Ukraine's Orthodox Church emerges from Russia's shadow

Financial Times ^ | Sep 29, 2018 | Roman Olearchyk, Max Seddon

[CondoleezzaProtege]

“Five years ago I’d probably never have thought about it,” said Anatoly Bilyk, 57, sipping coffee as he looked at the two churches in Kalynivka. “But after Russia attacked our country and stole territory from us; I think we need our own church now to finish building our nation.”

The dispute over giving the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly, or the right to be a fully fledged church, has moved the conflict between Ukraine and Russia into the spiritual realm.

Although both churches trace their history to the conversion of the medieval state of Rus in Kiev, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the smouldering war in eastern Ukraine are threatening to sever one of the last ties between the two countries.

Since the war began in 2014, dozens of churches in Ukraine have switched allegiance to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, a splinter denomination formed after the fall of the USSR.

The Ukrainian church argues, that Moscow was unfairly granted ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Kiev in 1686 after Russia absorbed Ukraine.

The Kiev church has in past years grown larger in membership then its Russian counterpart and was placed this month on the path to full recognition when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Orthodoxy’s spiritual leader, appointed two bishops as delegates.

Bartholomew is expected to give the Kiev Patriarchate a Tomos, or ordinance, granting it autocephaly at a synod next month.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which had kept a low profile during the conflict, suspended diplomatic ties with Constantinople in response; Kirill, the Russian patriarch, said this month he would stop mentioning Bartholomew in his prayers.

[ETL]

"The Russian Orthodox Church, which had kept a low profile during the conflict, suspended diplomatic ties with Constantinople in response; Kirill, the Russian patriarch, said this month he would stop mentioning Bartholomew in his prayers."

His prayers? LOL! That phony is about as religious as the commie pope, or the former president.

______________________________________________

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

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Agreed. The “no longer praying for Bartholomew” statement was rather juvenile. And very telling of Patriarch Kirill’s lack of character.

[ETL]

The “no longer praying for Bartholomew” statement was rather juvenile. And very telling of Patriarch Kirill’s lack of character.

I meant the guy is a fraud, like the commie pope, commie Obama and "reverend" Wright's communist Liberation Theology, so-called "church".

[ETL]

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/
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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

[NRx]

More western anti-Orthodox propaganda. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not asking for autocephaly. This is being requested only by a bunch of schismatics with close ties to the CIA and the Ukrainian Catholic Church. These are not recognized by any canonical Orthodox Church. The Ecumenical Patriarch’s uncanonical interference in the jurisdiction of another local church is being met with sharp criticism from almost all the other thirteen local churches. The Patriarchate of Alexandria and all Africa has denounced the proposed tomos and warned it will not be recognized by the broader Church. The Serbians have likewise warned the EP that he is endangering the unity of the Church. Even the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Seraphim of Kythira and Antikythera labeled the EP’s actions as a grave threat to the peace and unity of the Church. (He went on to condemn the EP’s announced intentions to permit 2nd marriages for priests which is absolutely prohibited by the church canons.) Indeed there is not a single voice being raised out side of the Ecumenical Patriarchate supporting his actions. Only the churches of Romania and Albania have so far maintained a diplomatic silence. All of the others have to varying degrees criticized or formally condemned Black Bart for his papal pretensions and claims of universal jurisdiction.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

“The Russian Orthodox Church, which had kept a low profile during the conflict, suspended diplomatic ties with Constantinople in response; Kirill, the Russian patriarch, said this month he would stop mentioning Bartholomew in his prayers.”

Go ahead then. Stop praying and just keep touting the Kremlin talking points as the ROC leadership is urging the flock to do.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

(Obviously I believe Kirill’s example needs to be rejected. People SHOULD be praying!)

[Biggirl]

But you do have members of the ROC though in Russia and 🌎 worldwide.

[Biggirl]

I am not surprised.