[Alex Murphy]

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the top Roman Catholic official for inter-church relations, said the re-emergence of Catholic churches in Ukraine and Romania is creating major tensions with the Russian Orthodox Church. For decades during communist tyrannies, these churches were largely suppressed. “The changes in 1989 were not advantageous for ecumenical relations,” Koch told Vatican Radio.

Koch, who spoke a week after the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, noted that talks on closer ties between Catholic and Orthodox theologians were suspended between 2000 and 2006 because of tensions between the two sides. Persecution of Christians in the Middle East has brought Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants there together, he said, but behind the Ukraine crisis there is a conflict of interests between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.

PFL

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Hold on folks - lamenting the fact that before you won the lotto, you didn’t have a problem with materialism doesn’t mean you totally regret winning the lotto. In Catholicism, we can be honest and see the good and bad in everything and seek better.

Solzhenitsyn wanted communism gone forever but also worried that what would follow would become morally corrupted. You absolutely take the one and fight against the other, that’s all.