Tag: Christianity

Revelation: Removing the VeilThis revelation was given by God to the Apostle John because we needed to know it.

“>Part 1
If Christ Is With Us, Death Is DefeatedThe book of Revelation teaches us a lot, especially when we begin to carefully delve into its words, when we see how Christ holds the world in His hands and acts with wisdom in all things.”>Part 2
Why Did the Lord Leave Man the Book of Revelation?Only the people of God, the saints, can receive revelations from God, and only they can interpret them, because a revelation, words from God, is given from God, from the Holy Spirit.”>Part 3

    

In matters of faith that are transmitted to us through the word of God, through Holy Scripture, we can be absolutely firm. God says it, the Gospel says it, Christ says it—we don’t discuss it. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God (Mk. 12:30)—it’s not me saying it, it’s God. I can be mistaken in my words; you can argue with me. I’m a human being, and it’s highly likely that I make mistakes. We all have to accept that we make mistakes—in ourselves and in others. Don’t be so surprised when someone makes mistakes. There’s nothing surprising about this. Human nature is imperfect, so it’s characteristic of it to make mistakes, sin, and have flaws.

True servants of God can be recognized by humility (the seal of truth is humility), by purity of heart. Then man accepts what God says, he receives Divine revelation with a pure and humble heart. God gave a revelation to Jesus Christ to show His servants what would happen soon. Someone might say: “So, all this is going to happen. And why do we need to know that this is going to happen? How are we to counter this? Tomorrow may come the day when they start giving people the seal of the antichrist, the number 666, and whoever doesn’t have this seal won’t be able to do anything—neither buy, nor sell, nor move, and so on. In any case, it’s going to start. And what are we supposed to do? Fight? Resist?”

All of this will happen, but we mustn’t bow our heads and be like a lamb to the slaughter (Is. 53:7); we shouldn’t accept all of this carelessly. We’re all responsible for ourselves. It’s important for us to keep our conscience, not to accept what isn’t good according to the teaching of the Holy Gospel, of Holy Scripture. The fact that this will inevitably happen doesn’t mean we have to just accept it all.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that those who take action are instruments in the hands of God, as, for example, in times of persecution. There were persecutions in the first centuries of the Church: Christians were persecuted, millions of people were tortured during the first three centuries. Nero killed thousands of Christians. But the fact that he destroyed so many Christians and Paradise was filled with saints doesn’t at all mean that Nero was an instrument of God’s providence and he’ll also go to Paradise. No. He was able to fill Paradise with martyrs, but he himself will go to hell for killing them. Those who do the works of satan, evil deeds, works that are not of God, are not justified by the fact that they serve for the salvation of others, participating in the providence of God.

Many people say about Judas: “What’s Judas to blame for? After all, it was foretold that Christ would be betrayed. He served God’s plan exactly. What’s this poor man guilty of?” But that’s not how it is. Judas didn’t do this because it was planned. It doesn’t mean this prophecy was recorded many years ago and therefore it must be fulfilled; rather it’s written because he betrayed. It was foretold. Prophecies are given because certain events will happen, but not the other way around; If there’s a prophecy, then it must come to pass. And those who contribute and commit what was foretold bear full responsibility for their actions. Those people who will destroy the universe tomorrow and bring this world to an end will be responsible for it. It can’t be said that they fulfilled God’s plan. You’re responsible for the crimes and the evil you commit. And prophets simply foresaw it.

I want you to understand this subtlety regarding the prophecies of God. God doesn’t determine what will happen; but rather, because it will happen, God foretells it to prevent people from following after it, and to protect them. Christ tried to stop Judas many times, as we know from the Gospel, so he wouldn’t commit this evil, but Judas wanted to do it. He’s responsible for this and for how he ended his life.

Thus, the words, which must shortly come to pass (Rev. 1:1) mean that this will happen, and thus it’s being written about. But those who will take part and commit this evil will bear full responsibility.

“Shortly”—what does that mean? Everything will happen in a day? We have to understand that God acts outside of time, and the events of Revelation don’t relate only to the end times. It describes events that had already happened when they were described by the holy Apostle John, and those that will happen later. The Church has always lived by the expectation of the resurrection from the dead, of the last day. We will read: Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20). The Church lives by the expectation of the Coming of Christ, the expectation of the coming of the Kingdom of God. Thy Kingdom come (Lk. 11:2), we say in our prayers. We ask for the Kingdom of God both within our hearts and in general. Every person in the Church is waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God. It’s not known when this will happen. And no matter how hard we try to figure out the deadlines, it won’t work—God will never tell us, because he doesn’t act out of human curiosity, but in a completely different way.

​Behold the Bridegroom Cometh by Nikolaos Gyzis, 1899     

He signified it by His angel unto His servant John (Rev. 1:1). God showed all this to the servant of God John through an angel. John was a faithful servant of God—humble, pure, blameless, possessing everything necessary for a man to receive a Divine revelation. Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw (Rev. 1:2). The Apostle and Evangelist John testified to what he saw, what he felt, what he experienced together with Christ and about the word of God.

And then he says: Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand (Rev. 1:3). That means Revelation was written for people to read it. Blessed is he that readeth. Blessed and happy are those who read and study the book of Revelation and Sacred Scripture, and those who listen to the teaching, the interpretation of the word of this prophecy. Therefore, there’s nothing bad about reading the words of prophecy. It’s enough that this is done correctly: in the spirit of humility and the teaching, according to the interpretations of the Holy Fathers of our Church, with the sole purpose of observing what’s written there. We shouldn’t read in order to satisfy our curiosity, like people who love to read horoscopes to know what they should do today and tomorrow. Some, often serious, people can’t live unless they read their horoscope. It’s interesting that different newspapers write different horoscopes and they don’t agree with each other, so you have to choose which one to read. Nonsense!

    

For the time is at hand. You might say: “Father, it’s been 2,000 years already and the end hasn’t come.” Indeed, it hasn’t come yet. There could be another 2,000 years and it doesn’t come. But, it’s absolutely certain that the end will come. In 5, 10, 100,000 years, it will come. There’s no doubt about it. You might not live till that time, but there will come the hour when you leave this world. Therefore, it’s important to read and keep what’s written in Revelation, not because you will necessarily personally witness that day. Some will live to see and meet the antichrist and see everything written there. But we, who probably won’t be alive in those times, must experience different events every day, recognizing those that are of the antichrist spirit, which come from breaking the commandments and from sins, from renouncing God. There are many events going on around us that challenge us and incite us to break the commandments of God.

When we come to the end of our lives, to our biological end, we’ll find ourselves before the face of everything we’ve done and thought. Our life, whether we want it to or not, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) has its limit, its end. And one day it will come. Sometimes it comes early, sometimes later, but either way, it will come. For the time is at hand. One can argue that we won’t live to see the antichrist, but the hour of our departure from this world will come, when we will stand before God and see what we have done and not done. We mustn’t live in fear and oppression. Revelation and the Gospel weren’t written to intimidate us or force us to believe in God out of fear. It’s wrong to believe in God because you’re afraid. They were written so we would love God, believe in Him for real, with love; because we see there how God loves the world, that He has prepared for us to live with Him in eternity. God calls us to the Eternal Kingdom and to the eternal coming of His love.

To be continued…

While the increasing polarization in our country is nothing new, we seem to be heading into a category 5 hurricane of hostility this year. Not only is it an election year, but it’s a reprise of 2020. In addition, we are divided over the Israel-Hamas war and the Ukraine-Russia war. We have dueling apocalyptic visions, whether it’s the death of democracy or the unwashed hordes invading our southern border.

Our Church has its own share of divisions as well, where even the pope has become a catalyst of polarization.

And while our communities, our parishes, our states are becoming increasingly ideologically homogeneous, the breadth and depth of our polarization is touching us even if we seek solace among people who resemble us in our beliefs and biases. 

The personal risks and costs of our divide have come home to me recently. A close friend of mine is Jewish. We bonded over my interest in Judaism, his interest in Catholicism and our resulting comfort with each other’s “tribe.”

That is until Oct. 7 and its aftermath. The horror we both felt over the Hamas massacre and hostage taking was shared, if not equal. After all, for him it was much more personal, one of a chain of massacres extending back through history and up to and including the Nazis’ “Final Solution.”

It was not the reaction to the massacre that was troubling us, but the reaction to Israel’s reaction. Over the weeks and months, the images and reports of Gaza’s destruction troubled me more. Our conversations became perhaps a bit more guarded. At one point, he said he hoped that our disagreement would not hurt our friendship, and I assured him it would not.

And it will not.

But not a lot of people share my certitude when it comes to such disagreement, which is why we are seeing a cottage industry of books aimed at addressing ways to diagnose and overcome polarization. Titles like “I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening),” “Why We’re Polarized,” “Uncivil Agreement,” “Steps to Positive Political Dialogue,” and more.

One that seeks to challenge us as Catholics is Father Aaron Wessman’s “The Church’s Mission in a Polarized World” (New City Press, $14.99). Wessman looks at the data around polarization, and what he finds is alarming. By nearly every metric, things have gone from bad to worse in recent years. Not only do we not like the people we disagree with, we increasingly view them as a mortal threat. Indeed, Wessman explores how our language of war and violence is used to describe our opponents. We don’t need to just defeat them at the ballot box. We need to crush them. We apply labels like MAGA, Communist, and even vermin, all ways to degrade and dehumanize.

Wessman and others have reported that Catholics increasingly identify more with their party than their Church. In fact, religious belief is less and less seen as a source of guidance. Fewer Christians are going to church regularly or reading Scripture.

The question Wessman asks is this: “Does my relationship with Jesus, and the tradition given to me through the Scriptures, along with the teachings of the Church, inform my life more than the political party to which I belong?”

The fact that many Americans today would be more bothered if their child married someone from the opposite political party than a different church may tell us the answer.

For Wessman, our challenge as Catholics is to rediscover the person on the other side of the divide. Because we are called to love our enemy, not to mention our fellow citizens and our fellow parishioners, the solution is not war, nor avoidance, but to “cross over,” to engage “the other.”

“When one chooses to encounter the other, the likelihood of seeing the person who espouses the idea, and not just the idea that one disagrees with, becomes more likely,” Wessman writes.

“For Christians, crossing over is not really an option: It is essential to a life of missionary discipleship,” he adds.

This is hard stuff. It can end badly, both because the “other side” may not respond well to our efforts, and because our own “side” may not either. Our faith does call us at this time to be “strangers in a strange land.”

But when I think of my Jewish friend, I realize that two essential ingredients are trust and time. Getting to know each other in small conversations and big, over meals or shared projects, the person becomes more essential than the position.

All those books about polarization give me hope. Organizations that are working to connect us one by one do as well. This fever of mutual fear and loathing will surely break. But that calm after the storm can only happen when we make the first move. 

Svyatogorsk, Donetsk Province, Ukraine, March 14, 2024

Photo: svlavra.church.ua     

The Holy Dormition Monastery in Svyatogorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk Province marked its 20th anniversary as a lavra on Saturday.

On March 9, 2004, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church made the historic decision to assign the honorary status of lavra to the monastery, after which it was revived in the 1990s, “which manifested itself both in the restoration of the walls of the buildings and in the organization of monastic life,” the Lavra writes.

“Tens of thousands of pilgrims began to flock to the monastery.”

The Synodal report from 2004 notes that the monastery was granted its lavra status due to its significant influence on the revival of spirituality in Eastern Ukraine both in the historical past and after the fall of the Soviet Union, “promoting the unification of the faithful around canonical Orthodoxy.”

The monastery dates back to at least the early 16th century. It was closed in 1922 and reopened in 1992.

With the Synodal decision of 2004, Ukraine has three lavras. The Kiev Lavra received the status in 1688, and the Pochaev Lavra in 1833. All three are dedicated to the feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos.

Ukraine’s Svyatogorsk Lavra given stavropegial status under Metropolitan Onuphry of KievDespite being physically located on the territory of the Donetsk Diocese, the Holy Dormition-Svyatogorsk Lavra is now a stavropegial institution, directly under the episcopal authority of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.

“>In September of last year, the Lavra was given stavropegial status, meaning that although it is within the territory of the Donetsk Diocese, it is now directly under the episcopal authority of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine.

Unfortuantely, Bodies of refugees found under rubble at Ukraine’s much-suffering Svyatogorsk LavraTheir bodies were sent to the nearby city of Kramatorsk for a forensic medical examination.

“>the Svyatogorsk Lavra and its sketes have repeatedly come under attack during the war since last February, suffering considerable damage.

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St. Matilda was born in 895, the daughter of Count Dietrick of Westphalia and Reinhild of Denmark. Her grandmother, the Abbess of Eufurt convent, raised her. In 909, Matilda married the son of the Duke of Saxony, who became Duke shortly after, and then King of the German throne.

After her husband died in 936, Matilda supported her son Henry’s claim to his father’s throne. But the throne went to her son Otto the Great, and Matilda persuaded Otto to name Henry the Duke of Bavaria after his unsuccessful revolt.

Matilda was known for her extreme charity and almsgiving, although her sons criticized her for giving too much to the poor. She resigned her inheritance to her sons and retired to her family home, but was later welcomed back at court by Otto’s wife Edith. Her sons then asked for her forgiveness, and she resumed her almsgiving.

Matilda devoted herself to building projects for many churches, convents, and monasteries, and spent many of her last years at one of her convents at Nordhausen. St. Matilda died at the monastery at Quedlinburg and was buried with her husband Henry.

The saints are not unreachable “exceptions of humanity” but ordinary people who worked diligently to grow in virtue, Pope Francis said.

It is wrong to think of the saints as “a kind of small circle of champions who live beyond the limits of our species,” the pope wrote in the catechesis for his general audience March 13 in St. Peter’s Square. Instead, they are “those who fully become themselves, who realize the vocation of every person.”

“How happy would be a world in which justice, respect, mutual respect, the breadth of the spirit (and) hope were the shared norm and not a rare anomaly,” he wrote.

Just like at his general audience March 6, Pope Francis told visitors in the square that due to a mild cold an aide, Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli, would read his speech. However the pope had seemed recovered when he read the entirety of his homily — adding plenty of off-the-cuff remarks and soliciting engagement from the crowd– during a Lenten penance service in a Rome parish March 8.

Continuing his series of catechesis on virtues and vices, the pope wrote that a virtuous person is not one who allows him- or herself to become distorted but “is faithful to his or her own vocation and fully realizes his or herself.”

Reflecting on the nature of virtue, which has been discussed and analyzed since ancient times, the pope said that virtue is not an “improvised” and “casual” good exercised from time to time. Even criminals, he noted, have performed good acts in certain moments. Virtue is rather a “good that is born from a person’s slow maturation until it becomes his or her inner characteristic,” he wrote.

“Virtue is a ‘habitus’ (expression) of freedom,” the pope wrote. “If we are free in every act, and each time we are called to choose between good and evil, virtue is that which allows us to have a habit toward the right choice.”

He encouraged people not to forget the lesson taught by ancient thinkers, “that virtue grows and can be cultivated,” and wrote that for Christians developing virtue depends primarily on the grace of God.

By developing open-mindedness, good will and the wisdom to learn from mistakes, he wrote, people can be guided toward a virtuous life in the face of the “chaotic forces” of passion, emotion and instinct to which humanity is susceptible.

Taking the microphone to greet pilgrims at the end of his audience, Pope Francis shared that he had been given a rosary and a Bible that belonged to a young soldier killed in combat, though he did not specify in which conflict.

“So many young people, so many young people go to die,” he said. “Let us pray to the Lord so that he may give us the grace to overcome this madness of war which is always a defeat.”

A federal judge March 8 dismissed a challenge from Republican-led states, allowing the Biden administration to continue operating a program permitting some migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton said Texas, and the 20 other states that joined the suit, had not adequately shown they had suffered financial harm because of the program, which they would have had to demonstrate to have legal standing to challenge the policy.

The program grants short-term legal status in the U.S. to up to 30,000 asylum-seekers each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined. The administration indicated that the program was intended in part to deter illegal border crossings amid a surge. It grants some asylum-seekers two years of parole, or temporary permission, to live and work in the U.S., if they have a financial sponsor.

The move came in tandem with new Biden administration policies restricting asylum access, so it was praised and criticized in turn by Catholic immigration advocates.

In a statement, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said, “We are pleased that today’s court ruling means that the parole processes for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will continue.”

“These processes — a safe and orderly way to reach the United States — have resulted in a significant reduction in the number of these individuals encountered at our southern border,” Mayorkas said March 8. “It is a key element of our efforts to address the unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere, and other countries around the world see it as a model to tackle the challenge of increased irregular migration that they too are experiencing.”

Mayorkas added, “We will continue to deliver strengthened consequences for those who attempt to circumvent lawful pathways on land or at sea.”

“Do not believe the lies of smugglers,” he said. “Those who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States will be subject to prompt removal, a minimum five-year bar on admission, and potential criminal prosecution for unlawful reentry. Migrants should continue to use safe and orderly lawful pathways and processes that have been expanded under the Biden-Harris Administration.”

The same day the judge ruled against his state’s suit, the office of Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott touted the third anniversary of his “Operation Lone Star” program that seeks to reduce border crossings.

In a March 8 press release, Abbott’s office said, “Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border.”

Three Egyptian Coptic monks of the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese of South Africa were brutally murdered March 12 in their monastery in Cullinan, a small town in Gauteng province, about 18 miles east of the capital, Pretoria.

According to a March 13 statement from the Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the three slain was Father Takla Moussa, assistant bishop and abbot of St. Mark and St. Samuel the Confessor Monastery. The other two were identified as Fathers Minah ava Marcus and Youstos ava Marcus. In what the church described as a criminal attack, an unknown assailant pounced on the monks in the early hours of March 12, killing the three, all of whom were found with stab wounds. A fourth monk was left with injuries.

“The Church expresses its deep anguish over the occurrence of such a tragic incident, extends its sincere condolences to the families of the three monks,” Coptic Orthodox Church said in a statement. “Our pain and sadness, no amount (of) words can express, but we know that they rejoice in paradise.”

The motive of the attack is not clear, but it further underlined the current challenge in the country, which has one of the highest rates of violence in the world. Recently, the country has grappled with sporadic and lethal xenophobic attacks against African and Asian foreign nationals living in the country, including refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants.

In South Africa, there are 12 Orthodox churches, a school and a training center. There are 11 priests and 120 deacons serving about 15,000 members, or more than 4,500 families. Bishop Antonious Markos leads the South Africa Archdiocese.

In the statement, church officials said South African people, the Black community in particular, loved Father Moussa, and hoped he would be ordained their bishop.

“This is a great loss for us. We will never find a father like Father Takla Moussa, who loved and served us unconditionally for about 20 years since he has been in South Africa,” it said.

Leaders worldwide condemned the killings, which sent shockwaves among Coptics in South Africa and other regions.

In Ethiopia, Orthodox Archbishop Abune Henok of Addis Ababa said he was saddened by deaths while the Coptic Archbishop Angaelos of London described the killing as saddening and shocking.

“In this holy Lenten period we pray (for the) repose (of) our departed brothers, and comfort for our Coptic Orthodoxy community in South Africa, their brother monks, and their families and loved ones,” said Archbishop Angaelos in a March 12 post on X, formerly Twitter.

On March 13, news reports indicated the police had launched an investigation into the incident and had arrested an Egyptian member of the Coptic Church as a suspect in the case.

The police said the bodies of the monks had knife injuries and a surviving monk had talked of being attacked with metal bars.

The Egyptian Embassy in South Africa called for calm and conveyed its condolences to the Coptic Orthodox Church and families of the deceased. The embassy urged the South Africans and Egyptians to allow the law to take its course.

It is a thankless job to work as a tour guide in these latitudes. In summer, all our potential sightseers either jet off to vacation at destinations with a more palatable climate, or they toil away at work, for themselves and for those who jetted off. But during the remaining nine months of the year our tours sound like this:

“Look to your left—it’s truly a sight to behold during the summer!”

But, on the other hand, since we yearn for summer so badly, we are much too sensitive concerning anything that’s green and blooming. Now, if we get hold of a grateful listener once the summer finally comes around, our mind begins to dally with images that are actually a perfect match for parables.

“You know,” I uttered with a wise air as we were passing the lawn disfigured by scarification, “plants are truly much like us….”

My guest, a sophisticated lady, condescendingly glances at me and I can’t help but agree with her. I don’t like it either when someone gives me baby talk in the vein of “my little doggy completely understands me” or “my flowers feel everything.” So, I finish my statement rather cunningly:

“But if you don’t hurt them, they’ll come to no good!”

She ponders over what I’ve just said for a moment, and then I see how the expression on her intelligent and strong face suddenly changes to show acceptance and vulnerability. She nods slowly in response.

Suffering is surely something that anyone can understand, like the fact that suffering makes us human.

***

I see our guests off and return to inspect the lawn. How similar! Just two days ago this lawn looked like this:

    

It’s perfect, isn’t it?

And it didn’t get this way on its own. First, the ground was leveled, and not just once. It was exactly in accordance with the words of the prophet: Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth… (Luke 3:5) So, those hills were leveled and it required great physical effort, sharp tools, and a good eye. Valleys were filled in, and it was dirty work, because only water could thoroughly cause the loosened soil to settle.

Next, the leveled surface was sown with good seed … and that’s also a reference to the Scripture. Only a good seed will produce a grass parterre, only select seeds from a trusted supplier.

It was important to choose the moment of the first mowing—both in terms of time and weather—so as not to damage the surface with the lawn mower wheels and cause the grass to lie flat, so that it would start to put out side shoots in good time. It was also important from that point on to mow it at the right height at the right time, so that the mowing wouldn’t weaken the grass but thicken it instead. Doesn’t it all sound like proper spiritual care?

It was necessary to nourish and water the burgeoning beauty—just as we can’t blossom without the grace-filled help we receive through the sacraments of the Church.

    

It turns out that our lawn was overgrown with moss. It was beautiful green moss. Not only did it not spoil its appearance, but it even masked small bare patches. The only trouble was that moss is akin to passions…. Especially the passions of pride and vanity, the ones that particularly harden the heart. Moss won’t quit growing or stop dead. It will keep growing and growing until it swamps anything that was cultivated, thrived, and yielded fruit. What’s worse, it won’t even stay green! It will turn out to look like some deadly Martian transplant and, as a result, those who reside here are pushed to plunge into truly deep melancholy.

And there’s a bunch of it! Look, in this photo, we worked on this plot for the second time:

    

And here we worked on it the third time!

    

I would not compare scarification with afflictions or hardships—scarification aims to work at the surface, it doesn’t dig in, but only scratches lightly instead… It rather resembles slight reproach and disrespect from others. And that’s what is actually necessary to remove a layer of our external decorum—so that we could come to confession and say, “Lord, I am filled to the brim with filth!”

Sometimes it turns out to be sufficient and it allows us to continue living and moving in the right direction. But it is also sometimes just like our lawn—when it has too many bare patches and when its roots run riot… All you have left to do is saturate it with some powerful poison. That’s when it will begin to look like this:

    

It is the same effect when we encounter injustice against us—it destroys the roots of passions in us, tearing us away from our attachment to earthly things. And, speaking of our lawn again, we can either mourn losing its beautiful appearance or rejoice, because the uglier the bald spots look today, the more weeds and unwanted plants have died.

But then comes a moment when all that hard work pays off and the lawn grows back.

    

    

It looks almost identical to the one we had at the beginning. But that one was dying, while this one is coming back to life…

You must admit that there is a great difference between the state of a soul that decays in its passions and the soul that comes alive to life in eternity. And yet, the untrained eye may not notice any difference between them at all. That’s what is really frightening! But it is certainly not frightening when we suffer from offenses or injustice.

Moscow, March 13, 2024

St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Melitopol, Zaporozhye Diocese. Photo: tripadvisor.com     

During its session yesterday, Tuesday, March 12, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church resolved to assume temporary administrative authority over the portions of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Zaporozhye Diocese that have been cut off from their ruling hierarch by the war.

The diocese is ruled by His Eminence Metropolitan Luke, one of the most authoritative hierarchs of the Ukrainian Church.

The Synodal report notes that His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has received repeated appeals from clergy, monastics, and laity from various districts and the cities of Melitopol and Energodar in the Zaporozhye Province “with requests to resolve the Church situation in these territories.”

Further:

The above-mentioned appeals report that Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye and Melitopol, enjoying the unwavering respect of the clergy and laity and striving to maintain remote contact with parishes and monasteries located in the given territories, is nevertheless separated from these territories by the front line, which has long deprived him of the opportunity to visit them with archpastoral visits, to celebrate ordinations, consecrate churches, distribute antimens signed by him, as well as directly distribute Holy Chrism.

It’s also impossible to legally register churches and monasteries, the Synodal report notes.

The Russian hierarchs refer to a decree from Patriarch St. Tikhon of 1920 that can be taken as a precedent for resolving such situations when the front line of a war or change of a state border cuts clergy and laity off from their hierarch. In such cases they should “turn to the nearest or most convenient diocesan bishop.”

Thus, due to the situation in the Zaporozhye Diocese and the Ukrainian Synod’s “lack of opportunity for the unimpeded resolution of this situation,” the Russian Synod resolved to place the temporary management of parishes and monasteries in the relevant districts and cities under the Bishop of the Berdyansk Diocese.

The parishes and monasteries of these areas are assigned to the Berdyansk Diocese for the purposes of legal registration.

The Synod prescribes that during the Divine services, Pat. Kirill is to be commemorated, followed by Met. Luke of Zaporozhye of the UOC, followed by His Grace Bishop Theodore of Berdyansk.

If the external situation changes, the Synod will reexamine the status and management of the relevant parishes and monasteries.

This decision concerning portions of the Zaporozhye Diocese differs from previous decisions in that the Russian Synod continues to recognize the authority of the Ukrainian hierarch and specifies that the given territories are being placed under the “temporary” administration of the Bishop of Berdyansk.

Conversely, the Russian Synod resolved Russian Synod establishes new diocese for parishes from UOC’s Kherson DioceseGathered under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill yesterday, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church resolved to establish a new diocese for parishes on the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Kherson Diocese.

“>in December to establish a new diocese to take in parishes and monasteries from certain areas within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Kherson Diocese, and several whole Ukrainian dioceses were earlier taken into the Russian Church.

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ROME — There’s a tendency in journalism to over-interpret virtually every development or trend that comes down the pike, in order to lend our stories sex appeal. “Nothing really to see here” might well be the truth of many situations, but it’s hardly a prescription for drawing eyeballs or selling papers.

So it is that over the past 11 years, reporters and commentators on the Francis papacy have tended to play up perceptions of a rift between the liberal pope and a more conservative church in the United States, particularly as it concerns the American bishops — and, of course, there have been just enough outspokenly dissident prelates in the country to keep that narrative alive.

Reality, however, is a bit less dramatic than these perceptions of fractures and schisms would suggest.

The most recent Gallup survey, released in mid-January, found that Francis enjoys a 58% approval rating among Americans generally. When you consider that the two major party candidates for president, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, currently have approval ratings of 42 and 38 percent respectively, the pope’s comparatively robust support can’t help but seem fairly impressive.

More remarkable still, Francis is seen positively by 77% of American Catholics. Given the notoriously fissiparous state of American Catholic opinion on most matters — let’s face it, it probably would be tough to get 77% of American Catholics to agree on what day of the week it is today — that too seems striking.

Granted, Gallup also found that Francis’ negatives are now at all-time highs, both among the general population and with Catholics specifically. Yet after 11 contentious years in office, and in an extremely polarized era, the fact that the pope still has such strong overall backing probably should be the biggest takeaway.

With that caveat, however, there’s equally no denying the fact that the Francis era has been a turbulent period for the church in the U.S. In both substance and style, history’s first pope from the developing world has sometimes proven disorienting for many American Catholics.

Ad extra, meaning in terms of the Church’s engagement with the wider world, Francis is reorienting Catholicism, and the Vatican specifically, away from being a predominantly Western institution to a truly global one. His policies on China, for instance, or on Ukraine, or on Gaza, align far more closely with those of the “BRICS nations” (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa among them, as the acronym suggests) than they do with the White House, even under a liberal administration led by a Catholic and self-professed Francis admirer.

Ad intra, with regard to the internal life of the Church, Francis is pursuing a program of “synodality,” a difficult term to define with precision but which, in broad strokes refers to a more participatory and inclusive ecclesial approach, rooted in compassion and dialogue, and with less emphasis on some of the traditional moral battles which have defined Catholic identity in America in recent decades, especially with regard to “life issues” such as abortion.

Both of those transitions have been trying for some sectors of American Catholic opinion. To some extent, the tensions overlap with the usual left/right divides, though not exclusively so. Many American liberals, for instance, may find Francis’ refusal to forthrightly condemn Vladimir Putin, for example, even more frustrating than conservatives, some of whom feel a certain grudging admiration for the Russian leader.

Standing back from the particulars of any given issue, what seems clear about American reaction to Francis that it cannot properly be understood in isolation, but rather as part of a more epochal shift in Catholicism — to wit, the rise of a global Church, one in which the United States simply is not the pivot point.

A bit of math makes the point: There are 1.3 billion Roman Catholics in the world today and just over 60 million in the United States, which means that Americans account for slightly under 5% of the global Catholic population. Put another way, 95% of the Catholics on the planet today are not Americans, and do not necessarily see the world through the lens of American experiences, interests, and priorities.

Two-thirds of the world’s Catholics today live outside the boundaries of the West, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and points beyond. By 2050, that nonWestern share will be three-quarters.

In such a far-flung global community of faith, Catholics in the U.S. increasingly will be pressured to make their peace with the reality that the Church, and its leadership, will not always react from within American categories or according to American logic. Right now, the tensions unleashed by this transition are focused on Francis, but they just as easily could be aroused by a pontiff from Congo, or Sri Lanka, or Myanmar — all, by the way, at least remotely plausible candidate nations to give the Church its next leader.

To be clear, American Catholicism is hardly sliding toward irrelevance in global Catholic affairs. The church in the U.S. wields mammoth resources, both human and financial, including by far the world’s leading network of Catholic institutions. They include schools and universities, hospitals and clinics, social service centers and humanitarian organizations, and on and on.

Nevertheless, American Catholics need to be clear that the turbulence of the Francis era is not a one-off affair triggered by the idiosyncrasies of a gaucho, or cowboy, pontiff. It is, instead, a harbinger of things to come — perhaps not always in service to the same agenda, but unlikely to be predictably “American” in tone or content either.

To put the point differently, the Francis papacy will pass, as all papacies eventually do. Yet the new and more complicated era in the global Church he embodies, with both its promise and its frustrations for Americans, appears here to stay.