End of communism not all good for Christianity: Vatican

reuters.com ^ | November 17, 2014 | Tom Heneghan

[Tailgunner Joe]

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.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the top Roman Catholic official for inter-church relations, said the re-emergence of Eastern Catholic churches in Ukraine and Romania after decades of suppression had created major tensions with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian Orthodox leaders have accused the Vatican-aligned Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of trying to take back churches and woo away believers from the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate. The Ukrainian church and the Vatican deny this.

Moscow prelates cite this as a hurdle to closer ties between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, which for decades prayed for the conversion of the Soviet Union only to see the newly resurgent Russian Orthodox Church become a difficult partner.

"The changes in 1989 were not advantageous for ecumenical relations," Koch told Vatican Radio. "The Eastern Catholic churches banned by Stalin re-emerged, especially in Ukraine and Romania, and from the Orthodox came the old accusation about Uniate churches and proselytism."

"Uniate" refers to eastern churches with Orthodox-style liturgies that recognize the pope as their spiritual leader.

Pope Francis will meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul late this month. The Orthodox spiritual head supports more cooperation with Rome, but cannot ignore the wary Russians, who make up two-thirds of the world's 300 million Orthodox.

[Talisker]

Your hermeneutic, by understanding that there is a "most important commandment" directed at you, implies that you should be doing all of the commandments He taught. One of those is...

LOL, so I created a "most important commandment" which therefore means I should be subject to unique questions about all of the commandments that you are allowed to answer differently. Well that's handy.

Actually, a guy named Jesus specified ONE commandment as the "greatest." Your "hermeneutic" allows you to not only shift the authorship of that command from Jesus into a mere perspective of mine, but also literally reverse it's meaning from the specific superior to the generalized neutral.

Well my hermeneutic tells me that Jesus spoke directly of your hermeneutic when He said "I know you not."

[Talisker]

P.S. Your hermeneutic hangs on my hermeneutic, according to Jesus. Yours - ALL of yours, all your history of "law and prophets" - must be interpreted in a way that serves and supports mine, by direct command of what Jesus calls the "first and greatest commandment," and you call my "hermeneutic."

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40

FYI, I believe Jesus made this statement so simple and plain precisely in order to shut up you infinite slicers and dicers of the law, for which His own Judaism is so famous, as He well knew.

Because you see, it's about the love. Everything is secondary to the love. All of it. And your hermeneutic is dry as dust. You've turned God into an accountant, and shut your heart against the most direct and clear possible command to open it.

You got a Theology degree so you wouldn't have to face God with your naked heart, like everybody else. Only someone with a Theology degree would think such a strategy could work.

[Dutchboy88]

"“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”"

Tragically, you cannot even read your own post. Read the text, my FRiend. "...in the Law". Yes, of course, this would be a perfect life. Unfortunately, according to Paul, you do not do this. But, the blindness of your heart, the scales over your eyes keeps you "trying"...but failing. When this is all over, we shall see who's hermeneutic was "dry as dust".

[Talisker]

But, the blindness of your heart, the scales over your eyes keeps you "trying"...but failing. When this is all over, we shall see who's hermeneutic was "dry as dust".

LOL, it is over the moment you accept God's love. I am imperfect, but I am already finished because I have realized that that Love is the only goal, and that it will guide and protect me to the end.

It is you, in the dust of your mind, who still "waits to see."

[Dutchboy88]

Well, certainly one of us is misunderstanding the Gospel of grace of Jesus Christ. One of us is trying, the other has been found.

[Talisker]

Well, certainly one of us is misunderstanding the Gospel of grace of Jesus Christ. One of us is trying, the other has been found.

See? I knew there was something we could agree on.

[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.