Posted on 07/28/2018 3:57:34 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pragmatism towards Russian Orthodoxy is beginning to look like appeasement
Is Pope Francis, like Donald Trump, guilty of abject capitulation to Russia’s Vladimir Putin? That question was raised by one of the most respected Vatican commentators, John Allen, bringing to greater prominence a criticism often made behind closed doors.
“As with Trump, albeit in a very different key, the question that appears destined to plague Francis going forward is how much is too much – when flexibility and pragmatism, in other words, turn into craven placation?” Allen wrote. “So far, the verdict would appear to be that for both men, the answer remains a work in progress.”
Allen recounts how, since the first months of his pontificate, Pope Francis has proved an ally of Putin in Syria, where Russia has now re-established its Middle East presence in an alliance with President Bashar al-Assad. And since 2014, Pope Francis has been muted in his criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, repeatedly disappointing members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
I noted here last month (in our June 15 issue) that, in a meeting with a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church in May, Pope Francis appeared to take the Russian side in all matters Ukrainian. That was noticed, apparently, in Kiev, for on July 3 there was a private audience granted to Major-Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the UGCC, by the Holy Father, ostensibly to honour the 1,030th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus’ in 988.
The UGCC statement pointedly noted that the meeting had been requested by Major-Archbishop Shevchuk. Indeed, the lengthy statement by the UGCC after the meeting systematically refuted all the points made by Pope Francis in his meeting with the Russian Orthodox.
All of which is remarkable in 2018, which marks 30 years since the millennium of the baptism of the eastern Slavs in 988. In 1988, with the Cold War still on, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union was prepared to recognise the baptism of Kievan Rus’, the kingdom out which Russia, Belarus and Ukraine would eventually emerge.
In 1988, all were still part of the Soviet Union, and the Russian Orthodox Church claimed for itself the exclusive inheritance of the baptism of 988. Indeed, for the Russian Orthodox, the UGCC should not even exist, and the Soviet Union was right to crush it.
John Paul, though, insisted that the Greek Catholics of the Ukraine – still suppressed and illegal at that time – participate in the millennium celebrations, as heirs to the baptism of Kievan Rus’. He published two apostolic letters to that effect in the spring of 1988, and celebrated Mass with the UGCC hierarchy in Rome in July 1988.
John Paul was making an argument in 1988 that the millennium belonged to more than just Moscow. Vladimir the Great ruled from Kiev – there was no Moscow at the time. He chose to be baptised in the Byzantine tradition of Christianity – this was before the split with what would become Orthodoxy – in Crimea.
That is why, when Putin speaks about Crimea, he partially justifies Russia’s annexation of it by noting that the baptism of Vladimir took place there, making it a place of Russian heritage.
John Paul and the Ukrainian Catholics saw it differently. The baptism of Russia in 988 was a baptism into a Byzantine Christianity in full communion with Rome, and took place in Ukraine’s capital. Today, who are the Ukrainians of Byzantine tradition who are in full communion with Rome? The UGCC.
“The gift of the Christian faith has been passed down as our greatest treasure,” said Major-Archbishop Shevchuk on July 15. “Today we thank God that it was the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who was privileged to be a successor to Prince Vladimir and his holy baptism.”
In 1988, both the UGCC and the Vatican were making the same argument. In 2018, Major-Archbishop Shevchuk is repeating the argument independent of Rome, or even in contradiction to it.
……..
The political tension between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict between the Ukrainian Orthodox and the Russia Orthodox are all rooted in the history of 988. Over the millennium the gravitational centre of Orthodoxy and political power in the Slavic world shifted east from Kiev to Moscow. Today, Russia – both Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church – argue that this should mean a Ukraine that takes its lead, politically and religiously, from Moscow. Ukrainians disagree, feeling that Ukraine ought to move away from Moscow’s dominance, re-staking its own claim to the inheritance of 988.
July 28 is the date marking the baptism of Vladimir and the eastern Slavs. Thirty years ago, the Polish Pope made the relevant claims on behalf of the Ukrainian Catholics, for the millennium was not only about the past but also the present. Today, Major-Archbishop Shevchuk does the same in Kiev. But the Holy See appears to have forgotten the position it took in 1988.
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#NotMyPope
I love them. I don't get it.
Nor mine. I have absolutely no use for the Vatican. If Jesus were on Earth he’d chase them all out of there like the money changers in the temple.
Here’s some background on the Russian Orthodox Church, and the guy who heads it...
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...”
_______________________________________________________
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
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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
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August, 2006
Image result for Kim Jong-Il communist
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. ...”
“I don’t get it.”
Once you realize this “pope” ain’t catholic, you will.
L
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
Given the recent...uhhh...”activities” of the Roman Catholic clergy, I’d say that the Roman Catholics are the weird uncles here.
Man, you ain’t kidding.
The Roman Church has chosen to be led by International Communism and a One World Order of no borders.
They have become an enemy of man and civilization.
“The Russian Orthodox Church is a member of the (communist) World Council of Churches:”
But all the communists live in the Vatican.
“..Is Pope Francis, like Donald Trump, guilty of abject capitulation to Russia’s Vladimir Putin? ...”
I reject the premise.
The Catholic church has been massively infiltrated by communists. Just look what happened to Ireland. This was a key communist conduit goal
And unrepentant ex KGB run the Orthodox Church.
Christians in Russia Refuse to Stop Sharing the Gospel Despite Putin’s Ban on Evangelism
To get
By Stoyan Zaimov , Christian Post Reporter
Aug 3, 2016 | 1:32 PM
Christians in Russia have said they are determined to preach the Gospel and fulfill the Great Commission despite tough new laws signed by President Vladimir Putin that ban evangelism outside of churches. ...”
http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-russia-refuse-stop-sharing-the-gospel-despite-putins-ban-evangelism-167442/
_____________________________________________________
July 2016...
FAITH UNDER FIRE
Russia puts lid on Christians sharing faith
‘Will require any sharing ... even a casual conversation, to have prior authorization from state’
http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/russia-puts-lid-on-christians-sharing-faith/#34c1Fo2QT9xudcrR.99
_____________________________________________________
July 2016...
“Activities as diverse as holding prayer meetings in homes, posting worship times on a religious community’s website, and giving a lecture on yoga have all been interpreted by police and prosecutors as “missionary activity”, thanks to the broad definition now enshrined in the Religion Law.
Despite a clear predominance of prosecutions brought against those who see their faith as requiring them to publicly share their beliefs, such as Protestants and Jehovah’s Witnesses, people from at least 15 different religious traditions have faced charges.” ...”
On 6 July 2016, President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Religion Law imposing harsh restrictions on the sharing of beliefs, including on where and by whom they may be shared. ...”
http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2305
“Is Pope Francis, like Donald Trump, guilty of abject capitulation to Russia’s Vladimir Putin?”
I knew I could stop reading after seeing this.
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