www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News MP's REACTION TO PATRIARCHS LUBOMIR's AND FILARET's meeting

Gee,

I think Our Lady of Kazan would look pretty good in the new Patriarchal Sobor in Kyiv!

Seems like nobody wants it.

There was even a period of about 10 years where the Antiochian Greek Orthodox Patriarchate was not recognized by Constantinople, Jerusalem and Greece. See the article in the most recent "Word" magazine: http://www.antiochian.org/Word_Magazine/index.htm

I like the MOC already!

Logos Teen

Diak,

Does Rome consider the SSPX to truly be Catholic? Does it consider the Polish National Catholic Church to truly be Catholic? According to Rome, a Church has to be in union with it in order to truly be Catholic.

So a schismatic Church like the Macedonian Orthodox Church is not truly Orthodox since it is not in communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church. The Church is one; therefore such breakaway groups are not part of the Church strictly speaking.

I personally would still call Macedonians "Orthodox" in a sense but only if the adjective "schismatic" preceeds it immediately. They broke from communion with their patriarch (the patriarch of Serbia).

Also, I didn't say that they were unOrthodox for trying to DIALOGUE with Rome. They were considered unOrthodox for trying to JOIN Rome. Rome actually said "no thanks." Becoming schismatic and then trying to become Catholic without the rest of the Orthodox Church is not an Orthodox thing to do.

Chtec,

When Constaninople objected to the Patriarch in Antioch, it did not attempt to sever ties with the Church as a whole, and since Constantinople is not the head of Orthodoxy, it doesn't really matter much what they think, as long as the Antiochian Church maintained communion with other Orthodox Churches.

TeenOTIL,

As mentioned above, Rome said "no way" to their proposal.

anastasios

Dear Diak,

I forgot this part in the last post.

You state that Alexei is starting to look more and more like a poster child for collision with the Soviet regime...

Do you know who established the Ukrainain Autocephalous Church that later became the UOC-KP, though? You guessed it, the Soviet Regime (strictly speaking the Ukrainian nationalists "founded" the Church before the Soviets arrived but the Soviets took over the Church and made it grow, and established it as the favored Church in Ukraine for awhile).

Please read "The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia" by Dimitry Pospielovsky before going off on attacks of the Russian Orthodox Church for "collision with the Soviet regime." When you see what they too suffered you will be a lot less polemical in regards to Pat. Alexy.

anastasios

I guess Alex has been right all along. We are all Orthodox. Except for those of you who might have gotten something in the mail from Patriarch Alexei about excommunication. I haven't gotten mine yet.

John
Pilgrim and Orthodox ????

Until the Sobor is completed we can give it a temporary home at Saint Josaphat's Cathedral in Parma!

I read you post with interest and I do not dispute your facts or interpretations because they are beyond me and I suppose you may be right.

What interests me here is that you state that Rome has said no to reunion with the Macedonians because it would be improper to conclude such an agreement with just a portion of the Orthodox church.

The general consensus is that the Unia as originally constituted was a mistaken policy. This refusal by Rome may be an acknowledgement of that. The proposals to Unify all of the Churches east and west should be accepted by all of the major hierarchs of their respective churches before such a union can be considered concluded.

But history has shown that Orthodox prelates are notoriously incapable of leading their flocks into agreements of such significance. On several occasions Orthodox prelates have concluded agreements and then had them rejected by the folks back home.

When individual Orthodox churches behave in ways unacceptable to the others the most they can do is break communion. They have no other recourse and they use it. That process can go on ad infinitum and there is no telling what the final result could be.

The Melkites are a good example of this. The Patriarch of Antioch for the Melkites initiated communion with Rome and a major portion of the church withdrew and elected another Patriarch, starting the current line of Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Antioch.

The Roman church suffered no Schism when that agreement was reached. It normally wouldn't even be considered likely.

I do not think that any hierarch of the eastern Orthodox churches commands enough respect from their own flocks to conclude reunion agreements. If ever a grand attempt to reunify the churches is attempted there will always be major segments of the churches pulling out of the agreements. Anyone at all who might object has a sort of "liberum veto" over such matters, and the hierarchs that may conclude such agreements will be tarred with that "Uniates!" description and left with skeleton-like church organizations. It seems Orthodox hierarchs cannot totally count on the obedience even of individual monasteries, and independant thinking is a proud hallmark of eastern monasticism.

It might be that -from Rome's perspective- a "Unia" policy is the only possible real policy, as much as I hate to say it.

Maybe the Ukrainian situation will turn out differently, but I doubt it. Although alternatively the result might be the UGCC will break with Rome, that doesn't mean that they would automatically be in communion with all of Orthodoxy.

This is only my opinion here and I mean no disrespect. I would rather be wrong about this but I think the reunion of all Christianity will not occur before judgement day.

Begging everyone's forgiveness here,
Michael, sinner

Anastasios, no where in my posts did I "attack" the Russian Orthodox Church in toto. I want to make that extremely clear. There is no doubt that the ROC suffered under the Soviets. No where in my posts did I deny that the ROC suffered under the Soviets. Many martyrs known and unknown suffered at the hands of the Soviets. I pray to those martyrs for their intercession daily.

My avatar St. Leonid Federov spent time in Solovki prison with brother priests of the ROC which he himself documented. But the fact that some benefitted from Soviet collusion is equally as factual as the martyrs. I am in agreement with the ROCOR on that matter.

If you read my post you will notice that I stated the MP was in collusion, not the entire ROC. That is a BIG difference. The last two patriarchs, and especially ALexei, were clearly formed within the Soviet system. With Alexei at least that is pretty well documented.

Your statements about the Soviets establishing the UAOC are not correct. It was made of staunch anti-Soviet clergy who took advantage of the freedom of Ukraine in the early 1920s to establish a native Kyivan church free from domination from Moscow.

The Soviets did everything in their power to eliminate it, and nearly all of the UAOC bishops perished from Soviet persecution. If you want me to believe it was a Soviet church that is just laughable. And with regard to Patriarch Filaret, I earlier admitted his checkered past.

Although many would just turn away from the facts, and perhaps are embarassed by his strictly partisan and un-Christian attitude, Alexei was a mouthpiece for the Soviet Ministry for External and Church Affairs. He was groomed from an early age for this function and his Soviet career is well known and documented (Agent Drozdov).

But all arguments aside, the attitude and public statements of Alexei completely legitmize both the UGCC and any native Ukrainian Orthodox Churches better than any representative of those churches can. Father Andrij Chirovsky said once that the UGCC should have given Alexei a commission for the PR work he did for the UGCC during the Papal visit to Ukraine.

The OCA was granted autocephaly. The Bulgarians, etc. right on down the line. Likewise the historic Orthodox see of Kyiv rightfully deserves its autonomy, especially considering it was Moscow who was originally her daughter.

I have read Pospielovsky. It is a very good book which deeply affected me. And after reading that book (twice actually) it did not change my attitude towards Alexei at all. Earlier Patriarchs of Moscow perhaps, but not Alexei.

May God grant unity and peace to His people of Ukraine.

Dear Diak,

I have a problem with two points:

1) You say the ROC is different than the MP. I say no, they are one and the same. Please explain further what you mean.

2) You are right that the Soviets LATER persecuted the UAOC, which was AFTER they helped it grow (they turned on it later, after they succeeded in spliting it from the Moscow Patriarchate).

The MP is a good Church even if it has made mistakes. What Church hasn't? I am glad the MP colluded with the Soviets. Thank God, it's what kept religion accessible to the Orthodox population.

anastasios

Well, the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Archbishophric of Ohrid, is one of the most respected and venerable jurisdictions in the East, and also because it was a multi-ethnic jurisdiction, when it was supressed, phyletism appeared in the Balkans and the East.

It was unfairly supressed by other Patriarchates before (Constantinople, Pec, Bulgaria, Serbia), and after WWII it was integrated to the Serbian Church as a vasall Church without any respect of its history. I don't mant they were right in separating from the rest of the Churches, but I think their decision to restore its autocephaly was legitimate. Moreover, the Patriarchate of Ohrid did not broke with Rome and was in communion with both Rome and Constantinople some time after the original schism. In fact if they decided to unite with Rome in a "spiritual" way, it would not be so ilegitimate. Or would it be ilegitimate?

Well with all due respect Snoopy, learn your history. The "Macedonian" Orthodox Church was a creation of Tito in the 60's; it was gratned autonomy by Serbia but its decree of independence was illegal and uncanonical. And also for your point of it being suppressed; in actuality, for much of its history, even during the Ottoman Yoke, the see of Ohrid was considered part of the Bulgarian Church. It was the blessed Saint Boris-Michael who send the venerable man to Ohrid. Even after the Patriarchate of Tirnovo seized to exist with the exile of the holy St Evtimi, there was a patriarchate in Ohrid that was seen as being the nominal leader of the Bulgarian Church whilst it was under occupation. To claim that it was always independent is to play into the hands of Macedonian nationalists who have a tendency to claim other countrie's histories as their own.

Anton

I really don't think we can be "glad" that the MP colluded with the Soviets. At best, we can say that it was a lesser of evils if it involved the survival of the Church. Certainly this was true during the Stalinist era. But by the time of Breznev, the Church hierarchy was privileged by what was a corrupt, atheist State and ordinary priests and laypeople were persecuted and going to the Gulag (Anatoli Levitin, Gleb Yakunin, Dimitri Dudko, Alekszandr Ogorodnikov etc etc etc) This was not the proudest moment for the Church.

If Pat Sergius had not issued the Patriotic Encylical (which was cleverly worded so as to show that he was reffering to Mother Russia not the Soviet Union) then Stalin would not have opened more of the Churches. When Stalin came to power there were somewhere around 200 open Churches in the USSR. After Pat Sergius's letter and other collusions, the number jumped to c. 10000 and a seminary was opened.

Sure there were "soviet agents" and sure there is evidence that Pat Alexy II was one of them, but I think the work he has done to strengthen the Orthodox Church since the fall of Communism outdoes any evil he might have done in the past.

anastasios

I do see some kind of parallel with the schism that developed in Africa in the early centuries of the Church, with a vocable group actively calling down condemnation on those it accused of collaborating with the state in this thing that people keep bringing up with HH +Alexis' past. Those of the Church who were left in Russia had to come to some kind of agreement to ensure that it survived; they did not have the luxury to go into exile, with the emigres, safe from harm and then have the audacity to condemn the Patriarchate's actions which were done for the good of the Church. There is a tendency for people belonging to ROCOR to present the Imperial Past as something of a golden age, confident in suppressing the often unconfortable truth that most of society lived in. Hence, my extreme uncertainess in the whole canonisation of the Imperial Family, which was done as much as a way to placate ROCOR.

Anton