A dialogue between the Archbishop and Petya
Note to the reader of this important conversation:
I gave up trying to differentiate which comments here
belong to this Petya or are SiR's Vladyka Chrysostomos's
astute replies, etc.
Perhaps it doesn't matter..as a lot of truth is expressed
between the two of them.
Subject: A dialogue between the Archbishop and Petya
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:22:07 +0000
To:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Archbishop Chrysostomos
Subject: Some Russian protesters seek escape
Date: 21 January 2013 19:57:05 GMT
Blgoslovite Vladyka Chrysostomos
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Dear Petya:
Gospod' blagoslovit!
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Dear Vladyka Chrysostomos,
I found this article in the Washington Post which on the 2nd page talks about an individual who was detained and sought after for his comments that the church appears to be an arm of the United Russia Party. Seems to me that when you read the whole article it highlights the crack down on free speech which indicates that Putin is trying not so hard to show everyone in the country and abroad that he is in power and that the a New Age/Soviet age will be back.
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Vladyka: It is a frightening thing to see. More frightening is the fact that those in the West are blind to what is happening. At least when the ROCA was a bulwark of resistance against the Soviets and their use of the Patriarchate to bolster their position, someone in the emigre community was there to expose this sad situation. Now there is almost no one left to do so.
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I recall that when Gorbachev came into power his schtick and political focus was on Perestroika. He himself said that the country has to rebuild itself and become stronger in the process He never advocated instituting a democratic process. Rather his thrust was on making the country stronger by eliminating the wrongs in the bureaucracy and the structure of the government not democratize it!
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I remember that political analysts observed this same thing at the time. Now, they simply act as though the legacy of Sovietism in the Russian Soviet Oligarchy is non-existent, pretending that a democracy has been established, even though they know that this is absolutely untrue.
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Well, things are now going Putin's way and it seems that even when you leave the country, they will still come after you! Nothing has changed
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Indeed. And instead of Orthodoxy in Russia standing as a bulwark against all of this, the sin and heresy of phyletism has become a strong tool for Putin. The Moscow Patriarchate, filled with former KGB agents and collaborators, works hand-in-hand with him, while he calls the Russian emigrees back to Russianism, when they should be calling Putin and the Russian Oligarchy back to Orthodoxy.
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My concerns are that the West does not appear to doing anything about it or voicing alarm on what Putin is doing I guess the economics (oil) is what is preventing the West to bring Putin on the carpet.
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That is a result of the moral decline of our own countries. We are stooping to the level of the Soviet heritage in Putin's Russia.
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Also, I just read an article that the Russian stock exchange is offering shares for sale into the stock exchange trying to raise $500M I don't think that they would do this if they felt that the West wouldn't jump at the chance and means that the West is not really interested in the internal political affairs of what Putin is doing.
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Again, just as we ignore in our own countries (and especially the U.S.) the warnings of such men as Eisenhower against the rise of an industrial-military complex more interested in power than principle, we ignore the fact that every single principle of democracy has been trampled upon by Putin's regime. We look, as you say, to economic gain over and against principles.
So, we in the West are guilty of immoral actions, as well. We stand hand-in-hand with the murderous former KGB agents who rule Russia, overlooking our own devastating failures at moral leadership and accepting their bloody, ruthless, incomprehensible tactics as though they were merely the innocent mode de jour.
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Also, with this increased activity by Putin, I find that the 'attacks' on the West by ROCOR being somewhat odd. In Archbishop Mark's Nativity Epistle he uses the excess of the West and the new calendar celebrations to show that the celebrating Nativity by the old calender brings one back to what Nativity is really about.
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And yet he communes with ecumenists in the New Calendar jurisdictions, reviles us as having Mysteries that lead to "condemnation" (his words, not mine - and we have the text to prove it, which was sent to Archimandrite Alexis in England when he asked to be received into our jurisdiction, rather than join with Moscow).
We, with whom he was once in communion and whom he now considers "outside the Church" (again, we have a letter in which he says just this), while his ecumenical brothers in Moscow affirm that Rome is not outside the Church (!), celebrate on the Old Calendar and preach a conservative, observant Orthodoxy. How can he condemn us? Interestingly, this question shows that his condemnation of the West is less confessional than political, even if he may not understand or admit that, given the process in which he found himself caught up.
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Archbishop Gabriel also points this out in his epistle as well. Although they are both correct in that our Orthodox celebrations by the true calendar along with how we celebrate Nativity is different and meaningful in a spiritual aspect they in effect are openly supporting Putin's new political direction and slamming the West!
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All of the ills of the West aside - and I do not justify or dismiss any of them, since those who offer hope to the world should never betray the trust others put in them - it is not the West that killed millions of Orthodox in Eastern Europe. And it was the West, its occasional and shameful failures (returning Russians escaping to freedom back to the Soviets in some instances) aside, that offered the ROCOR refuge from Stalin's killing spree and the madness of the Soviet utopia that Putin supported and which he has artlessly tried to equate with Orthodoxy: rendering the Soviet Caesar and Christ one!!!
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As well, the Archbishops are criticizing their own Orthodox brothers with whom they are not only in communion with but meet regularly at the WCC in various other forums.
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More important than that is the fact that they are sinfully in communion with ecumenists who, to quote Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) consider the idea of the primacy of Orthodoxy - THE basic ecclesiological dogma of the Church - "medieval" and "narcissistic"! Think about that.
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Also, the Patriarch himself sends greetings to non orthodox heads (http://mospat.ru/en/2012/12/25/news78411/)on Dec 25 and to the all orthodox (http://mospat.ru/en/2013/01/07/news78720/) albeit on January 7! Seems to be a bit hypocritical
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Strangely, even though we celebrate on the Old Calendar and, if one wants to be absolutely historical and technically legalistic, received our Apostolic Succession from the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (in fact, the historical Church of Russia, before the "time of troubles"), with Moscow is now in Communion (without re-Consecrating its Bishops, I might add), we are somehow outside the Church and without Mysteries!
Curious ecclesiology, whatever tricks of the politico-theological trade one wants to apply.
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So, I am afraid here is the first example that the MP/Putin are using ROCOR/MP to make their political points across to the faithful both in and outside of the country!
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Where, in all of this, is the catholic Church? Where is True Orthodoxy, which is united in a sole confession? This is world Orthodoxy? A political game and officialdom created by ethnic ties and ecumenical oneness? I am afraid that the blindness to the Russian situation is secondary to the blindness to the nature, roots, and integrity of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is becoming in the Old World and the West a religion of convenience and of phyletism in the service of something other than Christ.
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Your spiritual son in Jesus Christ
Petya
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This is a very important collection of documents, Petya, and I am going to send out our exchange to our clergy/laity list. Thank you VERY much for this springboard from which to comment on the growth of a false understanding of the Church. Let us, out of love for True Orthodoxy and for our misled brethren, make our prayers more fervent for the love of Truth and not its shadow.
With paternal and fraternal love, Least Among Monks, + Archbishop Chrysostomos
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