Machine translated. Will replace with English translation when available.
(spc.rs) The two-day session of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church (6th - 7th November of the current year) was devoted to three main themes - the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, the improvement of education and education in the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Church crisis in Ukraine after the latest decisions of the Constantinople Patriarchate . The Sobor presented our public with a special statement , as well as the perspective of the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the perspective of the struggle for the preservation of this martyred Serbian province within Serbia in the conditions of constant provocations of the fake state and the constant pressure of the great Western powers.
She is more or less familiar with the Sobor's work in the field of church education and education, but the parliamentary position on the issue of the Church in Ukraine is only partial. The reason for this is the fact that all the Orthodox churches should first officially announce the commemoration of the Orthodox Church, starting with the Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate, in the appropriate languages (Greek, Russian and English), and this work took some time. Since this has been done, now is the moment for the attitude of the Serbian Orthodox Church to be presented in its entirety to our public.
First of all with regret, the Parliament concludes that the Constantinople Patriarchate passed a canonically unfounded decision to rehabilitate and for the bishops recognize the two leaders of the splinter groups in Ukraine, Filaret Denisenko and Makarije Maletich, together with their episcopate and clergy, the first to be a canonically deprived rank, and then excluded from the church community and subjected to anathema, and the other is already deprived of the apostolic receipt as a spiritual branch of the sect of the so-called self-councils, which is why the Holy Assembly of Bishops decided the decision of the Synod of the Synod is non-binding for the Serbian Orthodox Church.
The Assembly does not recognize the mentioned figures and their followers for Orthodox bishops and clergy and, consequently, does not accept the liturgical and canonical publications with them and their supporters.
Lastly, the Parliament proposes to the Constantinople Patriarchate and all other prefigured autocomplete Orthodox Churches that the issue of autocephaly and the issue of the Orthodox Diaspora should be considered as soon as possible at the All-Orthodox Parliament in order to confirm and strengthen the unity and unity of the Orthodox Church and in the future avoid temptations such as this through which is now under the holy Orthodoxy.
Bishop Irina Bishop,
Spokesperson of the Serbian Orthodox Church
Posts
Am English translation is available here:
ReplyDeletehttp://orthochristian.com/117191.html
Orthodoxy is triumphing.
ReplyDelete"Metropolitan Filaret and Father Makary are ceasing to matter, as Constantinople is pursuing it's own plan and agenda in the Ukraine."
The Ukrainians were foolish to think otherwise.
"The restrained and fraternal dissent of the other Churches is a sharp contrast to the MP, who had no qualms about torching EVERY tie that binded them to the EP and casting all of us into the outer darkness. So quick to declare us as "graceless schismatics.""
The Phanar is hard of hearing when it comes to admonishment. Time comes when you have to get out the two-by-four.
Well, in fairness, the MP is the one receiving the direct insult.
ReplyDeleteSovereignty is serious business. Even the always diplomatic Antiochians broke communion with Jerusalem. I believe the departed +Philip's order (was it an "anathema?") is still in place over Jerusalem setting up some Palestinian parishes here.
According to the latest reports, the meeting with Poroshenko did not take place. Instead, there was an emergency meeting of the UOC-MP Synod of Bishops in the Kyiv Caves Lavra, followed by a Council of Bishops (since 83 of 90 UOC-MP bishops who aren't retired were already present). The Council of Bishops accepted the decision of the Moscow Patriarchate to cease communion with Constantinople and condemned the Fanar's actions.
ReplyDeletehttp://spzh.news/ru/news/57498-sobor-arkhijerejev-upc-reshenija-fanara-po-ukraine-javlyajutsya-nedejstvitelynymi
According to other reports that I have read, the most pro-autocephaly bishop of the UOC-MP Met. Alexander Drabinko went by himself to Poroshenko. He controls exactly one church building in Kiev, so even if he goes the UOC-MP will not lose much. They will probably heave a sigh of relief as well.
The answer: politics.
ReplyDeleteThe Antiochians do not commune with Non-Chalcedonians, though you may see some "don't ask, don't tell" practices by local priests. The bishops will tell you no and hell no.
ReplyDeleteEvery Orthodox bishop in the US right now is, strictly speaking, uncanonical, so yes canons are rather flexibly applied. The state of global Orthodoxy is unfortunate, and the EP dropping an atomic bomb from his suburb in Istanbul is sure not helping. Now we know why the Greeks declined to put the "diaspora" and autocephaly on the Crete agenda (literally the only issues remaining in the Faith for a Council to address). They've already decided how such issues are to be handled, and their answer is the Roman Papal model. This is truly a defining, ontological issue and therefore has triggered very harsh responses. There is a salutary way for Ukraine to get her own national Church, but it's not via the EP unilaterally making it so like the Roman Pontiff. Speaking of Antioch, it would be like the US Archdiocese doing an end-run around the Synod back in the Levant.
Like I've said, we are in undiscovered country with a hierarchy that was caught flatfooted in succession by 1) the fall of the Empire, 2) the Industrial Revolution, and 3) transnational immigration. Prayers are needed all around.
One final point you raise: yes, to be Orthodox in the US is not very "Orthodox." We all have family members who will never have a Trisagion and, correspondingly, will not hold a Trisagion for us. We are miles wide and an inch deep. Perhaps an American national Church would help but I don't think there's any consensus remaining on what constitutes the American nation.
The EP is unilaterally declaring autocephaly and regularizing a particularly nasty bunch of schismatics. That is more than just tossing a grenade, it's a mortar attack and it got a visceral response. And it's similar to the Roman Pontiff plopping down uniate churches wherever he feels like it. Like I said, sovereignty is serious business and the MP doesn't pull punches--when you're big enough, you don't need to.
ReplyDeleteNone of which is to denigrate the Greek Orthodox faithful, of course. This is all about the same problem: canons written for an Imperial model which does not reflect reality.
I'm rather impressed by the Serbian Orthodox Church's handling of this fiasco. It has set an example for the other Churches to follow. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who is aware of the way the Serbian Orthodox Church handled the schism in Macedonia. The late Serbian patriarch of blessed memory, Pavle, acting entirely out of pastoral care for the Macedonian Orthodox Christians, who have for decades now lived in schism, reached out to the Macedonian schismatic bishops and offered them the widest possible autonomy short of autocephaly, with the question of autocephaly itself being left for some future Great Council. The Serbian patriarch and bishops were, and still are, of the opinion that questions of autocephaly should be decided on by the whole body of the Church, and not by any single autocephalous Church (something both Constantinople and Moscow clearly oppose in practice, if not theory). The Macedonian bishops initially accepted this, but under direct political pressure, as in Ukraine, most of them broke their word, leaving just four bishops and their small flock in the fold of the Church. They number in the hundreds, from what I gather, and they live under constant state-sponsored persecution, but they are the only Orthodox Church Macedonia has. The so called 'Macedonian Orthodox Church', is, and has been from the start, a schismatic organisation that was set up by a decree of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
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