Posted on 02/05/2016 9:50:47 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is to meet his Roman Catholic counterpart, Pope Francis, during a historic visit to Latin America. The groundbreaking meeting is to happen in mid-February in Cuba. The meeting between heads the two major Christian churches would be an unprecedented move to mend a millennium-long rift between the Western and Eastern branches of the religion, which started with the Great Schism of 1054. The upcoming meeting confirms Russia's status in the Christian world, according to Alexandr Avdeev Russia's ambassador to the Holy See.
"In light of the Western sanctions, the meeting between the two celebrants is a confirmation of Russia's role in Christian civilization," he told TASS.
Persecution of Christians in the modern world is the main issue for the two leaders to discuss, the Russian Orthodox Church said. Christians are among the minorities suffering at the hands of groups adhering to radical Islamist ideology in places like Iraq, Syria and Somalia. In addition to Cuba, Patriarch Kirill's Latin American tour from February 11-22 includes Paraguay, Chile and Brazil. The meeting with Pope Francis will happen on February 12.
"The intersection of the routes allowed this meeting to be organized," commented Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church's Foreign Relations Department. “The situation in the Middle East, in northern and central Africa and in some other regions where extremists are perpetrating genocide of Christians, requires immediate action and even closer cooperation between Christian churches. "In the current tragic situation, we need to put aside internal disagreements and join efforts to save Christianity in the regions where it is subjected to most severe persecution..." he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at rt.com ...
Divided we stand, united we fall! Our division in Christianity is our strength. Why? Like separation of powers in government, if we do not have division, evil can prevail against us all. If we have division and separation, the good can stand against and unite against the evil. The Great Schism occurred in 1054 for real reasons; priestly celibacy, filioque clause, papal control of church, etc. These and other significant departures from scripture remain in the Roman Catholic Church that have contributed to its apostasy. The Bible says that in the last days a united church will come together, tolerating everyone and everything, except true biblical Christianity...
Revelation 17: 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: 5 And upon her forehead was a name written , MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. 7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel ? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast that thou sawest was , and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder , whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was * , and is not, and yet is. 9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth *.
So you are calling fellow Christians whores? Especially the churches whose ancestors gave us Revelations as a book in the canon? Shame on you.
In before someone else uses “immanentize the eschaton.”
The Christians suffering the worst persecutions at the hands of Muslims are Orthodox and Catholics but you choose to ignore that by calling them whores because they are different Christians then say Western versions. No wonder Muslims are killing Christians without much effort by the West to stop them.
Good Post.
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John Of Damascus thought it was Islam.
May God bless the undertaking of these two Bishops.
Ironic Jan_Sobieski picked a name of a Catholic war hero against Islam to insult Catholics.
And the Pope of the combined church will be St. Fidel the First?
You said, "Divided we stand, united we fall! Our division in Christianity is our strength."
And you have the gall to talk about "true biblical Christianity!"
Don’t be iggorant. Youse could look it up.
How about getting us all to celebrate Easter on the same day every year.
Trumpinator is a lying Putin butt kissing creep. Don’t pay him any attention.
An easy solution, use the same date calculation Christians used in the first 1500 years.
The one decreed by the first ecumenical council, which called for anathemas on anyone who changed it
September 2014
(excerpt from a long, detailed article)
First and foremost, in any review of the basics regarding Putin, the most outstanding fact is that he is a creature of the Soviet KGB, a truly diabolical organization nonpareil, which stood for murder, terror, and grand deception.
It was the Soviet Communist Party's tool for the brutal suppression of religion, including the persecution of Christians: denying them jobs and education; spying on and entrapping them; arresting and imprisoning them; torturing them in unspeakable ways; desecrating and demolishing their church buildings; infiltrating their agents into churches to subvert them. The KGB destroyed thousands of Christian churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, and slaughtered millions of Christians.
But it did not destroy the churches utterly. There remained an underground church, whose members were always at risk of discovery, arrest, torture, and martyrdom. Above ground, the KGB took control of the Russian Orthodox Church, which became a very useful organ of the Soviet atheist state.
In January 2009, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, better known as Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, was elected, from a short list of three candidates, to be the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the highest position of authority in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The election was called to fill the post that had been left vacant by the death of Patriarch Alexy II, who had headed the ROC since 1990.
Documents from the KGB archives have confirmed what sensible observers had long ago deduced from his actions: that Patriarch Alexy II (also spelled Alexi or Alexei) was a long-serving KGB agent (code-named Drozdov, "Blackbird"), in other words, a traitor to his Christian brethren and the God he claimed to serve. Putin's KGB/FSB was taking no chances with his replacement. All three candidates - Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk (code-named Topaz), Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk (code-named Ostrovskii), and Metropolitan Kirill (code-named Mikhailov) - also have been reliably identified as agents of the KGB/FSB.
Russia expert David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times (of London) and the Wall Street Journal, wrote of the election in 2009 for Forbes:
According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent (as was Alexei). This means he was more than just an informer, of whom there were millions in the Soviet Union. He was an active officer of the organization. Neither Kirill nor Alexei ever acknowledged or apologized for their ties with the security agencies.
Because Patriarch Kirill is of central importance to the myth of Putin as the Saul-to-Paul, Christian persecutor-to-Christian champion, it behooves us to more closely examine the man. He has publicly presided over, and provided official benedictions and exhortations for, Putin's cynical and Stalinesque exploitation of Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy. Josef Stalin, who had very nearly consummated the annihilation of the Russian Orthodox Church begun by Vladimir Lenin, reversed course in 1941. The reason? His erstwhile partner in crime, Adolf Hitler, had turned on him and had invaded Russia.
Stalin, needing all the help he could get, cut a deal with ROC Metropolitans Sergius, Nikolay, and Alexy. In exchange for their support in rallying the Russian people, he would cease (temporarily) the persecution and allow the reopening of churches and theological schools. In fact, Stalin's Soviet government paid for the rebuilding of many of the churches. The ROC was thus placed even more firmly under the control of the NKVD, which was later to be reorganized and renamed as the KGB. ..."
much more at link
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"For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004."
"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999."
Jay Richards | February 2, 2010
The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez's Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.
Marxist regimes obviously benefited from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.
A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In "The Church in Revolution," Chapman, "a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency," argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy's second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.
Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America-and the Vatican's struggles with it-and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn't establish its truth or falsity. Still, it's interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.
Unfortunately, this isn't just history. Chapman concludes ominously:
"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB's headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.
A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, "liberation theology is alive and well." The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/
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More on Liberation Theology and the Soviets
Catholic News Agency ^ | 5/15/2015 | Alejandro Bermudez
If the Soviet bloc wasn't the mother of liberation theology, it was certainly a sinister stepmother, enlisting Catholics in a geopolitical cause and inviting them to sell their souls for funding and support.
Only the naive can disregard the mountain of evidence connecting liberation theology with Soviet action in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)
IPS's [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace." In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations.
During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.
The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."
[lots more at link...]
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991
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