Free Republic

Abstract For many analysts the term Russky mir, or Russian World, epitomizes an expansionist and messianic Russian foreign policy, the perverse intersection of the interests of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church. Little noted is that the term actually means something quite different for each party. For the state it is a tool for expanding Russia's cultural and political influence, while for the Russian Orthodox Church it is a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the baptism of Rus, God consecrated these people to the task of building a Holy Rus. The close symphonic relationship between the Orthodox...

Orthodox Christians claim that the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church, is the one true Church of Christ. That’s the confession of faith that we make. Of course, we have to say right away that there are members of the Orthodox Church who are relativistic, especially in America, there would be those who could say, “Well, all churches are the same,” and, “no one can claim the truth,” and, “different churches have different things,” so we really shouldn’t be so proud and so arrogant as to say that our church is the only church or the only true church,...

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2015 / 11:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ahead of Pope Francis’ Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, newly released historic documents confirm the Holy See’s broad commitment to helping the Armenian people at a time when few others would. The Italian Jesuit-run magazine La Civiltà Cattolica stressed that newly published documents “prove how the Holy See, always informed about events, had not remained passive, but was strongly committed to face the issue” of the Armenian Genocide. “Benedict XV was the only ruler or religious leader to voice out a protest against the ‘massive crime’.”...

Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY, and noted Orthodox Christian priest, theologian, preacher, and speaker, fell asleep in the Lord on the afternoon of March 18, 2015.

On planet earth there are about 70 million Orthodox Christians that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church (centered at Rome) or with the Eastern Orthodox (centered at Constantinople). These are the Oriental Orthodox Christians. They have all seven sacraments, revere the Mother of God and the saints, have a valid Eucharist, pray for the faithful departed, and have preserved a valid line of apostolic succession.Armenian Christians in the Miaphysite Tradition These Oriental Orthodox Christians do not accept the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 which dogmatically defined that Christ is one divine Person with two natures (divine and human).Meet the...

Many years ago I was involved with an evangelistic ministry in New Jersey. A group of us would go out on the Boardwalk ask people if we could talk with them about the Gospel. In the course of our conversations, I would sometimes ask if they knew why they wore clothing. The humorous responses that we received were almost singularly worth the experience; however, the most common answer I would get was, "Because people would laugh at me if I didn't!" While it may seem like a trite question, it actually has profound importance regarding the Scriptural teaching about our...

Saint Patrick, the Enlightener of Ireland was born around 385, the son of Calpurnius, a Roman decurion (an official responsible for collecting taxes). He lived in the village of Bannavem Taberniae, which may have been located at the mouth of the Severn River in Wales. The district was raided by pirates when Patrick was sixteen, and he was one of those taken captive. He was brought to Ireland and sold as a slave, and was put to work as a herder of swine on a mountain identified with Slemish in Co. Antrim. During his period of slavery, Patrick acquired a...

Kaliningrad, March 16, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia speaks of a special role of the Kaliningrad Region in the dialogue between Russia and the West. "The region was organized not only as Russia's strategic outpost urged to prevent "attacks against the East," it should become Russia's spiritual outpost in Europe - not the region most subjected to western influence, but the region, which is ready for dialogue with the West more than others and introducing to this dialogue our spiritual values," the patriarch said on Saturday at the forum of the World Russian People's Council (WRPC)...

Video from the service for the Veneration of the Holy and Life Giving Cross in Christ the Savior Cathedral. On a side note, Stalin harbored a deep hatred for the cathedral and ordered it razed after destroying all of the holy icons. The cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990's after the fall of Communism.

An Explanation of the Traditional Russian Orthodox Three-bar Cross (also called the Eight-pointed Cross) The symbolism of the "complete" Cross (much of which is contained in the Old Rite Russian prosphora seal and on metal and wood icons) is quite complex. Since the OId Rite tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church is much richer than the New Rite Church in its use of symbolism to teach the faithful, this article should be of benefit to those unfamiliar with this tradition.Through the Cross came our Salvation. We are constantly reminded that Christ died for us when we see the Image of...

The commemoration and ceremonies of the Third Sunday of Lent are closely parallel to the feasts of the Veneration of the Cross (September 14) and the Procession of the Cross (August 1). Not only does the Sunday of the Holy Cross prepare us for commemoration of the Crucifixion, but it also reminds us that the whole of Lent is a period when we are crucified with Christ. As we have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24), and will have mortified ourselves during these forty days of the Fast, the precious and life-giving Cross is now placed...

The latest cover of the new New Republic features Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig taking on conservative anxieties about Pope Francis’s possible “radicalism.” The essay isn’t just about the pope; it offers a larger critique of the way that conservatives, Catholic and otherwise, relate to and interpret the human/Western/Christian past. I have a few disagreements with this depiction, and a few critical generalizations I’d make about the liberal tendency in Catholic thinking and debate right now. But I’ll save those for another post; for now I think it would be helpful for the discussion of Catholicism in the Francis era to spend...

The conversation with Tass is dedicated to the themes of Lent, but also to the war in Ukraine, schismatic Orthodox Churches and relations with the Catholic Church.Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill, has released his first interview with a secular magazine, choosing the official news agency Tass. Published on 10 March and dedicated to the period of Lent, the lengthy interview touches on various topical issues: the Mohammed cartoon, the war in Ukraine, relations between the Church and society, and also relations with the Catholic Church. The interview failed to provoke specific comments or clamor...

Brethren, Peace be with you. Ironically - or perhaps Providentially - I wrote my best academic paper ever during my years as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. You can still see that a very Scholastic mind stood behind the paper, perhaps a portent of my later return to the Catholic Church. The paper is titled Holy Tradition vs. Sola Scriptura: The Witness of the Liturgy. Frank Schaeffer published it on his Christian Activist Number 10 back in the 1990s. Fortunately, the good people at PEMPTOUSIA saved the paper from Schaeffer's unfortunate shipwreck and preserved the paper at their website. I hope...

Moscow, March 10, Interfax - The Center for Monitoring Orthodox Christians' Rights and Liberties in Europe has launched a website with support from the Moscow Patriarchate's representative office in the Council of Europe. The English-language website, Orthodoxrights.org, will carry information about violations of Orthodox Christians' rights and liberties in Europe, as well as special reports, according to the press service of the Russian Patriarchate's representative office in the Council of Europe. It said numerous abuses of the rights of Orthodox Christians of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were reported in 2014, which were documented in a special report on Ukraine for...

Two of the 200-plus Assyrian hostages kidnapped by the Islamic State during an assault on Christian villages along Syria's Khabur River in February have provided insight into their abduction in recent interviews where one revealed that the ISIS militants tried to force the Christian hostages to convert to Islam, but the captives boldly refused. On Feb. 23, the terrorist group raided approximately 35 different Christian villages in the Hasakah province and abducted somewhere between 263 to 373 men, women and children, according to the Assyrian International News Agency. But about a week after the raids, ISIS released a handful of...

Christ conquered the world. This victory consists in His having created His own Church. In the midst of the vanity and poverty, of the weakness and suffering of human history, He laid the foundations of a "new being." The Church is ChristÂ’s work on earth; it is the image and abode of His blessed Presence in the world. And on the day of Pentecost The Holy Spirit descended on the Church, which was then represented by the twelve Apostles and those who were with them. He entered into the world in order to abide with us and act more fully...

Two of the Assyrian Christian hostages released by ISIS have spoken to the mediaTwo of the Assyrian Christian hostages released by ISIS have spoken to the media about their ordeal. Some 200 Christians were taken by the Islamist group on February 23 after they stormed a number of villages in the north-east of the country. One of the hostages, going by the name ‘Peter’, told the Times: “They entered our village at five in the morning, while everyone was sleeping. Some of them were Syrians, some were Chinese, some Russian – people who didn’t speak Arabic. They took 17 men,...

...The life of Christ the Savior presents the reader of the Holy Gospels with numerous great moments which fill the soul with some special sense of grandeur. But perhaps the greatest moment in the life of all mankind was that occasion when, in the darkness of a southern night, under the hanging arches of trees just turning green, through which heaven itself seemed to be looking at the sinful earth with twinkling stars, the Lord Jesus Christ, in His High Priestly prayer, proclaimed: "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be...

... Now, with regard to Christian theology, the position both of the Eastern-Hellenic and the Western-Latin traditions appears initially the same as that of ancient philosophy. Thus, Origen on the one hand reassures us (De Princ. II, 9,2 · In Joh. 4, II, 17) that God is not the Creator of evil (no longer with a capital E, since only God comprises the true Being) and that it does not possess a hypostasis or life or essence of its own, but exists as a denial of Good - an idea that we shall encounter many times in Western thought, up...