By Serving Kremlin rather than Christ, Moscow Patriarchate Now a Small National Church

Ilya Zabezhinsky, an Orthodox commentator from the Northern capital [of St. Petersburg], says that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate by its promotion of the Kremlin’s agenda of “a Russian world” has failed in its Christian mission to the peoples of the former USSR and been reduced to a small national church of the Russian Federation.

Under Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin, the writer says, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has become “the ideological department of the powers that be of the Russian Federation and essentially ceased to be the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, it is becoming the Church of the Russian Federation."

No one in the Moscow Patriarchate should be surprised that all are running away from it, the Christian churches in the former Soviet space, the Russian believers who put Christ ahead of Putin, and all those who care about the rights and freedoms they should have as citizens of a modern country.

Our church, he says, has spent the last 20 years promoting things that have nothing to do with Christianity and not promoting the things that are at the core of the faith. Its members should not be surprised that others are running away from us, as the Ukrainian Orthodox now are, and that unless we change, others will do the same.

Today, Zabezhinsky says, “we are small little local church with a small flock, something that is not bad in principle.” Perhaps, he continues, it will lead us to give up our “earthly ambitions and remember Christ.”

============================================================

From the Russian Orthodox Church's website...

WCC welcomes meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill for unity and peace

12 February 2016

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), has issued a statement on behalf of the Council hailing the historic meeting of Pope Francis, pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and Patriarch Kirill, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The two leaders met on 12 February in Havana, Cuba.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest member church in the WCC..."

https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/wcc-welcomes-meeting-of-pope-francis-and-patriarch-kirill

_______________________________________________________

Catch that? The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest member of the World Council of Churches! (WCC)

That is all you need to know to understand that it is a sham operation. Reverend Wright’s fake church United Church of Christ (UCC) is also a member. In fact, his (communist) “Liberation Theology” was concocted by the KGB.

The Russians must laugh their butts off at how easily westerners can be tricked and deceived.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a member of the (communist) World Council of Churches:
https://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/russian-orthodox-church
____________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (WCC)

Long-time proponent of Liberation Theology
Infiltrated by the KGB during the Cold War
Funded Marxist insurgent groups throughout the world
Calls for capitalism’s “reform” according to socialist principles

[lots more at link...]
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7514
_______________________________________________________
From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: LIBERATION THEOLOGY

“...liberation theology’s real creator was the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence and domestic security agency, the KGB.
Patriarch Kirill, who today heads Russian Orthodox Church, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent some 40 years promoting liberation theology.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet-bloc official ever to defect to the West, writes: “Liberation theology has been generally understood to be a marriage of Marxism and Christianity.
What has not been understood is that it was not the product of Christians who pursued Communism, but of Communists who pursued Christians....
Its genesis was part of a highly classified Party/State Disinformation Program, formally approved in 1960 by KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and Politburo member Aleksei Kirichenko, then the second in the party hierarchy after Nikita Khrushchev.”
Adds Pacepa: “In 1971, the KGB sent Kirill — who had just been elevated to the rank of archimandrite — to Geneva as emissary of the Russian Orthodox Church to the World Council of Churches.... Kirill/Mikhailov’s main task was to involve the WCC in spreading the new liberation theology throughout Latin America.
In 1975, the KGB was able to infiltrate Kirill into the Central Committee of the WCC — a position he held until he was “elected” patriarch of Russia, in 2009.
Not long after he joined the Central Committee, Kirill reported to the KGB: ‘Now the agenda of the WCC [World Council of Churches] is also our agenda.’”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=2990
____________________________________________

August, 2006

North Korea Builds an Orthodox Church
The first-ever Russian Orthodox church will open in Pyongyang, North Korea this weekend.
It’s an odd project considering that freedom of religion exists almost exclusively on paper in the closed communist country.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il is supposed to be a communist atheist.
So why has he made promoting the Russia Orthodox Church his latest pet project?
On August 13, the country’s first Orthodox church is to be opened in the capital city of Pyongyang.
Russian Metropolitan Bishop Kyrill, second in command within the Church after the Patriarch, will travel to Pyongyang to christen the new house of worship. ...”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/kim-jong-il-and-religion-north-korea-builds-an-orthodox-church-a-431310.htm

Liberation Theology and the KGB

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/

************************************************************

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 ...

Putin: Defender of Christian Faith and Morality?

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

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/19162-putin-defender-of-christian-faith-and-morality

__________________________________________________________________

"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."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

Pope Francis: ‘Liberation Theology Was Good for Latin America’

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
Jan 27, 2017

In a controversial interview, Pope Francis has publicly defended Liberation Theology, calling it a “positive thing” in Latin America.

In his lengthy interview last week with the leftist Spanish daily El País, the Pope said that “Liberation Theology was a good thing for Latin America,” but also recognized that it had “deviations” that needed to be corrected.

The part of Liberation Theology that “opted for a Marxist analysis of reality was condemned by the Vatican,” Francis said.

“Cardinal Ratzinger issued two instructions when he was Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith,” he continued. “One very clear one about the Marxist analysis of reality, and the second picked up positive aspects.”

“Liberation Theology had positive aspects and also had deviations, especially in the part of the Marxist analysis of reality,” he said.

The two Vatican documents cited by the pontiff were Libertatis Nuntius, issued in 1984, and Libertatis Conscientia, released just two years later, in 1986.

Libertatis Nuntius addressed “developments of that current of thought which, under the name ‘theology of liberation,’ proposes a novel interpretation of both the content of faith and of Christian existence which seriously departs from the faith of the Church and, in fact, actually constitutes a practical negation.”

“Concepts uncritically borrowed from Marxist ideology and recourse to theses of a biblical hermeneutic marked by rationalism are at the basis of the new interpretation which is corrupting whatever was authentic in the generous initial commitment on behalf of the poor,” the instruction continues.

The document also noted that in “certain parts of Latin America,” the recognition of injustice “is accompanied by a pathos which borrows its language from Marxism, wrongly presented as though it were scientific language.”

The letter also said that certain Christians, despairing of every other method, turned to a Marxist analysis, “especially in Latin America.”

The 1986 text was issued as a complement to the first one, and sought to “highlight the main elements of the Christian doctrine on freedom and liberation” as a corrective to the errors of Liberation Theology brought out by the prior instruction.

In a striking revelation in 2015, the highest ranking Cold War defector asserted that the KGB had created Liberation Theology, exporting it to Latin America as a means of introducing Marxism into the continent.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector.” During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what the agency described as “an important and unique contribution to the United States.”

He is reported in fact to have given the CIA “the best intelligence ever obtained on communist intelligence networks and internal security services.”

“Liberation theology has been generally understood to be a marriage of Marxism and Christianity. What has not been understood is that it was not the product of Christians who pursued Communism, but of Communists who pursued Christians,” Pacepa said.

In his role as doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger referred to Liberation Theology as a “singular heresy” and a “fundamental threat” to the Church.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/01/27/pope-francis-liberation-theology-good-latin-america/
____________________________________________

Liberation Theology Activist: Pope Francis Is One of Us

by Stefan Farrar
December 27, 2016

BERLIN (ChurchMilitant.com) - The main figurehead of liberation theology in the 1980s is praising Pope Francis, and criticizing the signatories of the recently sent dubia.

Leonardo Boff, a main proponent for liberation theology in Brazil throughout his life, gave an interview to the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in Berlin, which was published on Christmas.

Boff entered the Franciscan order in 1959 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1964, where he became a controversial figure with his prominent advocacy of left-wing causes. During his priesthood, he became a vocal critic of capitalism and a strong proponent of liberation theology.

Liberation theology is a religious movement that offers a Marxist understanding of poverty and oppression, and which had its start in South America in the 1960s. One KGB defector who later converted to Catholicism claimed it was a movement created by the KGB and spread by willing South American bishops. ...”

Lots more at link...

https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/liberation-theology-activist-pope-francis-is-one-of-us

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine

Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
_______________________________________________________

From "45 Communist Goals", as per "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120227183203/http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

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.