Source: National Catholic Reporter by Christopher White This article appears in the War in Ukraine feature series. View the full series. ROME — For four weeks, the Vatican has offered to serve as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, and for four weeks, such overtures have been ignored by Russia. As Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on, Pope Francis has incrementally escalated his rhetoric against the invasion, condemning it as an “unacceptable armed aggression,” while refusing to directly name President Vladimir Putin or Russia as the aggressors. The diplomatic tightrope has been defended as consistent with longstanding Vatican neutrality, necessary for protecting Catholics in both Ukraine and Russia and…
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Source: Daily Beast by A. Craig Copetas Beneath the gold onion domes of the Danilov Monastery a few miles south of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s chief shaman explains why Russia is hell-bent on destroying Ukraine. “If we see [Ukraine] as a threat, we have the right to use force to ensure the threat is eradicated,” Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill recently preached to his church’s 90 million faithful followers. “We have entered into a conflict which has not only physical but also metaphysical significance. We are talking about human salvation, something much more important than politics.” The wartime coalition between Putin and his patriarch is called symphonia,…
Source: Providence Magazine Originally published on February 17, 2022 By Evagelos Sotiropoulos Appeasement,” Winston Churchill once said, “is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last.” It is this approach—one of appeasement and concession—that Orthodox primates have applied to the ecclesiastical ambitions of the Moscow Patriarchate. While the 2019 granting of autocephaly, or self-governing status, to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU) by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate made intra-Orthodox tensions more public, the root cause of today’s growing disunity is decades in the making. Moscow’s obsessive ethnophyletism and promotion of its Russkiy Mir agenda were quietly acknowledged…
Source: Public Orthodoxy by Assaad Elias Kattan | Русский A Greek version of this text is available at Polymeros kai Polytropos, the blog of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies At the time of writing, the tsar’s fighter jets are pounding the gorgeous Kyiv, and air raid sirens are echoing everywhere. “Who has believed our message” declares the prophet Isaiah: the fighters of Vladimir Putin are striking Kyiv, not Tbilisi, Yerevan, Berlin, Paris, or Istanbul, and certainly not New York. In fact, the Russian tsar wants to exact revenge on the Ukrainians…and on his own history. He is destroying the cradle of his own…
Source: The Christian Science Monitor President Putin’s battle to control the “Russian world” includes a religious front: a centuries-old spiritual and nationalist struggle within the Orthodox church – a part of the consciousness of average churchgoers worldwide. – Laurent By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer By Sarah Matusek Staff writer By Alexander Thompson Staff writer TORONTO, NEW YORK, AND BOSTON In the wake of an invasion that has shaken the globe, the diaspora of Ukrainians from Winnipeg to Warsaw has taken to the streets to denounce a war they say is unprovoked. But another side of their fierce resistance is spiritual…
Source: Religion News Service The Orthodox theologian who once taught at an evangelical school warns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should worry Americans who care about religious freedom. By Bob Smietana (RNS) — The news that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine was of deep concern for Bradley Nassif, a theologian and expert on Orthodox-evangelical dialogue who spent years as a tenured professor of religion at an evangelical university. The status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine has long been a source of tension. While Ukraine is home to millions of Orthodox Christians, they are divided in loyalties, with ties to rival leaders in…
Source: Religion News Service Their characterizations of the conflict, however, are very different. By Claire Giangravé, Jack Jenkins VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Addressing the faithful on Thursday (Feb. 24), prelates associated with a Moscow-linked subset of Orthodox Christianity issued statements lamenting the suffering caused by the ongoing attack against Ukraine by Russian forces and calling for peace. Speaking to members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who answer to the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev called the invasion of Ukraine “a disaster,” according to a translation of his statement from OrthoChristian. He addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin directly in his remarks. “Defending the sovereignty…
Source: National Council of Churches The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) joins with the World Council of Churches in an urgent call for peace for the people of Ukraine. We fervently pray that a diplomatic solution will be accepted, and that Russia will remove the troops on three sides of the Ukraine without resorting to a destructive and deadly conflict. Every possible means must be attempted to prevent the escalation of this confrontation into an armed conflict and the devastating threat of nuclear retaliation that it could bring to all the people of the…
Source: Public Orthodoxy by Paul Valliere and Randall A. Poole Scholarly study of the interaction of law and religion is well established in Europe and America, but it is not evenly distributed across the religious and ecclesiastical spectrum. There is a vast literature on some aspects of the subject, such as religion in the American constitutional order and law in the history of Roman Catholicism. Issues of law and religion in the Orthodox world, however, have not received much attention. Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia (Routledge, 2022), a volume sponsored by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory…
Source: Vatican News In an interview with Vatican News, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk reflects on the importance of joint efforts geared towards the protection of our common home and the need for interreligious dialogue on the path to a world of fraternity. By Benedict Mayaki, SJ Pope Francis, along with scientists and religious leaders, met in the Vatican on Monday for a meeting themed: “Faith and Science: Toward COP26” as preparations for the UN Climate Change Conference scheduled to hold from 1 – 12 November in Glasgow, Scotland, continue. The Holy Father and the participants at the day-long encounter also…
Source: Orthodox Church in America Sea Cliff, NY [OCA] – On Tuesday evening, August 3, 2021, Protopresbyter Leonid Kishkovsky, longtime Director of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations for the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and Rector of the Church of Our Lady of Kazan in Sea Cliff, New York since 1974, fell asleep in the Lord at Glen Cove Hospital in Glen Cove, NY at the age of 78 following a heart attack. In spite of serious health issues over many years, he remained in active service to the Church until his repose. Father Leonid Kishkovsky was born in Warsaw, Poland…
Source: The Jamestown Foundation By: Tetyana Zhurman On July 28, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians celebrated the 1,033rd anniversary of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus—a remarkable annual event for Ukrainian history and another reason for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political speculations. After the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, signed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church tomos in 2019, granting it autocephaly—independence from the Russian Orthodox Church (see EDM, July 26, 2018; RFE, January 23, 2020)—experts warned that Moscow would double its efforts to weaponize religious issues as an element of its “hybrid war” against Ukraine (Warsawinstitute.org, January 31, 2019). In his recent article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and…