Browsing: Constantinople

Source: The National Herald By TNH Staff CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND – A striking and pointed message written on one of the mass killer of Chirstchurch’s weapon, has left many with even more questions than they might already have following the senseless and horrific terrorist attack that left 49 people dead and scores more injured. In particular, Brenton Tarrant’s assault weapon had written in white, “Tourkofagos,” meaning “Turk Eater” in English, near the barrel of one of the guns he used to sow death in a peaceful New Zealand suburb. Although the perpetrator of the atrocities is Australian and from TNH’s…

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…

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…

Source: ToBHMA by George Gilson In his address to the Delphi Forum, Elpidoforos insisted that the educational offering must meet the international academic standards of universities regardless of whether the Turkish state recognises the seminary as a university or not. That an issue concerning a religious institution and religious freedom might preoccupy an international economic conference at Delphi might seem a bit unusual to most at first blush. In fact, it is in an odd way perfectly fitting that the place which in ancient Greece was considered the centre or omphalos of the earth – and a place where representatives from the entire…

Source: Russian Orthodox Church DECR In compliance with the decision taken by the Holy Synod of the Albanian Orthodox Church at its session on the 4th of January 2019, the Albanian Church refused to recognize “the Orthodox church of Ukraine,” recently created by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It is stated in the letter sent by His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and All Albania to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople on the 14thof January 2019 and published in accordance with the decision of the Holy Synod of the Albanian Orthodox Church of the 7th of March 2019. The text of the letter is…

Source: Orthodox Christianity Tirana, March 8, 2019 incarnatewordsistershouston.org The Holy Synod of the Albanian Orthodox Church has not recognized the Ukrainian schismatic church, calling their ordinations graceless and calling instead for a Synaxis of the primates of the Orthodox Churches, given that Constantinople has failed to achieve unity in Ukraine. The Holy Synod of the Albanian Church adopted its decision on January 4 and expressed it in a letter sent to Patriarch Bartholomew on January 14. The letter was published today on the Albanian Church’s site. In particular, the Albanian bishops expressed their concern about the recognition by the Patriarch of Constantinople…

Source: The Conversation A new Orthodox Church was recently established in Ukraine. Shortly after, Bartholomew I, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the spiritual head of global Orthodox Christianity, granted independence to the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine and transferred its jurisdiction from the church of Moscow to the church of Constantinople, located in Istanbul. This competition between the churches of Constantinople and Moscow for dominance in the Orthodox Christian world is not new – it goes back more than 500 years. But the birth of the new Orthodox Church in Ukraine opens a new chapter in this history. So what is Ukraine’s new church, and…

Source: OrthoChristian.com by Kirill Alexandrov A comparison of the relationship of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the Moscow Patriarchate and the “Holy Church of Ukraine” with the Phanar. Petro Poroshenko and Epiphany Dumenko have received their desired tomos. Already well before that, the majority of religious experts argued that the Phanar would never give the Ukrainian Church true autocephaly, and that’s what happened. Even the most ardent supporters of autocephaly have to admit that the Ukrainian so-called autocephaly has a number of very significant restrictions. They also expressed the opinion that the new Ukrainian Church, which will be called autocephalous, will in…

Source: Orthodox Christianity Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) The actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (EP) in its process of granting a Tomos of autocephaly to the schismatic groups in Ukraine have created a canonical crisis. This point of “judgment” (the real meaning of “crisis”) is not so much about Ukraine, per se; but about the nature of the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and of primacy, indeed of episcopacy in the Orthodox Church. Thus, it affects every Orthodox Church and every Orthodox Christian. It has nothing to do with nationalism, though this has been a tool for manipulation of various parties involved; it has…

Source: The National Herald By Dennis Menos The fact that Orthodoxy finds itself today in the midst of disastrous schism between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Russia is hardly a secret. It is all the result of the recent issuance of a Tomos of Autocephaly to the Church of the Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarch, a move that the Patriarchate of Russia strongly opposed. Because of the issuance of the Tomos, the Patriarchate of Moscow has directed that all religious co-celebrations between its hierarchs and those of the Ecumenical Patriarchate cease, and that the two Patriarchates no longer…