Russian Orthodox

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios announced yesterday that Bishop Savas of Troas, most recently the chancellor of the archdiocese, has been named director of the Office of Church and Society. The bishop will be charged with developing “programs and ministries that promote a creative Orthodox Christian engagement with contemporary societal and cultural realities.”

Readers of this blog will recall the effusive praise with which Bishop Savas greeted the election of Barack Obama, rejoicing that “this is the day that the Lord has made!” Yesterday, the Obama administration moved to rescind a Bush administration regulation, put in place in December, that cuts off federal funding for medical facilities that would force doctors, nurses and other health care workers to participate in practices, such as abortion, that “they feel violates their personal, moral or religious beliefs.” The move to lift the so-called “conscience rule,” which is subject to a 30 day public comment period, was applauded by pro-abortion activists and condemned by religious conservatives.

Perhaps the bishop, in his first official act, could issue a sharply worded statement and go on radio and TV to criticize the Obama administration for its attempt to overturn the health care “conscience rule” and pointing out how removing legal protections for religious belief in the workplace advances the culture of death. There’s a “contemporary societal and cultural” reality for you. Continue reading →

Cultural commentator Srdja Trifkovic writes on Patriarch Akeksy in the latest issue of Chronicles Magazine:

Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died of heart failure on December 5, 2008, at the age of 79…

Aleksy II came to the throne just as the Soviet state was beginning to disintegrate. The early years of his tenure were dominated by the tremendous task of restoring the moral authority of the Church in a nation devastated by seven decades of lethal anti-Christian rule.

The scale of that devastation defies imagination. Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and other denominations under the communists is one of the greatest crimes in history. Its death toll was several times greater than that of the holocaust. It had killed more Christians than all other persecutions in all ages put together, with Islam a distant second. In 20 interwar years (1918-38), the number of churches that remained open in Russia was reduced from 54,000 to under 500—less than one percent of the pre-Bolshevik total. Some 600 Orthodox bishops, 40,000 priests, 120,000 monks and nuns, and millions of laymen were murdered.

Continue reading →

Interfax reports that planning for a council of Orthodox Churches is actively underway.

“We expect that preparatory process for the great and holy All-Orthodox Council of the Eastern Church will be revived,” Inter-Orthodox Secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Nikolay Balashov said on Friday.

He reminded that preparations for the Council started in 1960 and after 30 years “unfortunately, they were suspended, but not through the Russian Church fault.” The Preparatory Commission last met about fifteen years ago.

Fr. Nikolay reminded that last autumn at the Istanbul meeting between primates of all Orthodox Churches Patriarch Kirill (then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad – IF) “actively and largely contributed” in taking decisions to lead preparatory work out of the deadlock.

Writing for the Independent, a UK newspaper, Paul Vallely looks at a legal battle over control of an Orthodox cathedral. The power struggle, he writes, began with an influx of Russian immigrants to the United Kingdom and their clash with an assimilated, diverse Orthodox community.

“Huge numbers arrived,” says one of the parishioners, Ruth Nares, a teacher who converted from Anglicanism two decades before because of what she describes as Orthodoxy’s extraordinary sense of sacredness. “We were a community of white Russians, Finns, French, Italians and English converts. But the incomers had a different mentality. To many, it was just a place to meet fellow Russians. They would come in halfway through service, talking loudly at the back, and started making lunch there.” Karin Greenhead, a musician, says: “There was a lot of unpleasantness and elbowing and pushing. It was noisy and unprayerful. There was even a fight outside the church.”

But it was not just the congregation that changed. Extra priests sent over by Moscow during the past six years imported an unwelcome world view, too. “Nearly every Sunday we were bombarded with Soviet-style propaganda and warnings that ‘the Devil is among us’,” says Nicholas Tuckett, the founder of Ikon Records, which markets recordings of Orthodox music. “I was finding it impossible to pray.”

The points at issue largely concerned the minutiae of church life. There were disputes about whether marriages could take place on a Saturday, how frequent communion should be, how strictly fasting rules were to be observed, whether women were obliged to wear headscarves in church or forbidden from wearing trousers.

But what lay behind all the nit-picking was a fundamental struggle for power. The Russo faction began to petition Moscow for reform to press the original community to become more Russian. Metropolitan Anthony’s anointed successor, Bishop Basil, asked Moscow to disassociate itself from what he saw as troublemakers. But in Moscow, Metropolitan Kirill, who was last month elected head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church, declined to reply.

Read “The Battle Over Britain’s Orthodox Church” in the Independent.