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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Blasts Russia Church’s ‘Pan-Slavism’

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Blasts Russia Church's 'Pan-Slavism'

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew blasted what he called the “pan-Slavism” of the Russian Church under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in a wide-ranging speech last week in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking at the “World Policy Conference – For a Reasonably Open World”, Bartholomew condemned the support the Russian Orthodox Church offers to President Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. The Ecumenical Patriarch criticized the role of the Russian Church over the last centuries and especially from the 19th century onwards when “in combination with the doctrine of pan-Slavism, it instrumentalized religious sentiment to achieve political and military purposes alien to the Church.”

Russia wanted to submit the church to its will in its effort to instrumentalize the religious feeling for its political and military ends, he said. “From the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, Moscow aspired to replace the Ecumenical Patriarchate by proclaiming that Moscow represented ‘the third Rome’. This long-lasting policy of Moscow constitutes a fundamental factor of the division of the Orthodox world,” Bartholomew opined.

From the 19th century, Moscow instrumentalized religion he added. “Inspired by Pan-Germanism, the new ideology of Pan-Slavism, an organ of Russian foreign policy, acquired a religious component. This is the idea that churches should organize themselves according to the principle of ethnicity, the central marker of which would be language. “It is this approach that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople denounced in 1872 as heresy (the heresy of ethnophyletism, a form of ecclesial racism). It is in flagrant contradiction with the universalism of the Gospel message, as well as the principle of territorial governance which defines the organization of our church,” Bartholomew said. He stressed that following the collapse of Communism, Russia used religion again for ideological purposes. The Russian Orthodox Church has sided with the regime of President Vladimir Putin, especially since the election of Patriarch Kirill in 2009.

“It actively participates in the promotion of the ideology of Rousskii Mir, of the Russian world, according to which language and religion make it possible to define a coherent whole encompassing Russia, Ukraine, Belarus as well as the other territories of the former Soviet Union and the diaspora. “Moscow (both political power and religious power) would constitute the center of this world, whose mission would be to combat the decadent values of the West.

This ideology constitutes an instrument of legitimization of Russian expansionism and the basis of its Eurasian strategy. “The link between the past of ethnophyletism and the present of the Russian world is obvious. Faith thus becomes the backbone of the ideology of Putin’s regime,” Bartholomew said. Bartholomew conceded that the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church granted in 2019 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate has worsened relations with the Russian Church. He also said that the invasion of Ukraine pushed the polarization “to a fever pitch.”
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Ideology fueling Ukraine war is hurting Orthodox unity, says patriarch

Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds a place of honor among the world’s Orthodox primates, called Putin’s war in Ukraine an “unjust aggression” which “constitutes the worst European geopolitical and humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War.”

His speech last week took aim at the ideology known as the Russian World, or Russkii Mir, which, according to a declaration drafted by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, states that there is a “transnational Russian sphere or civilization, called Holy Russia or ‘Holy Rus,’ which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world. It holds that this ‘Russian world’ has a common political center (Moscow), a common spiritual center (Kyiv as the ‘mother of all Rus’), a common language (Russian), a common Church (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate), and a common patriarch (the Patriarch of Moscow), who works in ‘symphony’ with a common president/national leader (Putin) to govern this Russian world, as well as upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture.”


A Declaration on the "Russian World" (Russkii mir) Teaching

“For the peace of the whole world, for the stability of the holy churches of God,
and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.”

(Divine Liturgy)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is a historic threat to a people of Orthodox Christian tradition. More troubling still for Orthodox believers, the senior hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church has refused to acknowledge this invasion, issuing instead vague statements about the necessity for peace in light of “events” and “hostilities” in Ukraine, while emphasizing the fraternal nature of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as part of “Holy Rus’,” blaming the hostilities on the evil “West”, and even directing their communities to pray in ways that actively encourage hostility.

The support of many of the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate for President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is rooted in a form of Orthodox ethno-phyletist religious fundamentalism, totalitarian in character, called Russkii mir orthe Russian world, a false teaching which is attracting many in the Orthodox Church and has even been taken up by the Far Right and Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists [...]

Against this “Russian world” (so the teaching goes) stands the corrupt West, led by the United States and Western European nations, which has capitulated to “liberalism”, “globalization”, “Christianophobia”, “homosexual rights” promoted in gay parades, and “militant secularism”. Over and against the West and those Orthodox who have fallen into schism and error (such as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and other local Orthodox churches that support him) stands the Moscow Patriarchate, along with Vladimir Putin, as the true defenders of Orthodox teaching, which they view in terms of traditional morality, a rigorist and inflexible understanding of tradition, and veneration of Holy Russia.

Since the enthronement of Patriarch Kirill in 2009, the leading figures of the Moscow Patriarchate, as well as spokespersons of the Russian State, have continually drawn on these principles to thwart the theological basis of Orthodox unity. The principle of the ethnic organization of the Church was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 1872. The false teaching of ethno-phyletism is the basis for “Russian world” ideology. If we hold such false principles as valid, then the Orthodox Church ceases to be the Church of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Apostles, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Ecumenical Councils, and the Fathers of the Church. Unity becomes intrinsically impossible.

Therefore, we reject the “Russian world” heresy and the shameful actions of the Government of Russia in unleashing war against Ukraine which flows from this vile and indefensible teaching with the connivance of the Russian Orthodox Church, as profoundly un-Orthodox, un-Christian and against humanity, which is called to be “justified… illumined… and washed in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God” (Baptismal Rite). Just as Russia has invaded Ukraine, so too the Moscow Patriarchate of Patriarch Kirill has invaded the Orthodox Church, for example in Africa, causing division and strife, with untold casualties not just to the body but to the soul, endangering the salvation of the faithful.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
It's also a demonstration that the Orthodox Church doesn't have a pope.
Because the Patriarch of Constantinople is not a pope. He is just considered, symbolically, the primus inter pares.
I don't think Patriarch Kirill feels, you know, reprimanded, because he can count on enormous political support.

The orthodox Church has always had the caesaropapism as characteristic: the tendency to merge the political authority and the ecclesiastical authority into a same powerful unity. That is why there are so many autocephalous national churches.

The opposite of the RCC, where State and Church remain separated and sometimes antagonistically.

I do understand Bartholomew's standpoint, but Christendom needs more unity and less criticisms.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
One hopes the Orthodox throw Moscow squarely in the bin (even though it has already been chucked out officially), allow dissenting Russians to join their Orthodox Church/es and forge closer ties to the RCC, OOC and possibly the AC as it also has a global communion and there are Anglo-Catholics who appreciate this dialogue, and the AC is already dialoguing with the OC. We are seeing good signals from many places within these Churches and just a few years ago the EO and OC (Eastern/Oriental Orthodoxy) Churches came very close to a kind of reconciliation. Greece, iirc, was the dissenting factor.

If Moscow wants to become an ethnicist outlier looking to justifying it's pan-Slavism it will quickly find itself isolated, especially when one considers that not all OCs are even Slavs, such as Romanians, the Hungarian OC, Greeks, Turks etc. It's not only a very limited and racist vision, but one that aims decisively to split the Orthodox Church more than it already is. How anyone could buy this nonsense is beyond me but I hope we see an exodus of Russian Orthodox to other Orthodox Churches and stronger ties formed with the RCC/AC/OOC, which size would make Moscow a shallow puddle.

I agree the West has problems but racism and other abhorrent beliefs are not the solution. There are conservatives in the West who are looking for other solutions to the various social issues of our day, and as we said before, Maltese ideology seems to be a good way of going about it for some. We don't need to adopt a kind of racist tyranny or put up with it on our doorstep. The Church has always condemned this behaviour and welcomed everyone.
 
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sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
It's also a demonstration that the Orthodox Church doesn't have a pope.
Because the Patriarch of Constantinople is not a pope. He is just considered, symbolically, the primus inter pares.
I don't think Patriarch Kirill feels, you know, reprimanded, because he can count on enormous political support.

The orthodox Church has always had the caesaropapism as characteristic: the tendency to merge the political authority and the ecclesiastical authority into a same powerful unity. That is why there are so many autocephalous national churches.

The opposite of the RCC, where State and Church remain separated and sometimes antagonistically.

I do understand Bartholomew's standpoint, but Christendom needs more unity and less criticisms.

This situation reminds me of the time of three popes Western Schism | History, Background, & Resolution
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
This situation reminds me of the time of three popes Western Schism | History, Background, & Resolution
I'm not sure. Seeing as Constantinople formally severed communion with Moscow in 2018, Kiril has no legitimate claim to anything imo. The Ukrainians now have their own church and are not talking orders from Moscow anymore. I'd more compare it to Elizabeth I being excommunicated by Rome and the CofE going its own way, making its own communion - but even then, Moscow has failed at the latter, being such an aggressive and politically captured force that seems to think in some bizarre terms of Slavic superiority.
 
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paarsurrey

Veteran Member
This situation reminds me of the time of three popes Western Schism | History, Background, & Resolution
Thanks for the Link, it starts:

"Western Schism, also called Great Schism or Great Western Schism, in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the period from 1378 to 1417, when there were two, and later three, rival popes, each with his own following, his own Sacred College of Cardinals, and his own administrative offices."
Western Schism | History, Background, & Resolution
Isn't It all Religious Politics between rival factions of the Hellenist -Paulians aka "Christians", none of them is representative of (Jesus) Yeshua- the Israelite Messiah, one gets to know, please?

Regards
 
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