www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West What is ROCOR's positioin regarding Moscow Patriarch's lies ?

It's nice to be appreciated - thank you! I was inspired to go and make a nice large portion of hot chocolate laced with something spiritual.

Incognitus

Oh Yummy

Care to pass some over the Internet to get here ? Have to say the virtual stuff I have drunk in the past really just does not cut it .

Gimme the real live stuff every time

Dear Incognitus,

You chastened me on another thread for not being serious enough.

If this is your idea of being serious, then . . .

TO YOUR HEALTH!!

Alex

No, but it's what I had after Pascha this year. Believe me, I would have been much happier with a bottle of Mount Gay. There's always next year!

Andrew

fact of the matter: the Saracens and Turks referrred to Rome as Rum
Much Love,
Jonn

Dear John,

Correction - it's how they referred to Constantinople ie. the EP was the "Patriarch of the Romans."

The "Rum Orthodox" are the Byzantine Orthodox, the true Romans.

To be a "Rum" or "Rhoum" (sounds like there's some lack of phlegm involved . . .) , was to be the heir of the best of Greco-Roman civilization - the national languages were both Greek and Latin, one's culture was an amalgam of the two and one's religion was. . . Orthodox Catholic, the fullness of it.

To be in schism from the "Rum" Church was to also enter into a cultural eclipse.

That is why the Orthodox referred to the church of "Old Rome" as "Latin" (culturally partialized) and why the Roman Catholic Church referred to the Orthodox East as the "Greeks."

Also, Romania is named for the Latin word for the Roman Empire in Latin - Romania.

This is also why the Orthodox don't accept they ever went into "schism from Rome."

Constantinople is more than Byzantium - it IS new Rome, the inheritor of what old Rome was.

Alex

Dear Alex, I must say that the Baptism of Rus' by Volodymyr(which we just celebrated today at St. Vladimir's church here in the Ann Arbor area) and the union of 1596 may be both been forced, but there was one important differance.The inhabitants of Kyivan Rus' were pagans, wheras Ukraine is 1596 was Christian and the Union was a Polish political move to wean the Ukraians away from Orthodoxy. Today, of course, every Ukrainian Catholic knows that he/she belongs to an Eastern-Rite church in communion with the Papacy.What happened in 1946 was forced on the Greek Catholic population by the COMMUNISTS backing the MP.I have a book in Ukrainian, "Pravdy ne vtopyty", which is roughly translated as "TRuth always prevails"It is the memiors of a Ukrainian Orthodox Priest,Fr. Vitaly Sahajdakiwskyj, and his 59 years of Priesthood(written in 1977) in Poland, the DP Camps in Germany and finally Canada and the US.I agree with much of what he writes,BUT I think he was mistaken is describing the union of "46" in positive terms.I'm sure he took a lot of flack from Ukrainians for this, too.Fr.Andrei

Bless, Father Andrei,

I agree with what you say, absolutely!

I met Fr. Sahajdakiwsky (he was a bit, shall we say, "controversial" for reasons other than his book ).

Not only he, but also the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko (whose books are actually rife with anti-Uniate statements) APPROVED of what happened in 1946 and even called Fr. Gabriel Kostelnyk a true martyr (he lists him in his book of Ukrainian saints).

The synod of 1946 was indeed carried out by an atheist government.

However, the Russian government has always made every effort to destroy the Greek-Catholic church and enforce its Orthodox church in western Ukraine, as we know.

In all cases, the methodology employed was similar - first, a campaign for "de-Latinization," then an "awareness campaign" to underscore how violently the Polish kingdom imposed the Union of Brest (which was true, of course).

And this was done to discredit the Union today - if it was imposed by the Poles, then it should be just discarded and "we'll help you (whether you like it or not)."

This was also not only about imposing Orthodoxy - it was about imposing a specific kind of Orthodoxy, the Russian (Muscovite) Orthodox Church on people who were, in their national consciousness, Ukrainians and others.

Both Tsarist and Soviet Russia shared a common imperial goal - it mattered not whether the former "believed" in God and the latter didn't.

And the Orthodox Church in either case was the servant of the state (in both cases, Orthodoxy was persecuted and "beaten up" - it is just that the soviets did a much more extensive job of it).

For these reasons, it is appalling that the autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox churches in the West would approve of what happened in 1946 insofar as the synod at that time resulted in a "reunion with Orthodoxy."

It was no "reunion." The Greek-Catholics did not return to the Kyivan Orthodox Metropolia of St Peter Mohyla.

They were driven into the embrace of the Muscovite church that was every bit the enemy of independent Ruthenian/Ukrainian eccesial and national life that the historic Polish church was.

And the difference today is also that the Muscovite Church refuses to "let go" of Ukraine and refuses to alter its former imperial ideology with respect to the "other Russias."

Alex

Dear Alex, I'm afraid I have to take issue with you when you say that Tsarist and soviet Russian shared the same imperial mentality.You may not like either the Russians or the Tsars,BUT, can one say that 60 million people perished under the Tsars?(This may be a conservative figure).You yourself must know the about 8 million Ukrainans alone perished in 1933,what Tsar ever killed 8 million Ukrainians?Speaking of numbers of people killed, right now there aamong the Slovaks ,there is the controversy surrounding Fr. Jozef Tiso, the Slovak President during WWII because 60,000 Slovak Jews were deported to death camps during his presidency.Where is the outrage over the 60,000,000 plus who perished in the Soviet camps, including Ukrainians, Jews, Russians,Poles, and many others?Yes, there was corruption in Tsarist Russia.But during the same time frame, there were horrendous outrages against Black Americans, for which we are paying the price today.Being a Canadian, you must know that the Homecountry ,Britian, ethnicly cleansed the Highland Scots and the Irish.Also, at no time did Western Ukraine belong to Tsarist Russia, and the Austrian government there was no more tolreant of Orthodoxy than the Tsarist Government was of Greek Catholicism.Only in Romanian areas including Bukovina, and in Voivodina(which was sort of a buffer against the Ottomans) was Orthodoxy tolreated in the old Austro-Hungarian empire.Of course, I'd say that the Hapsburgs were preferable to Hitler, just as the Tsars were preferable to the Soviets. As for Metropolitan Ilarion,I'm really surprised that he would have seen the events of 1946 in a positive light.I also met Fr.Sahajdakiwsy once.He autographed my copy of his book.I admired and respected him, but I think by portaying the forced union of 46 in a positive light, he was setting himself up for severe criticism.Fr. Andrei

Dear Father Andrei,
Most of your posting is right on the button. One matter, though: Austria-Hungary really was two different countries sharing a monarch, and the policy on religious toleration differed between the two. In Austria, there was toleration for Eastern Orthodoxy - in L'viv (or Lemberg) an Orthodox parish functioned throughout the Austrian period (it's still there, and now belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate). Orthodox service-books in Church-Slavonic were printed at the expense of the Austrian Crown. The Old-Ritualists had their most important center in Bukovina, at Bila Krynytsia (or Bielaia Krinitsa), despite repeated protests against this from the Tsar.

Once or twice there were episodes of villages in Galicia where the local Greek-Catholic parish was threatening to become Orthodox. [The most famous case was at Hnylychky.] The villagers were using this threat because for one reason or another they were annoyed with the Greek-Catholic authorities (in the case of Hnylychky, the village belonged to a larger parish, which had a filial church in the village but was building a new church in the larger village which was the center of the parish - and the folks in Hnylychky did not want to find themselves pressured to contribute towards that new building). What would then happen was simple enough: the villagers were informed that they had a perfect legal right to become Eastern Orthodox if that was their wish, but they could not take the church building with them, and they would find themselves within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan in Bukovina - meaning that they would not be able to receive financial subsidies from Tsarist Russia. This information usually cooled the ardour of the prospective converts, and life would settle back down.

Austria did mistreat Father Ivan Naumovych, unfortunately, and that cannot be justified.

You know what was happening to the Old-Ritualists and the Greek-Catholics in the Russian Empire.

Incognitus

Fr Al mentioned the genocidal artificial Ukrainian famine of 1932 - 1933 in which an estimated 7 - 10 million men, women, and children died of starvation. It should be noted that food was available on the Russian side of the border (except in regions where ethinic Ukrainians and Germans resided).

Although the ROC and the ROCOR now commemorate many martyrs of Soviet Communist persecution, the ROC's Moscow Patriarch gives directives to his Kyivan metropolitan not to do the same for the victims of this act of genocide.

The R0C has continued it's decades old participation in a global conspiracy to cover up the evil perpetrated against the Ukrainian people by Moscow. When will the ROCOR firmly and openly acknowledge the Ukrainian genocidal famine of 1932 - 1933 ?

Does the ROCOR support this ROC's position on genocide denial ?

I.F.

I am in no way a spokesman for ROCOR, so I can't offer a statement on official policy.I do think it is safe to say that Bishop Agathangel, who is in charge of ROCOR parishes in U

Bless, Father Al,

I am myself a strong supporter of constitutional monarchy and support the return of the Tsar to Russia (I also venerate highly the Romanov Martyrs, Emperor Paul I and Alexander I (St Theodore Kuzmich)).

Certainly, the Tsars had none of the genocidal tendencies of the soviets and I NEVER implied they did.

The mentality was similar only insofar as both wanted to assimilate certain nations to their empire - using differing means, of course.

Both used disgruntled GC priests with Russophile tendencies to bring over Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy, whether through subtle means or less subtle means.

And both were certainly against an independent Ukrainian (and other) national identity and statehood.

Alex

Dear Jean Francois,

Actually, the UOC-MP Metropolitan does indeed serve panakhydas for the victims of the Holodomor!

The New Martyrs and their veneration as saints is a separate matter - the Holodomor victims are not canonized nor will they be, unless certain instances can be shown to have been martyrs.

In fact, the UOC-MP is bending over backwards to be as "Ukrainian" as possible . . .

There are many members of the UOC-MP who are sincere Orthodox Christians and also sincere Ukrainians.

The autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchs honour Met. Sabodan highly as he was, at one time or another, their theology professor . . .

He is also a master at public relations - we would do well to learn from him in this department too!

My point is that both the MP and ROCOR share the same view of East Slavic history. Both repudiate soviet imperialism.

But that doesn't mean they repudiate Tsarist imperialism.

Nor will they.

Alex