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class="post-5840 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-metropolitan-hilarion tag-russian-orthodox-church tag-theology entry">
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Met. Hilarion
Many ask: what does it mean to be a Christian? This is what we read in the 3d century manuscript known as ‘A Letter to Diognetus’ and ascribed to St. Justin the Martyr: ‘there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… To speak in general terms, the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body’.
These words speak to us about the self-determination of the early Christian community. In spite of the fact that many centuries have elapsed since this letter was written, its words in fact concern each of us. We really live in our own country, while wearing the same clothes, other people do and speak in the same language as those around us, but we are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
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We vigorously oppose atheism perceived as a ‘common denominator’ of all religions, as secular politicians sometimes try to present it, saying, ‘There are differences among religions; therefore, let us proceed from atheistic prerequisites so that no religion feels offended.’ This position is absolutely false and unacceptable to us. We state that traditional religions have much more in common rather than different in the sphere of morality…”
13.01.2010 · DECR Chairman, The Far Abroad
On 12 January 2010, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk met with journalists at the Moscow Patriarchate Department for external church relations. While answering their questions, he told them that the Russian Orthodox Church intended to continue dialogue with different European institutions, including the European Union and the Council of Europe, “on the problems linked to the moral and spiritual human life.”
“We shall try to attain the decision-making, in legislation in particular, that would take into account not only the atheistic and secular world outlook, but also the religious one,” Archbishop Hilarion said.
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ROME, January 25, 2010 – This evening, with vespers in the basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls, Benedict XVI is closing the week of prayer for Christian unity.
There are some who say that ecumenism has entered a phase of retreat and chill. But as soon as one that looks to the East, the facts say the opposite. Relations with the Orthodox Churches have never been so promising as they have since Joseph Ratzinger has been pope.
The dates speak for themselves. A period of chill in the theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches of Byzantine tradition began in 1990, when the two sides clashed over so-called “uniatism,” meaning the ways in which Catholic communities of the Eastern rites duplicate in everything the parallel Orthodox communities, differing only by their obedience to the Church of Rome.
In Balamond, in Lebanon, the dialogue came to a halt. It hit an even bigger obstacle on the Russian side, where the patriarchate of Moscow could not tolerate seeing itself “invaded” by Catholic missionaries sent there by Pope John Paul II, who were all the more suspect because they were of Polish nationality, historically a rival.
The dialogue remained frozen until, in 2005, the German Joseph Ratzinger ascended to the throne of Peter, a pope highly appreciated in the East for the same reason he prompts criticisms in the West: for his attachment to the great Tradition.
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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.
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Met. Jonah explains why he signed the Manhattan Declaration. H/T Peter and Helen Evans
Interviewer: Why did you sign the Manhattan Declaration?
Met. Jonah: …I believe in the same basic principles that are enunciated in the Manhattan Declaration. I believe also that many of them are the basic teachings of the Church regarding human life and how we are supposed to live — first and foremost the stance on pro-life, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, and how critically important it is to protect that every step of the way…
See the complete interview and more interviews with Orthodox signers (and others) on the Peter and Helen Evans website (website under construction).
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