Posted on 08/19/2014 1:06:44 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has again alleged that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has undertaken a campaign of hatred against Orthodoxy-- prompting a sharp official response from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the largest of the Eastern Catholic churches, which are in full communion with the Holy See.
“As far back as last autumn when the present political crisis in Ukraine just began, representatives of the Greek Catholic Church and schismatic communities, who appeared in the Kiev Maidan, openly preached hatred towards the Orthodox Church, calling to seize Orthodox shrines and to eradicate Orthodoxy from the territory of Ukraine,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow wrote in a letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, according to an Interfax news agency report.
“With the beginning of hostilities, the Uniates and schismatics, having been given arms, under the pretext of antiterrorist operation, began an outright aggression against the clergy of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the east of the country,” he continued.
In its official statement of response, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church denounced “any violence towards the peaceful residents of Ukraine, especially its clergy, regardless of the fact to which confession, religious or ethnic group they may belong.”
The Church’s efforts for peace do “not contradict the right and obligation of Ukrainian citizens to protect their freedom and independence,” the statement added.
The statement continued:
Attempts to claim that … the Orthodox faithful of the Moscow Patriarchate are the only ones who suffer is a dangerous intention to set off the whole Ukrainian society against one confession. Intolerable is the evil attempt to label the realization of the natural right of the Ukrainian people for freedom and independence of their country, into the interconfessional area, which provokes new tensions and new sadness in Ukrainian society-- this time in the activities of interconfessional relations. Today Ukraine needs from its churchmen not a provocation of violence, but a construction of peace.
In a related development, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church- Moscow Patriarchate issued a statement that seemed directly contradictory to Patriarch Kirill's argument. Father Georgy Kovalenko said that "the conflict in the east of the country cannot be considered inter-confessional."
Father Kovalenko, who heads the information agency for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, also veered from the Russian line regarding the control of Crimea. "As citizens of Ukraine, we feel the same way as our government and the entire international community," he said. "The Crimea is a territory of Ukraine and it must be returned."
The same is true here in the USA. “Buffet” Catholics, including feminazi nuns, are trying to redefine what “Catholcism” is.
This is very difficult. The Russian Orthodox Church is going step by step with the Kremlin. It is not only opposing the Greek Catholic church but also the two Ukrainian churches that hold allegiance to Kiev.
All had better start regarding the real enemy - Islam - for the evil that it really is.
Following the “regard” part, action would be nice.
No...... do ya think? Would they try to resurrect a 1500 year old war?
That’s verging on the islamic war between shia and sunni
Typical Russian lie: take a fact and turn it inside out. There are very few Catholics present in the East, and they are in fact severely persecuted by Russian “Orthodox” humanoids. Russian church serves a very different god, the one of greed, corruption and murder. Otherwise known as “Father of Lies”.
I post this occasionally to try and put things in perspective. Compare today with over 500 years ago:
Two excerpts from Roger Crowley’s “1453” book on the fall of Constantinople:
May 27th, 1453: “Late in the afternoon the people of the city, seeking religious solace, converged for the first time in five months on the mother church of St. Sophia. The dark church which had been so conspicuously boycotted by the Orthodox faithful was filled with people, anxious, penitent, and fervent, and in the first time since the summer of 1064, in the ultimate moment of need, it seems that Catholic and Orthodox worshipped together in the city, and the 400 year old schism and the bitterness of the Crusades were put aside in a final service of intercession.”
Pope Pius, Mantua, 1459:
“We ourselves allowed Constantinople, the capital of the east, to be conquered by the Turks. And while we sit at home in ease and idleness, the arms of these barbarians are advancing to the Danube and the Sava. In the Eastern imperial city they have massacred the successor of Constantine along with his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, sullied the noble edifice of Justinian with the hideous cult of Muhammad. They have destroyed the images of the mother of God and other saints, overturned their altars, cast the relics of the martyrs to the swine, killed the priests, dishonored women and young girls, even the virgins dedicated to the Lord, slaughtered the nobles of the city at the sultan’s banquet, carried off the image of our crucified Saviour to their camp with scorn and mockery amid cries of “That is the God of the Christians” and befouled it with mud and spittle. All this happened beneath our very eyes, but we lie in a deep sleep….Mehmer will never lay down arms except in victory or total defeat. Every victory for him a stepping-stone to another, until, after subjecting all the princes of the West, he has destroyed the Gospel of the Christ and imposed the law of his false prophet upon the whole world.
The Russian Orthodox church is of the devil.
Looking at the numbers, I have to think the UGCC’s answer was, in part, “Us and what army?” The Russian Orthodox are so much bigger it’s not even funny.
Ukraine should be free and should accommodate both churches in peace. Neither Church should be subservient to ANY state.
There were reports after the Russian invasion of Crimea that the Ukrainian Catholic priests were being harassed or forced to flee but I haven't heard anything lately about their situation. I don't think the Russian government has ever accepted the Ukrainian Catholic Church as a legitimate church, either in the Soviet period or in the post-Soviet era.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.