Posted on 12/26/2006 9:13:01 AM PST by kawaii
26 December 2006 Russian Orthodox Church to be fully reunified May 17
Moscow, December 26, Interfax - The unity of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) will be fully restored on May 17, 2007, on Ascension Day, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Moscow Patriarchate's chief spokesman, told journalists following a Synod session.
Patriarch Alexy II and ROCOR Primate Metropolitan Laurus will sign the Act of Canonical Communion on this day, he said.
The signing ceremony is to take place at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow before a Divine Liturgy service, after which the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate and the ROCOR will conduct a joint service for the first time in history.
ping
Wow!
Now the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics need to do the same thing. The split between them is bad for God's work.
We're a ways from that...
There's still the growing MP-EP riff to address.
That said the MP is very close to working jointly with Catholics to promote Christian values in Europe.
"There's still the growing MP-EP riff to address."
Indeed. There is a growing concern among the Greeks and Arabs and, I am told, most of the eastern European Slavic Churches that the MP and the Russian Church have become an increasingly strident organ of Russian government positions and nationalistic Russian pretentions. Short of the Russian Church acting more like The Church and less like a department of the Russian State, I don't think the future looks too good. The recent vote at the Belgrade conference is only one example of the bad state of affairs between the Russian Church and the rest of canonical Orthodoxy. I suspect things will get worse before they get better.
GOD BLESS THE EMPRESS MARIA!!! I hope that she and her son the GD George will be present!
Any word on where the Serbs weigh in?
I didn't post it however recently the Russian church has called the government out on a few things. You might endeavor to check them out.
That said endorsing positions of the state which benefit the church is hardly uncanonical.
Intervening on the terrirtory of local bishops, unilaterally changing the Calendar, praying with the Non-Orthodox. Those are.
27 December 2006, 13:19
Russian Orthodox Church does not attend to any government order - Metropolitan Kirill
Moscow, December 27, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate refutes an opinion that the Church in Russia carries out a government order.
‘Actually, there is no government order to the Church. I am not quite sure that under the present frame of mind someone would manage to formulate a concrete government order to the Church,’ the Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad said in his interview to Trud daily published Wednesday.
He said that people asserting this opinion, ‘are either not knowledgeable about the real process in church-state relations, or project their own phobias to reality.’ ‘Both approaches are counterproductive.’
He said further that no one in the country had a finished ideology of his own, ‘nothing like what is sometimes called “the national idea.”’
‘Something is being shaped, even in the Presidential administration. I appreciate a wish of the people working in the Kremlin to philosophically comprehend that which is happening with the country,’ Metropolitan Kirill added.
According to him, the Church is willing to participate in the process ‘as a direct participant rather than as executor of an order.’
‘Should the Church be excluded from this work, it would not do any good to the country, I believe,’ the hierarch said.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=2438
"Any word on where the Serbs weigh in?"
Yup; voted with the EP as did all the churches except Russia.
"Intervening on the territory of local bishops, unilaterally changing the Calendar, praying with the Non-Orthodox. Those are."
The interventions of the EP in the territories of other bishops may well be uncanonical. In one recent instance it lead to schism between Moscow and the EP. That ended when Moscow noticed no one follwed its lead. Changing the calendar and praying with non-Orthodox may well be uncanonical but last I looked, only the Old Calendar, "True Orthodox" groups broke communion over it. As for praying with the non-Orthodox, well all the reps of canonical Orthodoxy just did that with the Latins at Belgrade, including the Russians.
It is true that the Russian Church just came out against a proposed registration law in Russia. It is also true that the role the Russian Church plays in the Russian government is troublesome to other Orthodox churches. One I suppose need not get too worried when the Greeks or the Serbs or the Bulgarians do it, but when it happens in a place like Russia it is a matter of concern. The EP is just what his title implies, the Patriarch of the Oecomenne and thus isn't tied to any particular nation or ethnicity. Given his position as the first among equals, that is appropriate as his support among the orthodox Churches seems to indicate.
"Full communion the aim, Patriarch tells Pope
Meeting Benedict XVI in Istanbul, Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew told the Pope that the Catholic and Orthodox churches share an unhesitating desire to restore full communion."
http://www.cathnews.com/news/612/3.php
And here one would have thought that the only unhesitating desire involved here should be one to maintain Orthodoxy.
"We'll see who sides with the EP, and is concerned by the MP working to promote Orthodoxy at the Government level, when the EP announces union with Rome in return for the title Pope #2."
In my very Greek opinion, it is ALWAYS right for the national churches to do everything in their power to advance Orthodoxy at the government level. The Russian Church, however, has a history of being something of a cats paw for whoever rules in the Kremlin. It is an unhappy history which extends rather further back than the October Revolution. And as I said, it causes concern.
Now as for the EP trying to become Pope #2, if he ever had that idea, and he may well have, it got kicked out of him during the Spyridon affair when he came within about 48 hours of being, shall we say, retired. If, however, he does try to pull of such a stunt, he won't last more than a couple of months at the outside. Even the Greeks will rise against him.
Moscow finds itself in a difficult spot. It is far and away the largest Orthodox Church but is way down the totem pole regarding primacy. Moscow has never liked that. That's where the whole "3rd Rome" idea comes from. It tried to advance its position at Belgrade with that vote on the position of the EP and failed miserably. Not one Orthodox Church voted against the EP and with Moscow. So much for Moscow's pretentions.
So far as I can see, these desires of Moscow for power and this fear of the EP cutting a deal with the Latins evinces a basic misunderstanding of the nature of the pre-schism Church. In fact, what it shows is just how deeply Western ecclesiological (and theological) ideas penetrated the Russian Church over the past few hundred years. To tell you the truth, its almost Roman Catholic. It reminds me of a discussion I had with a very conservative Latin the other day. he commented that if a reunion occurs, the Patriarchates and national chuches will have representation on the curia so they can have a vote on who is the pope. That's bizarre! (The bishop of Rome is the choice of the Roman church, not us.) Just as is some paranoia that the EP will somehow or other end up a pope of the East, no matter how much the present EP may dream of such things.
"And here one would have thought that the only unhesitating desire involved here should be one to maintain Orthodoxy."
Sort of goes without saying, doesn't it? Remember who, until quite late, the great champions of Orthodoxy were in the One Church...the bishops of Rome.
In all ecumenical relations the goal should be an unhesitating urge to preserve Orthodoxy, not enter into communion with any heterodox.
If the recent Bishops of Rome had managed to resist the urge to innovate there wouldn't be a need for discussions would there?
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