The Russians are just using an old Soviet tactic: Make all those who oppose them look like fascists.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=2606
The Estonian Orthodox are better off under the EP than under the MP. Sad, but true.
greece has a huge pro communist movement btw.
sad but true.
i mean its not like the government is bowing to the greek church though and arresting whole monastaries for disagreeing with him.
"The Russians are just using an old Soviet tactic: Make all those who oppose them look like fascists."
The Cold War may be ramping up again. Aside from the Soviet period, and even then in part and probably for understandable if not laudable reasons, the Russian Church has always been closely connected with the Russian government and worked in tandem with those various governments. The same I suppose can be said about all state churches, at least in the past. This cuts both ways, though. On the one hand, a powerful state church, assuming it is truly Christian, can have a positive effect on state civil policy. On the other hand, it can also become a tool of distinctly secular state policy, to the detriment of the Faith and the particular church involved.
I must say I am concerned with what I am seeing from the Russian Church. It is increasingly identified with Putin and its pronouncements about the reunion with ROCOR all speak of a uniting of the Russian people with the Mother Church. That is of course true, but there are very, very large numbers of non Russians in ROCOR these days. One wonders what their position will be in a reconstituted "Russian club". It has taken Greek Orthodoxy and Antiochian Orthodoxy 100 years to begin, and I say again, begin, to move away from that sort of ethno-phyletism. The future of what are now ROCOR parishes in the West could become uncomfortable if they are seen as outposts of a resurgent, antagonistic Russia. Elsewhere I suppose there could be places where this would be attractive, maybe some places in the Middle East, but certainly not in Eastern Europe. Even the Serbs, who have the most to lose on account of the West right now and are looking to Russian support in the UN, voted with the the rest of the Orthodox in support of the EP's position as first among equals among the Orthodox and against the Russians at the Belgrade session of the Catholic/Orthodox dialogs. Likely that had more to do with keeping faith with the ancient canons than anything else, but decades under Russian lead/imposed communism may have had at least a little to do with it.
How pathetic that a nation wanting to mourn its forced subservience under Communism is accused of celebrating Naziism.