Free Republic

MPs adopted in the first reading draft Law No. 8371, which provides for a ban on the UOC. On October 19, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading government bill No. 8371, which provides for the ban on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. MP Artem Dmytruk shared this news with the UOJ. 267 MPs voted for the corresponding decision, another 15 voted against, 2 MPs abstained. Let us remind you that human rights activist Oleg Denisov said that the ban on the UOC cannot be implemented in practice. As the UOJ reported, according to the Ukrainian MP, Ukraine's allies...

At its session held at St. Panteleimon’s Monastery in Kiev yesterday, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church adopted an urgent appeal to President Zelensky, calling on him to end the persecution against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and to block any bills that would ban the Church, which is by far the largest religious organization in the country. The hierarchs, gathered under the chairmanship of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine, remind the head of state that the UOC stands by the Ukrainian people and has always supported Ukrainian territorial integrity sovereignty, whereas the enmity against...

In the perception of the ruling elites of the (post)modern West, nations shaped by Orthodox Christianity belong to a tradition that is both alien and sinister. By contrast, many Western Christians—and especially Roman Catholic conservatives—see in Orthodox Christianity a morally and liturgically sound bastion against both the Western world gone mad with self-destructive wokedom and the progressivist tendencies among their own senior prelates. Despite the legacy of occasionally strained relations between the “Latin West” and the “Greek East,” a lively dialogue and mutual assistance of Christian traditionalists is both possible and desirable (albeit not in the name of “ecumenism,” of...

A renewed schism in Christianity: Ukraine is fighting for its independence from Russia in the churches as well as in the streets. And Kyiv has a surprising model for its struggle for sovereignty and religious identity"If Ukraine is ground zero in the tensions between Russia and the West, religion is ground zero in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Grappling with the conflict with Russia made Israel a model for Eastern Christian churches in Ukraine. Now that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been launched by Russian forces and Ukrainians find themselves surrounded by hostile countries, they will look to...

Fox News contributor Dan Bongino believes Rep. Justin Amash should leave the Republican Party after the libertarian lawmaker said President Trump engaged in "impeachable" conduct. Amash, R-Mich., became the first Republican to publicly accuse Trump of engaging in “impeachable conduct” stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's lengthy investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. "Contrary to [Attorney General William] Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment," Amash tweeted, drawing a stinging rebuke from the president. His comments drew a strong rebuke from...

The Press and Mass Information Bureau of the Serbian Orthodox Church spread a statement emphasizing, in particular, that the only Church known to and recognized by the Serbian Patriarchate in Ukraine is the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church led by His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine. The document characterizes the encroachment of the Patriarchate of Constantinople on the territory of the Russian Church as uncanonical and calls the “unification council” convened with the participation of Constantinople a disuniting and dividing false-council that “deepened a ditch of alienation and societal disintegration in the unhappy country of Ukraine.” The Serbian...

The patriarch of Constantinople recognizes the independence of Christians who have broken from Moscow. The Russian Orthodox Church cries foul. The Russian Orthodox Church on Monday officially broke communion with the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, whose patriarch has held the title “first among equals” for nearly a thousand years, following the East–West schism of 1054 — the schism that separated Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. If communion between Moscow and Constantinople is not reinstated, the schism would be the largest in nearly a millennium. Typically, questions of church are a purely ecclesiological matter, but in this case politics seems to...

Happy Ester everyone. Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

What are the twelve traits of authority, and how do they work? First of all, it seems clear that their decision would have to be made from a historical perspective. It was not good enough to decide complex moral, social, or doctrinal issues based on popularity polls or yesterday’s newspaper. To decide difficult questions, a valid authority has to be historical.

CHICAGO, June 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholics are not alone in holding that birth control is a sin against God. Father Patrick Henry Reardon, pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Chicago, who’s also an author and senior editor for the Christian magazine Touchstone, spoke in a recently published YouTube video of how throughout history until the 20th century all Christians, not just the Orthodox, but the Church fathers and Protestants as well, regarded birth control use as immoral and a sin. “Now it’s lost,” he states in the video. “And the Church really must not go with...

Conchita Wurst is responsible for flooding that left over 50 people dead earlier this month, church leaders in the Balkans have claimed. The Austrian drag artist, whose real name is Thomas Neuwirth, seized international attention after winning Eurovision 2014 with his hit Rise Like a Phoenix. […] “This [flood] is not a coincidence, but a warning,” Patriarch Amfilohije of Montenegro said, according to e.novine.com. “God sent the rains as a reminder that people should not join the wild side.” […] The Russian Orthodox Church has previously described Conchita as an “abomination” and that his victory was “one more step in...

How to Read the Bible by Bishop Kallistos Ware WE BELIEVE THAT THE SCRIPTURES constitute a coherent whole. They are at once divinely inspired and humanly expressed. They bear authoritative witness to God's revelation of Himself—in creation, in the Incarnation of the Word, and the whole history of salvation. And as such they express the word of God in human language. We know, receive, and interpret Scripture through the Church and in the Church. Our approach to the Bible is one of obedience. We may distinguish four key qualities that mark an Orthodox reading of Scripture, namely our reading should...

Melkite Greek Catholic PATRIARCHATEof Antioch and All the Eastof Alexandria and of Jerusalem The Melkite Greek Catholic Church took the bold step of resuming full ecclesial communion with Rome, three hundred years ago. It was a difficult decision, which was the outcome of a gestation of fifty years! We experienced difficulties, both on the part of the Roman Catholic Church and on the part of our own Orthodox Church, whose tradition we keep.Life in the ecclesial communion with Rome has caused us to lose part of our original authentic Eastern tradition, that we have not succeeded in keeping in...

Marriage as an Icon of the Trinity:Rublev’s “Hospitality of Abraham” and the Communio Personarum byAnn Hanincik IntroductionIn every beloved there is an encounter with the one and only Beloved, just as in every divine name the totality of Names is found again… [1] God creates all people, men and women. He creates out of love, for a specific purpose, making our destiny eternal life with Him. This destiny is called divinization, and it means that we are created to experience life within the Trinitarian communion of persons. What exactly this divinization consists in we do not know, for it...

The Future Lies in the Past -- Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.Many 20- and 30-something evangelicals are uneasy and alienated in mall-like church environments; high-energy, entertainment-oriented worship; and boomer-era ministry strategies and structures modeled on the business world. Increasingly, they are asking just how these culturally camouflaged churches can help them rise above the values of the consumerist world around them. For younger evangelicals, traditional churches are too centered on words and propositions. And pragmatic churches are compromising authentic Christianity by tailoring their ministries to the marketplace and pop culture....

For decades, many social scientists had pretty much two things to say about Eastern Orthodox Christianity: 1) that like all religions, it was disappearing with the advance of modern civilization; 2) that it derived most of its support from the reactionary tides of authoritarianism and nationalism. Those pronouncements are being proved wrong. Today, as in the parable of the prodigal son, throughout Eastern Europe people are returning to the Orthodox Church in droves, and the effect in the public sphere, contrary to most expectations, is quite benign. Though historically viewed with suspicion by Catholic and Protestant Europe, Orthodox Christianity can...

""....On 9 January 1976, three days after Epiphany, the priest of Damour Father Mansour Labaky, was carrying out a Maronite custom of blessing the houses with holy water. As he stood in front of a house on the side of the town next to the Muslim village of Harat Na’ami, a bullet whistled past his ear and hit the house. Then he heard the rattle of machine-guns. He went inside the house, and soon learned that the town was surrounded. Later he found out by whom and how many — the forces of Sa’iqa, consisting of 16,000 Palestinians and Syrians,...

MOSCOW. June 5 (Interfax) - Understandings reached by the European Union Troika, Russia, the United States and China rule out the use of force against Iran, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta published on Monday. Lavrov was asked whether any of the six countries at the Vienna meeting of foreign ministers had spoken of the possibility of using force against Iran, to which he answered: "Nobody did. Moreover, I can say that the understandings reached by the six nations rule out the use of force in any case."

Archbishop Raymond Burke, who previously consecrated his former Diocese of La Crosse, Wis., to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is known as one of very few bishops in the United States who has sincerely been "wide and generous" (Ecclesia Dei Adflicta, by Pope John Paul II, June 1988) in allowing all of the Classical Roman rite sacraments in his diocese. He has begun to show his benevolence toward the Classical Roman liturgy and sacraments also in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, as will be shown later in this interview. Bishop Fernando Rifan, the only traditionalist bishop in full communion with...

Recent outbreaks regarding Danish cartoons portraying Muhammad have brought attention to Islamic regulations concerning the pictorial portrayal of prophets. The issue has once again come to the fore in Egypt, but this time concerning the portrayal of a different holy figure—Jesus... ...Abdel Moti Bayumi, an Islamic scholar, echoes these concerns. "Muslims hate seeing Jesus represented in human form and especially if they show him in moments of weakness."