Patriarch Kirill and Patriarch Ilya of Georgia to Serve Together in Kiev on the Day of the Baptism of Rus on 28 July

The Baptism of Russia

Viktor Vasnetsov

1896

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According to established tradition, Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias will serve liturgy in Kiev on 28 July to mark the Day of the Baptism of Rus. This year, Catholicos-Patriarch Ilya Ghudushauri-Shiolashvili of all Georgia will also attend the festivities, according to Vladimir Legoida, the head of the MP Information Department, in an interview published on Thursday in the newspaper Комсомольская правда (Komsomolskaya Pravda). He said, “The visit of Georgian Catholicos to Kiev will allow the two patriarch to serve together on the Day of the Baptism of Rus, the feastday of the Holy Prince Vladimir, and on the angel day of the First Hierarch of the UOC/MP in the very place where the original Baptism of Rus took place, on the banks of the Dnepr”.

According to Vladimir Romanovich, inviting the Georgian patriarch to Kiev at this time (the Ukrainians also sent him an invitation) was “an elegant solution thought up by Patriarch Kirill, after all, he and Patriarch Ilya had met many times”. He pointed up that both patriarchs have a long-standing and friendly relation. “Our Churches, both Russian and Georgian, have done a great deal, and are doing everything they can, to overcome the tension that exists today in international relations at the political level. After all, our peoples have a long history of friendly and fraternal relations. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill will do his utmost to consolidate this centuries-old relationship”, Vladimir Romanovich said. Commenting on the church situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Legoida admitted that it was “really difficult, and, therefore, he wouldn’t like to anticipate and articulate any assumptions on the eve of a meeting of the two patriarchs”.

14 July 2011

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=41501

Vladimir Legoida Believes that the Yanukovich Administration can Help Overcome the Church Schism in the Ukraine

Elder Schema-Archimandrite Zosima Sokur (1944-2002), the elder of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich…

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Vladimir Legoida, the head of the MP Information Department, believes that conditions are ripe in the Ukraine to overcome the Church schism. “It’s no secret that the tragic schism in the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine was largely associated with political ambitions and was motivated by political considerations”, he said in an interview published on Thursday in the newspaper Комсомольская правда (Komsomolskaya Pravda). He pointed up that since the schismatics now lack political backing, “it creates an environment favourable to the solution of this break. The contemporary situation differs from what went on before in that there’s no longer any political pressure on religious organisations. Actually, in my opinion, that’s the main change that occurred in Ukrainian religious life after the new administration took office”.

Referring to the upcoming visit of Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias to the Ukraine, he didn’t rule out the possibility of the patriarch meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. “Indeed, as a matter of course, as he visits his Ukrainian flock, His Holiness meets with state leaders. These meetings are important because the Orthodox Church plays a very important role in modern Ukrainian life. I don’t rule out such a meeting during the forthcoming visit of His Holiness the Patriarch”, Vladimir Romanovich said. He went to say, in regards to the content of the agenda of such meetings, that’s determined by “the importance of the role of the Church in people’s lives”; it involves creating conditions favourable to the Church, so that it “could most effectively carry out its functions, including its social programme”. In any case, he continued, Patriarch Krill and President Yanukovich have had “a longstanding relationship”, and “they always have something to talk about”.

14 July 2011

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=41502

Editor’s Note:

Be in a hurry to do good deeds… life is so short!

Elder Schema-Archimandrite Zosima Sokur

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Let’s keep this short. President Yanukovich’s starets was Elder Zosima Sokur, one of the greatest holy men of the early Perestroika/post-Soviet era. Elder Zosima baptised Viktor Fyodorovich, and married him to his long-time partner. President Yanukovich has gone to the Mountain more than once… and the Fathers on the Mount are behind him 100 percent (just as they’re behind Vladimir Vladimirovich 100 percent, too). You shouldn’t listen to ignoramuses such as Francis Frost in Stokoe’s comboxes. Mr Frost is simply someone who married a Georgian, so he spouts the Saakashvili/zapadnik line down the line. I’m told that most of the émigré Georgians can’t stand him. Stokoe’s commentary is similarly ignorant… it’s clear that he doesn’t know any of the Russian sources, he only prints what he gets from his master, Lyonyo Kishkovsky.

You can have Viktor Fyodorovich and support a spiritual son of the great Elder Zosima, or, you can believe the dreck that circulates in Western circles, whose logorrhoea emanates from the American special services and hardhead Galician Uniate émigré circles. I choose to stand with Viktor Fyodorovich… he had a REAL elder as a mentor. Don’t forget who stood tall for the Church in the dark days of the Nasty Nineties, and don’t forget who knifed the Church in the back with their uncanonical intrusion in the Rodina… it reminds me of Shakespeare:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

They’re all “honourable men”, aren’t they? For the time being, at the least…

BMD 

14 July 2011. Some Good Thoughts… and My Reflections Upon Them

Who’ll stand and fight the fire? We’ve let it go for too long, I fear…

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My father said if you believe in the fatherhood of God, you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily, and even though I left the church and wasn’t religious, that truth remained with me.

Bob Hawke

Prime Minister of Australia 1983-91

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A whiff of manure… shit, if you like… is simply part of life. If you’re reading this editorial now and no strong odour memories come flooding back, go out and find a dairy barn this weekend, stick your head in, and take a long, deep whiff. It’ll do you good.

Christopher Kimball

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Brethren, we’ve woken up too late… too late, we see our wretchedness, when our house is already burning from top to bottom, when water won’t extinguish it, only our own tears and blood will douse it.

A Word to the People

Signers included Valentin Rasputin and Gennady Zyuganov

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Some excoriate me for reporting “bad news”, for not being “positive”, for not adulating clergy, and for, generally, not being “respectful” to authority figures (especially, authority figures that they’ve jumped up into what they’re not). I simply point up the following:

If you do not attend to reality, reality will tend to you (and in VERY short order).

If there’s dishonesty in the Church, we must report it. If a hierarch lies, especially, when he lies repeatedly, we must report it. If there was one story in the past, and another one now, we must report it.

If you love the truth, you must do this.

If there’s a distinct ordure of shit in the air, I’m not going to say that it’s scented with roses, as the cultish HOOMies do. Most especially, DON’T be quiet if a priest tries to pressure you, a family member, friend, or fellow parishioner. I’ve gotten reports that Seraphim Gan is putting the squeeze on people that he suspects are funnelling me intel. HANDS OFF, MISTER. In any case, you’re going after the wrong people… the ones that you’re harassing aren’t in contact with me.

That’s what so sad about the First Families and their grip on the Church’s power structure (such as it is). Personally, I don’t believe in “conspiracy theories”. There’s no conspiracy afoot, anywhere, anyplace, by anyone. That being said, the First Families do strike out whenever they feel threatened, even if they’re not. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it all because it’s all hutsky-klutsky and disorganised in a particularly Slavic sort of way (just as Greek friends tell me that there’s casual corruption in the GOAA that’s been around for ages… it’s part of the culture). For instance, even though Vladyki Laurus was in frail health, no CNA was assigned to watch him. Could this have prevented his death at the time when it occurred? No one knows, particularly, not me. What we do know is that he was left alone for over twelve hours, and that no one checked on him until Sunday liturgy was over. Negligence? Probably… but I know for a fact that it wasn’t planned or foul play… we’re simply too disorganised to pull it off.

I find that l’condition humaine explains everything without the need for conspiracies. That there are those who are willing to do anything to protect their offices and to protect what they perceive as their interests requires no belief in dark backroom dealings. At present, the OCA and the ROCOR First Families see a common foe (they certainly don’t agree on a positive programme). I’ll be blunt… there’s no churchman with the guts to go against the First Families… ergo, the Church drifts, rudderless, whilst ignorant children stage cockamamie farces such as a “Church Growth Boot Camp” (I kid you not… an adult actually termed it such). We’re all waiting for the OCA Sobor… I can’t say what I know. I’ll say this… there are those in high places who think that they’re scot-free. They’re not. There’s gonna be blood on the floor. I don’t know whether the partizani will succeed… I do know that they’re going to give it their best shot. People have had enough of Fathausen’s boasts about his nonexistent record in Russia, of the covering up of Peterson’s alcoholism, and of the fact that James Silver and “Love BT” are allowed to spout off on the Indiana List with lie after lie… note well that Silver NEVER references the bone-deep feud between his pal Bobby and Lyonyo (that’s why he throws stones at Stokoe… Mark is part of Lyonyo’s faction)… that’s a taboo subject, I think.

It’s best to close with this quote; it particularly applies to the OCA and the ROCOR (it’s too late to save either body, as they’re presently constituted):

We see our wretchedness, when our house is already burning from top to bottom, when water won’t extinguish it, only our own tears and blood will douse it.

I fear that’s the truth…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Thursday 14 July 2011

Albany NY

Fr Vsevolod Chaplin said that the Church Rejected the Notion that Orthodoxy should be the State Religion

Fr Vsevolod Chaplin (1968- ), Head of the MP Department of Church and Society

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Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the MP Department for Church and Society, reiterated that the MP’s position on the question of Church/State relations hasn’t changed, and it isn’t going to in future, either. “We don’t want the Church to become part of the state apparatus, of the government administration, assuming roles proper to secular authority. I think that most people understand this, they’re aware of the Church’s position, they realise that it’s definite, and that it’s not going to change”, he said in commenting on a survey conducted by the service Среда (Wednesday), in conjunction with the Public Opinion Fund, of 1,500 people in 44 RF subjects, in 100 cities and towns. According to the poll, 30 percent of Russians are in favour of Orthodoxy being the state religion, 48 percent are against it, and 23 percent of respondents were unsure of their position on this question.

According to Fr Vsevolod, the system of Church/State relations in Russia over the past ten years hasn’t changed, neither the rules laid down in the RF’s statutory law nor the procedures embodied in MP ecclesiastical regulations. “The fact that the Church is now more numerous and active doesn’t mean that we should review its stance in regards to proper relations between the state and religion”, he emphasised. Fr Vsevolod pointed up that the Church isn’t trying to replace the state or formulate a politicised ideology. He thought it’s not the case that “a lot of people right now are urging the Church to become an organ of the authorities, namely, to assume the status of a state religion. Maybe, it’s more likely that people believe that the Church should have a higher legal status. Well, that’s what many people think. We’ll see how it affects things in future, on how it affects legal and political realities”.

14 July 2011

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=41497