Posted on 10/04/2015 11:16:20 AM PDT by NRx
The Russian Orthodox Church is deeply grieved to learn about the terrible terrorist action in a college in the state of Oregon in the United States, in which peaceful people were killed. What makes the tragedy even graver is that the killer consciously chose to victimize young people who confess Christianity. This glaring inhuman act confirms once again that Christianity has become the most persecuted religion in the world. Extremists in various parts of the world increasingly seek to provoke hatred and enmity among religions and nations, for which they are ready to commit the most inhuman evil deeds.
The Moscow Patriarchate again and again calls the world community to pay attention to the importance of protecting Christians against terror. We keep reminding the powers that be and religious and public leaders of the responsibility lying on their shoulders for the peaceful co-existence between people of different religions, ethnoses and cultures. At the same time, we believe that the terrorist actions committed in the recent time in various countries of the world were provoked by the political and social chaos created by external forces in a number of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
The Russian Orthodox Church is grieving together with the American people for those who were killed and praying for the recovery of the injured and for the consolation of the families and friends of the victims of the terrorist action. We hope that the authorities of the United States of America will take measures to prevent such tragedies and ensure a peaceful and safe life for Christians and people of other traditional religions.
Title abbreviated by necessity...
The well-wishes are appreciated. Where were they for the Christians of Ukraine?
Of course Obama does nothing when Christians are targeted.
Sad that the ROC speaks more clearly about this than American churches.
September 2014
(excerpt from a long, detailed article)
First and foremost, in any review of the basics regarding Putin, the most outstanding fact is that he is a creature of the Soviet KGB, a truly diabolical organization nonpareil, which stood for murder, terror, and grand deception.
It was the Soviet Communist Party’s tool for the brutal suppression of religion, including the persecution of Christians: denying them jobs and education; spying on and entrapping them; arresting and imprisoning them; torturing them in unspeakable ways; desecrating and demolishing their church buildings; infiltrating their agents into churches to subvert them. The KGB destroyed thousands of Christian churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, and slaughtered millions of Christians.
But it did not destroy the churches utterly. There remained an underground church, whose members were always at risk of discovery, arrest, torture, and martyrdom. Above ground, the KGB took control of the Russian Orthodox Church, which became a very useful organ of the Soviet atheist state.
In January 2009, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, better known as Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, was elected, from a short list of three candidates, to be the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the highest position of authority in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The election was called to fill the post that had been left vacant by the death of Patriarch Alexy II, who had headed the ROC since 1990.
Documents from the KGB archives have confirmed what sensible observers had long ago deduced from his actions: that Patriarch Alexy II (also spelled Alexi or Alexei) was a long-serving KGB agent (code-named Drozdov, “Blackbird”), in other words, a traitor to his Christian brethren and the God he claimed to serve. Putin’s KGB/FSB was taking no chances with his replacement. All three candidates — Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk (code-named Topaz), Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk (code-named Ostrovskii), and Metropolitan Kirill (code-named Mikhailov) — also have been reliably identified as agents of the KGB/FSB.
Russia expert David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times (of London) and the Wall Street Journal, wrote of the election in 2009 for Forbes:
According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent (as was Alexei). This means he was more than just an informer, of whom there were millions in the Soviet Union. He was an active officer of the organization. Neither Kirill nor Alexei ever acknowledged or apologized for their ties with the security agencies.
Because Patriarch Kirill is of central importance to the myth of Putin as the Saul-to-Paul, Christian persecutor-to-Christian champion, it behooves us to more closely examine the man. He has publicly presided over, and provided official benedictions and exhortations for, Putin’s cynical and Stalinesque exploitation of Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy. Josef Stalin, who had very nearly consummated the annihilation of the Russian Orthodox Church begun by Vladimir Lenin, reversed course in 1941. The reason? His erstwhile partner in crime, Adolf Hitler, had turned on him and had invaded Russia.
Stalin, needing all the help he could get, cut a deal with ROC Metropolitans Sergius, Nikolay, and Alexy. In exchange for their support in rallying the Russian people, he would cease (temporarily) the persecution and allow the reopening of churches and theological schools. In fact, Stalin’s Soviet government paid for the rebuilding of many of the churches. The ROC was thus placed even more firmly under the control of the NKVD, which was later to be reorganized and renamed as the KGB. ...”
much more at link
That’s because the ROC is an arm of the Russian Foreign Ministry. American churches speak for themselves.
“..Of course Obama does nothing when Christians are targeted...”
Could have been easily predicted. America is a country founded and grown on Christian principles. His long standing, well recognized HATRED for America, its religions and its culture of freedom and liberty has underscored his modus operandi since before he was elected. If it had been a bunch of Muslims targeted, he would have had every pandering news network and newspaper filled with it.
Jay Richards | February 2, 2010
The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.
Marxist regimes obviously benefitted from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.
A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In “The Church in Revolution,” Chapman, “a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency,” argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy’s second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.
Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America—and the Vatican’s struggles with it—and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn’t establish its truth or falsity. Still, it’s interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just history. Chapman concludes ominously:
"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.
A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, ‘‘liberation theology is alive and well.’’ The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/
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More on Liberation Theology and the Soviets
Catholic News Agency ^ | 5/15/2015 | Alejandro Bermúdez
Posted on 5/16/2015, 11:56:24 AM by observationdeck
If the Soviet bloc wasn't the mother of liberation theology, it was certainly a sinister stepmother, enlisting Catholics in a geopolitical cause and inviting them to sell their souls for funding and support.
Only the naïve can disregard the mountain of evidence connecting liberation theology with Soviet action in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Did I miss the Vatican statement or did they already walk it back and claim to be misquoted?
This is the church that Putin was raised in and returned to a an adult after tragic experiences opened his heart.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin’s administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004.”
“On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999.”
>>Sad that the ROC speaks more clearly about this than American churches.
My PCA church spoke VERY clearly about this today.
While the statement has much to commend it and it does speak to the heartfelt yearnings of all faithful and orthodox Christians, I cannot help bu think it also has a political spirit since I’ve long believed the ROC is used by and is an agent of the communist government. In this sense it is like many American denominations that have been co-opted and infiltrated by foreign agents seeking to change real and orthodox beliefs of authentic Christianity.
Thank you, Russian Orthodox Church. Your prayers are needed more than ever.
I reject equating the two
It’s Christian culture versus Christian culture mostly in the Ukranian conflict
Mostly Orthodox on both sides....those that are even religious
Did our clergy pray for Christians in the Axis powers in World War Two as we were killing them?
Did Christian Yankee pastors pray for Southern Christians they were killing and vice versa?
Not much from the pulpit I’d wager
Save the Union!
Repel the Invader!
That was more likely
Well, the ROC doesn’t appear to be making the distinguishment you are making here.
Why is it that Putin and other leaders can say the word “ Christian” and Obama along with many in congress have not even mentioned the word?
Christians are now under attack in this country and the illegal Islamist in the WH can talk about is DISARMING US?
Well it isn’t going to work for him because many in non-liberal, non-islamist Oregon are now openly carrying our guns. This type of orchestrated attack is going to be met with resistance unless you live in Portland or Eugene. People aren’t stupid.
I think one should take a deep breath before indicting an entire church. Under the Communists somewhere between 12-20 million people were murdered in Russia for their faith. The vast majority of those were Orthodox Christians. EVERY BISHOP that attended the great council (sobor) of 1917 was either murdered outright or died in a Soviet concentration camp.
In 1914 there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns in Russia. On the eve of the German invasion in 1941 those numbers had fallen to less than 500 clergy including bishops. Only a few dozen churches were still legally open and only one monastery. all but a handful of of the priests, monks and nuns were murdered. Most of the rest were sent to slave labor camps. It is more or less impossible to determine the exact number of the laity murdered, but it is certainly well over 12 million. By 1941 the Orthodox Church had been all but exterminated. The survivors went underground and mostly shunned the the visible remnants of the church that the Communists allowed to exist as collaborationist and apostates in all but name.
In January 1918 Patriarch Tikhon anathematized the Bolsheviks.. When Tikhon died in prison in 1925, Soviet authorities forbade patriarchal elections to be held. Patriarchal locum tenens (acting Patriarch) Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky, 1887–1944), going against the consensus of a major part of the church’s parishes, in 1927 issued a declaration accepting the Soviet authority over the church as legitimate, pledging the church’s cooperation with the government and condemning political dissent within the church. By this declaration Sergius granted himself authority that he, being a deputy of imprisoned Metropolitan Peter and acting against his will, had no right to assume according to the XXXIV Apostolic canon.
Thereafter the church began moving underground and most of the bishops and clergy living outside Russia broke communion with Sergei and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the puppet Patriarch. This remained the case until after the fall of the USSR. The slow healing of the wounds, with often very bitter recriminations, has progressed since then with the largest schism, that with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, only ending in 2007.
Today the Orthodox Church commemorates the millions of Martyrs of the Communist persecution on the Sunday closest to January 25th (old calendar).
There is no church in the history of the world that has endured a more bloody and ferocious persecution than the Russian Orthodox.
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