www.byzcath.org

Thank you!

Oh, heavens! Would that not be caving in to the values of the corrupt and decadent West, instead of allowing Russia to be true to its own culture and history? I mean, Vladimir Putin is a gift from God, so Putinism must have some sort of divine sanction. [Sarcasm Alert!]

Did the Lord confirm that?

No, just Patriarch Kyril, and Putin's minions both in Russia and the West.

Oh? Why not? They and their darling are running the country now.

Go to a court, especially a divorce court or an eminent domain hearing post Kelo v. City of New London or a EPA evaluation, and report to us on the existence of these "rights."

You do know, btw, that now the US has more Czars than Russia ever had, no?

The Boy Scouts had a right to their policy on homosexuality. Now that the Demogogue-in-Chief has set his eyes on it, let's see how long they keep it.

Gerard Depardieu seems to have found Russia more attractive than Paris as of late.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/w...sia-with-sights-on-citizenship.html?_r=0

IOW the Russians see the "gay lifestyle" for what it is.

Russia just spent almost a century being remade by the likes of Stalin to conform to Marxist ideals.

What's the US's excuse for its moral slide in the "home of the free" and the land of super abundance?

Well said.

Yes, Russian society was de-Christianized through the physical torture and murder of Christian believers by the Bolsheviks; while American society has been de-Christianized voluntarily, without physical force, but watch out, because once the process of de-Christianization is complete we will see both psychological and physical persecution of Christians in the United States.

Of course the Bolsheviks voluntarily de-Christianized themselves alongs with plenty of Russians otherwise the White Army would have won.

But hey, if you think Russia is such a bastion of Christian virtue please move there and escape the coming tribulation.

Then you'll have many Americans that want to remain Christian like us trying to escape to other countries, in hopes that we'll be heard, but who knows how successful that'll even work out? With that mentality, I'm sure Canada's border security will be just stressed beyond repair, as it were.

And yet, it was remarkably easy to get the majority of Orthodox Russians to go along. According to Metropolitan Hilarion, this was due entirely to the alienation of the Church from the people, and the superficiality of the catechesis to which most Russians were exposed.

Some, like Trotsky, came already de-Christianized.

Despite that a lot of rot was around under the Czar, the Bolsheviks never made good their claim to represent the majority (bol'shinstvo) of the Socialists, let alone society at large. Even after nearly two decades of ruthless rule and imposition of atheism: the Census of 1937 found that 56.7% of those over 16 stated they were religious. That, despite the undercount of the gulags by half, and the brunt of the famines, Holodomor etc. hitting the more religious classes. And of course, the fear of reprisal (another million refused to answer the question). Stalin sent the census takers to Siberia, and a religion question (which Stalin had put on the census questionnaire himself, and the census was taken on Christmas Eve) was never taken again.

The fact that the White Army had fought itself to exhaustion for three years, such that the Czarist regime collapsed and the provisional government had no power, had nothing to do with their defeat by a Red Army swelled by fresh recruits...Nah.

Stalin had to ease up on the Church 25 years after the Revolution, in order to get enough support from the population at large to defeat Hitler.

The Russian Orthodox can take care of themselves. America, not so much.