Exercises in Orthodox Catechism in Moscow

AsiaNews ^ | 7/25/17 | Stefano Caprio

[marshmallow]

The Biblical-Theological Commission of the Patriarchate of Moscow releases plans for official catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church. The idea of ​​catechism comes from the wisdom experienced by Russian martyrs of the faith last century. Its drafting began in the 1990s.

Moscow (AsiaNews) – The Biblical-Theological Commission of the Moscow Patriarchate has released plans for the official catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church. This comes after a long period of development and follows the release of previews.

The plan is the first "modern" attempt to put in a single text the whole of Orthodox doctrine for both clergy and believers. It includes open consultation before a final draft is accepted by everyone.

As laid out in the foreword, the Orthodox Church wants to restore the catechistic wisdom of the ancient Fathers of the Church, but it also wants to harvest the best fruits of Russian tradition.

So far, Russian catechesis has relied on various texts. Historically, at least two of them have represented an authoritative synthesis of the doctrine, and for this reason have been widely used in ecclesial practice.

The first dates back to the early 16th century, the famous Orthodox Confession by Metropolitan of Kiev Peter (Mogila), who tried to mediate with the Latin school and the Protestant tendencies of the time.

Mogila was the first to translate the term of the Creed on the "Catholic" Church with the Russian term sobornaya, "conciliar" and universal, which has had great fortune in the thoughts and confession of faith of Russians.

Based on this and many other proposals from the metropolitan who favoured outreach between East and West, the aim was to propose Russian tradition as a place for dialogue and synthesis without insisting on differences and historical separations.

Peter Mogila’s endeavour was also well appreciated in Rome, who saw in...........