Browsing: Russian Orthodox Church
Source: Meduza Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues The Russian Orthodox Church now formally opposes new draft legislation in Russia that would increase penalties on domestic violence. In an announcement by the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues and the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, the Church argues that the bill recently published by the Federation Council “contains a number of legal defects that make its adoption unacceptable.” Specifically, the church commission says the legislation “disregards universally recognized legal principles of common sense, justice, and equality,” and warns that its implementation “can and will lead to grave and mass violations of the…
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meeting with President Donald Trump
Source: Interfax Moscow, November 6, Interfax – The United States had a hand in the granting of autocephaly to the new church of Ukraine and is seeking to split the Orthodox world even more, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “I didn’t hear that the Church of Greece officially recognized the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine. I’ve heard that there is a letter by Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece addressed to the leader of the schismatics, but I didn’t see an official statement by the Church of Greece,” Lavrov said at a press conference following negotiations with…
Patriarch Bartholomew signing the Tomos for the Church of Ukraine.
Source: Public Orthodoxy by His Eminence Metropolitan Ignatius of Demetrias (Volos, Greece) The following are excerpts from the intervention of His Eminence Metropolitan Ignatius of Demetrias, Chairman of the Synodal Committee for Inter-Orthodox and Inter-Christian Relations, during the Extraordinary Session of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece (12th October 2019). The Synodal Committee for Inter-Orthodox and Inter-Christian Relations, which I am honored to chair, explicitly followed the mandate of the Standing Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. In this light, I would like to summarize the prevailing perspectives during the Committee’s discussions, drawing your attention to the following five points: The…
Archbishop John (Renneteau)
Source: Peter Anderson, Seattle USA A whirlwind of events occurred today in connection with the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s former “archdiocese,” composed of parishes of the Russian tradition in Western Europe. Many of these events are revealed in the minutes of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, which convened a special meeting today (September 14), “thorough remote communications,” to grant an appeal, also made today, by Archbishop John (Renneteau) to Patriarch Kirill. The full text of the minutes is posted at http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5499619.html. An English translation of parts of the minutes have been quickly posted by the DECR of the Moscow Patriarchate. https://mospat.ru/en/2019/09/14/news177560/ These…
Photo: spzh.news
Source: Orthodox Christianity PARIS — The Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople unexpectedly decided to remove the exarchate status of the Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe, telling the parishes that they had to become part of the Patriarchate’s Greek metropolises. However, the clergy and faithful of the Archdiocese then overwhelmingly voted to remain together as an ecclesiastical body. They are actively considering several options for their future, the most likely being to join the Moscow Patriarchate, which has the backing of the Archdiocese’s hierarch, Archbishop John of Chariopoulis, though there are certainly those members who actively oppose returning…
Archbishop Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis)
Source: Orthodox Christianity Arkady Maler The author of this analysis of the current threat hanging over world Orthodoxy, Arkady Maler, is a scholar and teacher of philosophy specializing in Russian religious philosophy. He is a member of the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission of the Inter-Council Presence of the Moscow Patriarchate and founder of Moscow’s “Byzantine Club”. Maler is the author of four religious-philosophical books, which include the theme of Constantine the Great, and Russia’s spiritual mission. A half a year did not go by from the formation by the Constantinople Patriarchate of a hastily-cobbled, politically strategic, fake church in Ukraine under…
Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem
Source: Orthodoxy in Dialogue Following the rubles seems to be a reliable predictor of where a given Patriarchate will stand on the question of Ukrainian autocephaly. A May 19, 2019 report by Russia’s Union of Orthodox “Journalists”—arguably the Moscow Patriarchate’s most loyal peddler of propaganda after the Department for External Church Relations itself—cites the following statement by Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem, delivered by his proxy to the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and published on the Patriarchate’s website. The Patriarch’s statement is remarkable for two reasons: first, while Jerusalem is lauded as “the Mother of the Churches” in our liturgical hymnography, we question where in Orthodox tradition…
Source: Orthodoxy in Dialogue A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state’s nuclear potential. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy considers how, since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Church has worked…
Patriarch Kirill and Russian President Vladimir Putin
Source: Kyiv Post By Giacomo Sanfilippo In recent weeks a number of conflicting news items related to Ukraine have appeared in various sources which combine to demonstrate the scope of “Byzantine symphonia” in its 21st-century Russian reincarnation. As I noted previously on these pages, the expression denotes a religious-political ideology from Orthodox Byzantium according to which church and state were said to speak with a single voice. This produced mixed outcomes in the Byzantine Empire, and later in Tsarist Russia, resulting in some of the most shameful pages in the history of the Orthodox Church. In Russia’s case, we have only to recall…
Source: Russian Orthodox Church DECR In physics there is a notion of ‘bifurcation point’, which denotes a critical state of a system when it becomes unstable and, under the impact of even minor external events, can shift to a lower or, on the contrary, higher level of self-organization. In a certain sense, the developments in Ukraine are such a ‘bifurcation point’ for the whole world of Orthodoxy. The decisions made today and actions carried out determine in many ways the future life of the Orthodox Church, possibly, even for many centuries. In this situation, it would be wrong to step aside…
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, left, and Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, right, attend a reception at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, late Monday, Feb. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Pool)
Source: Orthodoxy in Dialogue by Shane McCrum and Alexis Mrachek When Vladimir Putin rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000, he inherited the remains of a once-fearsome communist-atheist imperial state. In the intervening 19 years, he has transformed Russia back into an imperial power with global ambitions. One of his key tools in that transformation has been the Russian Orthodox Church…. Read the entire article here