[Dr. Sivana]

The end of the famine was not all good news, as labor disputes arose in its wake.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Is that another one of those Koch brothers?

[GeronL]

Was total suppression better than “tension”?

[for-q-clinton]

Wow...I had to check if this was satire. The church is a joke now.

[Hugin]

“...woo away believers from the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate. The Ukrainian church and the Vatican deny this.”

I’m not always a huge fan of the Catholic Church, but isn’t wooing people from other faiths what churches are generally supposed to do?

[shibumi]

“Surprise, Surprise! - Ping”

Looks like the Lefty Pope-pretender yearns for the good old days of Communist repression in Eastern Europe.

Whoda thunk it?

[NorthMountain]

reuters.com ^

Uh-huh ...

[DoughtyOne]

Maybe not good for all of Christianity...

Just good for Christians who have the audacity to like living...

Persecution can cause a group to focus, their plight be seen with sympathy, and their numbers increase.

When things go too peacefully, there is a tendency to become less devoted.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

****** ATTENTION HEADLINE READERS ******

THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT CATHOLIC RELATIONS WITH
THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES

************* END OF ALERT *************

[Don Corleone]

I don’t know if its this Pope or if its his subordinates but something has run off the rails in the Vatican.

[Buckeye McFrog]

so....the Vatican prefers to have Russians living under an atheist dictatorship rather than following Orthodox Christianity because they can’t stand the sibling rivalry?

[icwhatudo]

Absolutely tone deaf.

[Dr. Thorne]

End of communism not all good for Christianity Catholicism: Vatican

There. Fixed it. Freedom is never good for Catholicism.

[KC_Conspirator]

Fuc*ing morons. The Soviet KGB tried to hire a crazy gunman to kill the Pope, the leader of the church and the religious free world, for crying out loud.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

In other words, the Atheist Communists brutally suppressed a competing version of Christianity, which the Catholic Church viewed as positive.

[docbnj]

This seems to be a case where one problem is mitigated, and so attention goes to the next problem down in the hierarchy of problems. Human nature is like that.

What we may be missing is that the Russian Orthodox Church is totally nationalistic, and is now an arm of Putinism.

[Chgogal]

The end of communist rule in Europe, which began 25 years ago this month, was not all positive for Christianity because it brought tensions between Rome and Russia back to the surface, a senior Vatican official said on Monday.

I guess this guy never heard of Pope John Paul 2 and what a holy pain he was to the USSR.

[Caipirabob]

What an idiot...

[EBH]

Revelations 2

Seven stars, seven churches, seven angels and God has seven issues with ‘us,’ even with the good works of the churches.

Repent.

[x]

That's the headline writer's interpretation. It isn't the cardinal's overall assessment of the end of the Cold War, let alone the Vatican's. It's one official's off-the-cuff view of the changes in ecumenical relations over the last 20 years.

As to the broader question, though: isn't that something that many people have thought at one time or another? That as we grow more affluent and freer we lose something spiritually? It doesn't mean one wishes the old days of repression were back, but that one recognizes that there are trade-offs.

That's something that Solzhenitsyn was certainly familiar with, and I doubt he actually wanted to return to the old days.