Browsing: Autocephaly

Source: The Russian Orthodox Church Department of External Relations According to the official website of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, on March 7, 2019, Metropolitan Daniel of Vidin, a hierarch of this Church, sent a letter to His Holiness Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria and members of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church presenting his arguments against the Patriarch of Constantinople’s claims to primacy of power in the Orthodox world, especially against the decision to revoke the 1686 act on transfer of the Metropolia of Kiev to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and against Phanar’s opinion on its alleged right to…

Source: Orthodox Christianity Istanbul, May 31, 2019 – The Patriarchate of Constantinople restored canonicity to the entire Ukrainian nation, although the “presence of the Moscow Patriarchate” threatens the unity of the Ukrainian nation, Patriarch Bartholomew boldly declared in a recent interview with the Bulgarian outlet BGNES, even as the so-called “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU), created by him along with President Poroshenko, battles to maintain unity simply within itself. Pat. Bartholomew’s brother primates, the Holy Synods of the Local Churches, and a number of hierarchs from throughout the Orthodox world have repeatedly called on him to convene a pan-Orthodox council to…

Source: Orthodox Christianity Patriarch Bartholomew is Isolated: The Danger of Ethnophyletism Fr. Theodore Zisis For the first time, the Constantinople Church has found itself isolated from the other autocephalous Churches, due to its anti-canonical and anti-conciliar actions in granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian schismatics. Thus, it itself has placed under doubt its accepted coordinating role as a unifying factor and driven its hitherto proven and effective ecclesiastical politics into complete failure. It all began with the incomplete, truncated representation of the Body of Christ at the pseudo-council in Kolymvari, Crete. In our previous articles we noted the unavoidable danger arising…

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation by James George Jatras Originally published on November 17, 2018 Was $25 million in American tax dollars allocated for a payoff to stir up religious turmoil and violence in Ukraine? Did Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (unsuccessfully) attempt to divert most of it into his own pocket? Last month the worldwide Orthodox Christian communion was plunged into crisis by the decision of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Constantinople to recognize as legitimate schismatic pseudo-bishops anathematized by the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is an autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church. In so doing not only has…

PDF version available here This paper was presented originally at a symposium honoring Fr Meyendorff on the 20th year of his death, held at St Sergius Institute in Paris on February 8-11, 2012. It was published in St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 56 (2012): 335-52, and is being reprinted here with permission. Fr Meyendorff was in the 1950s one of the teachers of His Beatitude, Patriarch Ignatius, at the Institut de Théologie Saint-Serge in Paris, and it is evident that they shared the same ecclesial vision. My personal acquaintance with Patriarch Ignatius began when I was a small child, when he…

Source: Orthodox Christian Laity Historically, the administration of the Orthodox Christian Church is shepherded by a bishop in a geographic area.  Geography, bishops and cities are interrelated.  This reality remains until today, and this is a major cause of the impasse among Patriarchs and Assemblies of Bishops in the USA and other parts of the world. Historically, the Orthodox Christian Church taught the faith and conducted its missionary work in the language of the people where they lived and in their own cultural setting. It helped create written languages where the people had none, and it taught in that language…

Source: Orthodox Christian Laity The Synaxis of Patriarchs in 2008 decided that the Orthodox Church in the USA is uncanonical.  How many more years can this situation fester?  The Synaxis developed an Assembly of Bishops of all the canonical bishops in the USA to address the issue.  They have been meeting for ten years and have reached an impasse.  It is now up to the Patriarchs to act either in a synodical conciliar meeting with the 14 Self Ruling Patriarchs/Hierarchs, or if that cannot happen, the Ecumenical Patriarch needs to act as he did in  Ukraine.  On his visit to…

Source: Peter Anderson Today (Thursday) [April 18, 2019], at the invitation of Archbishop Chrysostomos (primate of the Church of Cyprus), a meeting was held in Nicosia with Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria, Patriarch John X of Antioch, and Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem.  There was no advanced notice of the meeting.  The meeting was especially significant in that these four Local Orthodox Churches were all recognized as separate churches in the first millennium.  In the Orthodox diptychs, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem follow immediately after Constantinople.   In the last few minutes, the full text of the final communique of the meeting has been…

Source: Orthodox Synaxis The recent letter of Patriarch Bartholomew to Archbishop Anastasios of Albania is a remarkably revealing document, not only for its candid expression of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s ecclesiology, but also for the insight it gives into the patriarchate’s internal discourse and the historical touchstones of its self-understanding. It is striking that most of the examples and quotations that the letter cites to illustrate the “Throne of Constantine[‘s …] universally recognized hallowed and dread responsibilities that transcend borders” date from the Ottoman period, to a degree that one might be tempted to suggest that the “Throne of Mehmet” might be…

Source: Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate In a January 14, 2019 letter to His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and all Albania called for a pan-Orthodox Council to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. His All-Holiness’ response, detailing the duties, responsibilities and rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, follows below. Protocol Number 104 Your Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and all Albania, most beloved and precious brother, concelebrant in Christ our God of our Modesty: We address Your venerable Beatitude with exceeding delight, even as we greet you with a fraternal embrace. We received and thoroughly examined your fraternal…

Source: Orthodox Christianity Istanbul, March 13, 2019 – The Orthodox Churches have no right to speak on the matter of the Ukrainian crisis other than to affirm the decisions and actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, according to Patriarch Bartholomew’s reply to the Albanian Church that was recently published in Greek and subsequently in Russian. In December, Pat. Bartholomew wrote to the primates of the Orthodox Churches throughout the world, calling on them to recognize the results of December 15’s “unification council” that created a new ecclesiastical structure in Ukraine. On January 14, the Albanian Church responded that while it cannot accept…

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…