time and thought to eternity."

Putin and Reagan listened to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Those who listen to their elders tend to be wiser. Vladimir Putin allows Christianity to flourish unlike the liberals in America who have their own warped idea of freedom from God and a denial of evil's existence in the world.

There is a reason that most public schools in America do not teach the Bolshevik revolution and its true consequences. There are people in the West that want to remove everything related to Christ from "public view" just as the communists did during the Soviet enslavement of Russia. 20th century Russia is proof that Christianity can prevail against their darkness and confusion.

Today, the liberals who control the West fear Putin as though doomsday was tomorrow. It's not a nuclear threat but rather a spiritual renewal that threatens them. It is not Putin but Russia's Christianity they fear. Rather, it is Christ they truly fear and hate. They try to persuade Americans by scaring everyone with ideas of Putin as the evil KGB out to destroy the world. They "reason" KGB is bad. Putin is KGB. Therefore, Putin is bad. They demonize Putin because it's not our world but their liberal world that is in danger of being destroyed.

Xavier Lerma


http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/01-07-2013/124992-russia_christianity-0/

Awesome!

I am glad that Putin is not anti-Christian and supports the Russian Church. However, I don't think Russia is populated by only saints. I suspect any visitor to Russia, or any other Orthodox country, could find sin and depravity just as easily as in the west. People are not that different from place to place and they all tend toward similar behaviors.

Aint that the truth!

On the other hand, any sin that is encouraged-- *any* sin, no matter what it is, when encouraged officially (and officially is not only laws, but it can even be considered the entertainment industry, literature, education system, and media), will obviously proliferate. Our human nature is such that we like sin, and confusion about right and wrong, does not tend to steer us towards God and away from sin.

At least that is how I see it having lived through half a century of change in all aspects of life, and having raised children.

One example would be magazines. The girl's teen magazine SEVENTEEN for instance, in the 60's and 70's advocated virginity. Dating articles were about love, relationships and kissing. Today's SEVENTEEN magazine talks about casual sex on the first date, masturbation, etc. The young girl of the 60's and 70's therefore, tried to be chaste and thought of a sexual relationship ONLY in the context of love and eventual marriage. The young girl of the 2000's doesn't care to be chaste as it is seen as abnormal, and she thinks of a sexual relationship as being equal to that of her male counterparts, filled with one night stands that are purely lustful and have no emotion attached.

(Of course in both instances, these are generalizations, as there are, and always will be, exceptions, but they do involve a good majority.)

Meanwhile - minorities were still not allowed to sit in the same restaurants, drink out of the same water fountains, become Officers in the military above white enlisted, and other depravities. Not to mention all we know about the shenanigans hidden within the Church, police departments, teachers and schools and other issues we now recognize should not be kept out of sight. There was an old saying, even within the monastic movements of the earliest times - too much wine and young boys tempt the monks to stray. Somewhere in between that warning and the 2000s, we forgot and pretended there as a perfect bygone era that needs recapturing.

Michael,

I lived in the North. Minorities were our classmates and our coworkers and our friends. Sorry to disillusion you.

I would not give up my childhood and the era I grew up in today for anything in the world... Living and growing up in the 60's and 70's in NY was the best thing ever (despite the problems of the 70's--crime, deep recession, drugs)!

No one loves each other despite racial and ethnic differences more than New Yorkers...Sorry to burst your bubble...now getting back to the topic of encouraging homosexuality as a society.

When I see Prince Vladimir Putin's helicopters bringing aid to the people of the Philippines and other disaster areas about the world, and any organization of the ROC having the outreach of Catholic Relief Services, then I might pay heed to his excoriations of the West and condemnation of its unchristian values. Awesome? Talk is cheap.

Alice, I agree we as a society should not encourage this, however I am living and grew up in the North as well - it is not a cake walk for blacks, hispanics, non-white recent immigrants, or those who are poor. Sorry to go on a tangent.