ROC Synod forms schismatic structure on Patriarchate of Alexandria’s territory – Spiritual Front
The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church has now broken communion with the Patriarch of Alexandria, who is the Patriarch over all “orthodox churches” on the African continent.
This comes on the heels of the 2018 decision by the same Russian Patriarch in Moscow to sever communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch (in Constantinople) and the churches under his jurisdiction in Greece and the Greek Orthodox Diocese of North America.
Now we have yet another schism among the mainline eastern “churches.”
And rumors are swirling that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is next, as they too are about to go down the same road as the Ecumenical and Alexandrian Patriarchs.
So what is this all about?!?
Ukraine.
As soon as a patriarch announces that they think the churches in Ukraine should be “autocephalous” (have their own head Patriarchate), the Patriarch in Moscow throws a fit and severs communion with them.
It all goes back to 2018, the year I decided to become eastern “orthodox” incidentally.
That’s the year the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople recognized the “orthodox churches” in Ukraine as “autocephalous.” In other words, Constantinople was saying that the Ukrainians should have their own church and should not be under the Russian Patriarchate, as they have been for as long as anyone remembers (probably since the days of Peter the Great, who himself dissolved the office of Russian Patriarch and put the Russian Church under direct control of his government).
Why should Ukrainians be under the Russian Orthodox Church?? Ukrainians are not Russian!
Eastern “orthodox” apologists (at least pre-2018) always bragged about how a distinctive feature of "eastern orthodoxy" was how each nation has its own church.
I guess Ukraine is to be an exception!
But why? No answer is ever given.
And since 2018, rather than dealing with that $64,000 question, these same “orthodox” apologists now do a shuck and jive and dodge the issue by making the claim that the Ecumenical Patriarch is just a “stooge of the US State Department” and is doing this to attack Russia at the instigation of the West.
Ok…maybe there is some truth to that (i.e., it is part of the West’s current campaign to inflame tensions in Ukraine to poke the Russian Bear). But it is almost uproariously funny to hear this charge being levelled that the EP is having his strings pulled by the West....when the "church" in Moscow has, for years, had its strings pulled by whoever was sitting in the Kremlin. The current Russian Patriarch's predecessor, Alexy II, was a literal KGB agent! And anyone who thinks that Putin, for example, doesn't currently use the ROC for his own political ends, is fooling themselves! There is a long precedent in Russian history that the ROC has always been more or less controlled by the Russian State.
And it still doesn't address the central burning issue, the pink elephant in the room: why should Ukrainians be under the Russian Church in the first place?
In 2020 I got to witness some of the silly fallout from this firsthand. Every year all of the local “orthodox” churches have a combined liturgy at one of the local parishes. That year, it was the Serbian church’s turn to host the event. All the local churches sent their priests and deacons: the Russians, the Antiochians, and the Greeks. But when the Greek priests showed up, the Russian priests and deacons excused themselves and left. I had no idea what was going on until my then Russian priest later explained that they were told by their bishop that they were not allowed to serve with the Greek priests because of the situation in Ukraine.
So why do I bring this up?
Because it’s just one of MANY of the false practices and claims of the eastern “churches”, and these current schisms are the gift-that-keeps-on-giving for anyone who wishes to engage in polemics against the eastern orthos, not only to show the absurdity of their ecclesiology, but also to argue for a more Biblical model of Church government, which is NOTHING AT ALL LIKE the ethno-nationalist episcopal model of Church government that they espouse.
Looking Forward…
2025 fast approaches, when Nicea III is supposed to be taking place, where a serious effort will be made, spearheaded by the Ecumenical Patriarch, to reunify with Rome, with the hopes of having it all sealed up by Easter of that year, because Easter and Pascha occur on the same day (which doesn’t usually occur since many Eastern churches, who call it “Pascha”, are still on the Julian rather than the Gregorian Calendar). As is already happening, most of the other "eastern churches" will split away from Russia, which is the largest eastern church.
How, then, can any convert to the "eastern churches", or somebody who is interested in converting, not see that there really is no such thing as "Eastern orthodoxy?"
This was all predicted by Vladimir Soloviev back in 1889, when he wrote:
“…for on the day on which the Russian and Greek Churches formally break with one another, the whole world will see that the Ecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that there exists in the East nothing but isolated national churches…It need hardly be added that all these national Churches are simply State Churches entirely without any kind of ecclesiastical freedom.” (Russia and the Universal Church).
The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church has now broken communion with the Patriarch of Alexandria, who is the Patriarch over all “orthodox churches” on the African continent.
This comes on the heels of the 2018 decision by the same Russian Patriarch in Moscow to sever communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch (in Constantinople) and the churches under his jurisdiction in Greece and the Greek Orthodox Diocese of North America.
Now we have yet another schism among the mainline eastern “churches.”
And rumors are swirling that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is next, as they too are about to go down the same road as the Ecumenical and Alexandrian Patriarchs.
So what is this all about?!?
Ukraine.
As soon as a patriarch announces that they think the churches in Ukraine should be “autocephalous” (have their own head Patriarchate), the Patriarch in Moscow throws a fit and severs communion with them.
It all goes back to 2018, the year I decided to become eastern “orthodox” incidentally.
That’s the year the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople recognized the “orthodox churches” in Ukraine as “autocephalous.” In other words, Constantinople was saying that the Ukrainians should have their own church and should not be under the Russian Patriarchate, as they have been for as long as anyone remembers (probably since the days of Peter the Great, who himself dissolved the office of Russian Patriarch and put the Russian Church under direct control of his government).
Why should Ukrainians be under the Russian Orthodox Church?? Ukrainians are not Russian!
Eastern “orthodox” apologists (at least pre-2018) always bragged about how a distinctive feature of "eastern orthodoxy" was how each nation has its own church.
I guess Ukraine is to be an exception!
But why? No answer is ever given.
And since 2018, rather than dealing with that $64,000 question, these same “orthodox” apologists now do a shuck and jive and dodge the issue by making the claim that the Ecumenical Patriarch is just a “stooge of the US State Department” and is doing this to attack Russia at the instigation of the West.
Ok…maybe there is some truth to that (i.e., it is part of the West’s current campaign to inflame tensions in Ukraine to poke the Russian Bear). But it is almost uproariously funny to hear this charge being levelled that the EP is having his strings pulled by the West....when the "church" in Moscow has, for years, had its strings pulled by whoever was sitting in the Kremlin. The current Russian Patriarch's predecessor, Alexy II, was a literal KGB agent! And anyone who thinks that Putin, for example, doesn't currently use the ROC for his own political ends, is fooling themselves! There is a long precedent in Russian history that the ROC has always been more or less controlled by the Russian State.
And it still doesn't address the central burning issue, the pink elephant in the room: why should Ukrainians be under the Russian Church in the first place?
In 2020 I got to witness some of the silly fallout from this firsthand. Every year all of the local “orthodox” churches have a combined liturgy at one of the local parishes. That year, it was the Serbian church’s turn to host the event. All the local churches sent their priests and deacons: the Russians, the Antiochians, and the Greeks. But when the Greek priests showed up, the Russian priests and deacons excused themselves and left. I had no idea what was going on until my then Russian priest later explained that they were told by their bishop that they were not allowed to serve with the Greek priests because of the situation in Ukraine.
So why do I bring this up?
Because it’s just one of MANY of the false practices and claims of the eastern “churches”, and these current schisms are the gift-that-keeps-on-giving for anyone who wishes to engage in polemics against the eastern orthos, not only to show the absurdity of their ecclesiology, but also to argue for a more Biblical model of Church government, which is NOTHING AT ALL LIKE the ethno-nationalist episcopal model of Church government that they espouse.
Looking Forward…
2025 fast approaches, when Nicea III is supposed to be taking place, where a serious effort will be made, spearheaded by the Ecumenical Patriarch, to reunify with Rome, with the hopes of having it all sealed up by Easter of that year, because Easter and Pascha occur on the same day (which doesn’t usually occur since many Eastern churches, who call it “Pascha”, are still on the Julian rather than the Gregorian Calendar). As is already happening, most of the other "eastern churches" will split away from Russia, which is the largest eastern church.
How, then, can any convert to the "eastern churches", or somebody who is interested in converting, not see that there really is no such thing as "Eastern orthodoxy?"
This was all predicted by Vladimir Soloviev back in 1889, when he wrote:
“…for on the day on which the Russian and Greek Churches formally break with one another, the whole world will see that the Ecumenical Eastern Church is a mere fiction and that there exists in the East nothing but isolated national churches…It need hardly be added that all these national Churches are simply State Churches entirely without any kind of ecclesiastical freedom.” (Russia and the Universal Church).
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