Abp Hilarion

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The more I read what is coming out of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the clearer it becomes that they understand the culture within the Church and outside of it. The ROC will emerge as the world leader of Orthodoxy because it comprehends that the crisis in Western culture, including Russia, is primarily moral and speak to it with clarity. Note this paragraph:

Archbishop Hilarion added that there were nominal Orthodox believers in the world who consider themselves Christians by birth or by belonging to a certain ethnic group, but they do not completely fulfill that what their religion prescribes. The archpastor expressed his regret, saying: “It is a common problem of all the religions: people identify themselves with a certain confession, but they do not shape their lives in accordance with its teaching.” He added: “This means there is such a phenomenon as a lack of serious and thoughtful consideration of the fact that they belong to the Christian Church. They even agree to perform certain religious rites, but as far as real life is concerned, they are not ready to observe the commandments of Christ.”

Compare that with the Constantinopolitan policy of building the Church on ethnic identity instead of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This policy dims moral awareness and leads to a confusion between moral and political authority. That’s why we see errors such as granting religious imprimatur to secular apocalyptic movements like global warming. If the policy continues, Constantinople will not be able to muster the interior strength and depth that is necessary to meet the challenges facing Western civilization.

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H/T: Byzantine, TX

The Russian Orthodox Church has opened its first seminary outside the former Soviet Union – in a small French town outside Paris. The institution is starting modestly but has big ambitions: to serve Russia’s growing diaspora and foster closer ties between Eastern and Western Christian churches.

It is a bitterly cold afternoon, but the large stone building in the heart of Epinay-Sous-Senart is warm and welcoming, with smells of cooking and a Christmas tree in the front hall. Upstairs, half a dozen black-robed students are studying theology.

The building is an old convent. But the nuns are gone and their Roman Catholic crosses have been traded for Russian icons and incense. The students are on the front lines of a bold experiment launched by the Russian Orthodox church, the first pupils of the church’s first seminary in the West.

“The Russian Orthodox church needs more than ever good specialists who know not only the life of Christian churches in western Europe, and in the West generally, but also who know the theology, the history of the Catholic Church and the other Orthodox Churches and specialists who know foreign languages and are able to study the experience that Christians in Europe encounter with secularization,” Siniakov said.

Alexander Siniakov, the seminary's director sits to the left of Abp. Hilarion

The seminary was officially inaugurated in November and it is starting modestly with about a dozen students enrolled in its five-year program. Most are from Russia and former Soviet republics, but there are plans to diversify and grow the student body to 40 over the next few years, with the seminarians also earning master’s degrees in theology from the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Read the entire article on the Byzantine, TX website.

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk: “The work of the Church is always mission-oriented because mission is a vocation of the Church”

Russian Orthodox Church opens seminary in France