Patriarch Kirill: It Shall Take Quite a Bit of Time Until Those Who Are Orthodox in Name Become Firm and Active Believers

Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all Russia (1946- )

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia believes that the Church should help people who are Orthodox in name to become active believers. Patriarch Kirill noted that people often think of themselves as Orthodox for cultural reasons. “It often begins that way. However, eventually, people grow in their religious consciousness and become closer to the Church. Still, it is important to be aware that Orthodoxy is a critical part of our cultural identity”, he said, in reply to questions from students at the Ice Palace in St Petersburg. “It is necessary for theory to closely follow practise. The Church plays a very important role in this respect. The primary task of the Church is to help those who consider themselves culturally Orthodox to become Orthodox in their way of life. This is what true religiosity entails, when people justify their actions on the grounds of moral criteria”, His Holiness emphasised. Therefore, he believes that “it is necessary for Russia to travel quite a long road until those who are Orthodox only in name become firm and active believers. The Church must be supported in this by all the resources of our society. It is important to engage student and youth organisations in this effort because we are speaking of the future fate of our country. Indeed, Russia will become a great country only when we learn to combine the spiritual with the material, when we connect the temporal with the eternal”, the First Hierarch added.

29 May 2009

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=155 (in Russian)

Yushchenko Believes the Uniates Are a Key Element amongst Those Supporting Ukrainian Statehood

A view of the centre of the old quarter of Lvov. Shall this be the last remaining portion of a rump “Ukraine” or shall it be Polish, yet again? The worm appears to be turning…

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko praised the role of the Uniate church in national life and in its support for the integration of the Ukraine into the EU. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church “certainly plays an important role as a key supporter of our national identity and a herald of our inseparable connection with Europe”, Mr Yushchenko said on Monday at a meeting with students and seminarians of the Ukrainian Papal College of St Josaphat in Vatican City. In reference to the Ukrainian Papal College, the President noted, according to his press-service, “During many years of trial for the Ukrainian people, whilst Greek-Catholicism was banned by the Communists, it was the only here that a centre existed that nourished the Greek-Catholic faith by providing spiritual formation for Ukrainian [clergy], allowing them to serve our people by bringing them the words of faith”.

The Ukrainian Papal College of St Josaphat is directly under the jurisdiction of the Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches. During the time of its existence, the college has produced some 400 priests, of whom 25 became bishops. At present, there are 50 students from the Ukraine and the Galician diaspora. The seminarians study at various Papal institutions in Rome, and they take courses in liturgics, church chant, and the history of the Ukrainian [Uniate] church at St Josaphat. Courses are taught in Ukrainian and Italian.

At the forefront of nationalism in the early 1990s, activists of the Greek-Orthodox Church used force to seize some hundreds of Orthodox churches in the western Ukraine, [using violence against] parishioners and priests [in the process]. No criminal cases were initiated [as a result of these actions]. The Union of Brest remains one of the main problems in the dialogue between the Vatican and the Patriarchate of Moscow and all Russia.

2 June 2009

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=30470 (in Russian)

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6087 (in English)

Editor’s Note:

This is interesting… Paragraph 2 does not exist in the English version, whilst paragraph 3 does not exist in the Russian version. It is why I have trackbacks to both versions.

Yushchenko is circling the wagons… when one reflects that the Ukrainian economy is due to contract by 20 percent this year, one finds that not surprising. Russia is in better shape, in fact, the rouble has been steadily gaining on the dollar. It has gone from 38 to the dollar earlier in the year to 30.5 per USD today. That is, not only is the Ukraine falling apart, but, the US does not have the funds to bail it out, and the exchange rates suggest that the Russian economy is not as hard-hit as Western media outlets have reported.

Therefore, Yushchenko is appealing to his most hard-core supporters, the Galician Uniates. They, and Philaret Denisenko’s schismatics, shall probably be the last ones to stand around the failed Orangies. Does this presage a “two-Ukraine” future? I am thinking that the former tsarist Russian territory could very well rejoin the RF, whilst the former Polish region of Galicia becomes either a rump “Ukrainian” entity or it shall be reabsorbed by Poland (shades of 1919!). This is not without the realm of possibility, and it seems more probable as the Ukrainian economy tanks and more Ukrainians are thrown out of work.

Poor Yushchenko… he is left with nothing but a sodden cardboard box. The only question left is whether he shall reside in Edmonton or in Chicago when he flees into exile. He’ll just be another embittered émigré “politician”, with no real power or means, posturing to the end of his days. A sad end…

Let’s Talk Turkey!

Justice Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime (Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 1808)

The conclusion to be drawn is that something catastrophic happened on board that has caused this airplane to ditch in a controlled or an uncontrolled fashion.

Chris Yates

Jane’s Aviation analyst

The above is a classic example of doublespeak, that is, language used pompously in a deliberate effort to make the speaker appear more authoritative or more veracious. Of course, Mr Yates should have said, “I am afraid that the plane crashed”. We need to use this same standard to judge a comment made by Rev Tassos, the OCA Treasurer. He stated that he could not tell the truth concerning the recent financial scandal that roiled that body, for it would, according to him, “destroy the Church”. I think that Rev Tassos has to be taken to task for such mendacious hyperbole and be forced to retract it publicly.

The Church survived the Neronian persecutions. It weathered the great Christological disputes. It resisted the Uniate menace. It stood firm against the attacks of the infidel Muslims and the godless Communists. However… the picayune antics of a raggedy beggar’s lot of inconsequential, corrupt, overblown, and venal married priests would “destroy the Church”. Metropolitan Jonas has the duty to call this man to task and demand either a complete retraction of such rubbish or his immediate resignation. There is only one way forward to true and complete healing. The guilty must be turned over to the secular authorities and they must answer for their thievery (for one must call it what it is). I should state that there is a federal minimum-security prison just down the road from St Tikhon’s Monastery on Route 296. Herman and his cronies could be imprisoned there, and have access to, with little difficulty, Orthodox pastoral care.

If Benjamin Peterson bleats, “We have to move on” (a fatuous statement, if there ever was one), he should be investigated to see if he covered up any of the crimes (or, indeed, participated in them). We must do what the Episcopalians were forced to do when a treasurer in that body was found to be dipping her hand in the till. She was handed over to the authorities, tried, convicted as an embezzler, and imprisoned (when I told a friend of mine, a former Episcopalian parish warden, what Rev Tassos said, he looked at me incredulously).

There is nothing unchristian in handing over a suspected criminal for trial. For that matter, convicted criminals do NOT cease being Christians. Herman, Kondratick, and the rest of their merry men deserve our Christian love and charity if they are sent to the slam for their escapades. The salvation of these fellows would not be impeded if they were convicted as felons. Truthfully, it would be a salutary warning to all of them, and it would cause some to “ponder nothing earthly-minded”, perhaps, for the first time in their lives.

The financial scandal is only a symptom. However, it must be treated before we can treat the systemic cause of the disease. We must first clear away the consequences of this relatively-petty wrongdoing so that we can grapple with the deeper damage caused by Aleksandr Dmitrievich Schmemann and his cabal at SVS. That is another, and far more substantial, issue. It is truly a topic on its own, and we would do damage to it to consider it here. We would do well to emulate the identical twin brother of Aleksandr Dmitrievich, Andrei Dmitrievich Schmemann, and reject his crack-brained notions. We must return to the path of tradition, or, the painful history of the OCA shall only be repeated time and again.

Let the accused have their day in court. Let history judge. Otherwise, we not only expose ourselves as fools, we show ourselves foreign to all the previous generations of Christians that went before us. Only the truth shall set us free. Otherwise, we are sunk in prelest, and Satan laughs. Ponder that.

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Monday 1 June 2009

Albany NY

I’m Back!

I I have been resting after a spell of bad health. It was difficult, not being able to post, but, I was advised that intellectual labour could be as tiring as the manual kind. However, I am starting back, a little at a time. Thank you for all your prayers and support. God willing, we shall have more time together and that I can, in my small way, help the dialogue concerning both Russia and Orthodoxy.

As the Gubernator put it, “I’ll be back!” Indeed! I AM back! It feels GOOD.

Vara Drezhlo

Monday 1 June 2009