Simultaneous cake eating and having attempted

Moscow, September 18, (Interfax) – The Russian Church points out to great potential for cooperation with Catholics, but warns against their unfriendly steps.

“We have much in common with Catholics not only in teaching, but also in morals,” the Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on air of the Soyuz Orthodox TV channel.

According to him, today “Catholic hierarchs and laymen actively opposes the problems actual for modern Russia: aborts, dilution of family, cult of permissiveness in private life, in sexual relations, in media, in education and so on.”

“We fight against the same enemies and must at least coordinate our efforts,” Fr. Vsevolod stressed.

Though, he noted, the Moscow Patriarchate saw “there are people in the Catholic Church who try to expand the area of its influence in Orthodox countries and nations.”

“It happens in Ukraine where the Greek Catholic Church was a local phenomenon of three regions of Western Ukraine and now pretends to have some national status, to be a Church of the whole Ukraine and claims it can unite Orthodox as well,” the priest stated.

He pointed out the Russian Church did not agree to it.

“We don’t understand those Catholic missionaries who come to various regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia and act as though these lands have never been enlightened with the light of Christ. It not fraternal actions, to put it mildly,” Fr. Vsevolod said.

According to him, those Catholics, who try to act like this, “should remember that their small benefits greatly limit possibilities for joint work and opposing the challenges both Catholic and Orthodox Churches face.”

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 18, 2008 at 9:42 PM

    The more things change, the more they stay the same!

    Russia, the Catholic Church and Patriarch Aleksy

    The Patriarch is NOT eager to lose any Ukrainians... They constitute more than HALF of HIS church...

    He acts like all those coming to faith and becoming Catholic are already devout Orthodox... Would that it were the case, but someone needs to tell comrade Patriarch that there are more than enough heathens to go around, and honestly there WERE 3,000,000 Catholics pre-Revolution compared to 600,000 today.

    If he is mad about the fact there are Catholics in siberia, he should think about how his government SENT them there.

    Give it a rest, and tend to your own! One would never realize that the Orthodox are well on their way to being a minority in Russia, a nation that is depopulating with Muslims and ethnic Chinese filling the void.

    There is NO SINCERITY in the Moscow Patriarchate at this time. Pray for a better future.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AndrewSeptember 19, 2008 at 4:06 AM

    Simultaneous cake eating and having attempted

    This is classic! ROTFL.

    BTW, did he request the permission of the canonical hierarch before his upcoming visit to Austria, either His Eminence Cardinal Schonborn or the Pope as he expects the Pope to get his permission before His Holiness can visit Russia? Or did he get the permission of his Bishop in Vienna instead? Bishop Hilarion is Bishop OF Vienna, mind you, where all the Orthodox, as Fr. Robert Taft famously remarked, can be fitted inside a telephone booth =)

    Where do the Russians get the idea that they can install Bishops in traditionally Catholic territory (such as CUBA!) where they have almost no members and restrict the Catholic Church from tending to her flock on Russian soil?

    Some of what the Russians are doing really smells of BS and someone should call them out on it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Byzantine, TXSeptember 19, 2008 at 8:45 AM

    I'm glad the more salient points came through to you guys. If this were Risk he'd be claiming Asia as a no-invade territory while sending in troops through Alaska and Eastern Europe.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousSeptember 19, 2008 at 6:43 PM

    "If this were Risk he'd be claiming Asia as a no-invade territory while sending in troops through Alaska and Eastern Europe. "

    But in fact, isn't that how the reality of it has almost begun to play out? As I recall, there has been some dust-ups (of the minor variety) over who "owns" China between the PoM and the PoC...

    Given the paucity of Orthodox believers EITHER could claim, isn't that rather like debating who has canonical jurisdiction on Mars?

    As Russia depopulates and Islam and the Ethnic Chinese of Siberia and Far Eastern Russia gain majority in different spheres...

    Well, hubris is all this old Patriarch has to hold unto.

    Recall "Better the Turkish turban than papal tiara" was uttered by a Constanipolitan who, under the turban, got to witness the beheading of his own sons, before the same befate immediately befell him.

    The more things change, eh?

    ReplyDelete

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