Notice the essential dishonesty of this response (well, ALL your responses are essentially dishonest). I cite articles talking about CATHOLICS and Protestants in the plural number, and you reduce it down to a single Priest you claim is a Nazi, and therefore, I suppose, deserves kidnapping. Tell me, thou enemy of Christendom, are all Non-ROC churches Nazi organizations?
Why Russia Persecutes Non-Orthodox Churches
ICC Note:
This article provides an excellent introduction into the difficult climate for non-orthodox Christians living in the former Soviet Union. The recent forced demolition of a Protestant church in Moscow and subsequent fining of the pastor for having the courage to meet in the churches rubble record demonstrate a determination by the Russian government to control and suppress non-orthodox Christians.
10/4/2012 Russia (Christians in Crisis)- Russian police demolished Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church in Moscow last month. The members of the church now gather near the ruins for worship, bearing testimony to the continued persecution of "non-traditional," or disfavored, religious groups after President Vladimir Putin assumed office about five months ago.
It is estimated that 90 percent of ethnic Russians - and around 70 percent of all Russian citizens - identify themselves as Orthodox. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russians have closely associated Orthodoxy with national identity, replacing socialism with Orthodoxy. However, people's association with the Russian Orthodox Church is apparently more symbolic than representative of their commitment to the substance of the faith. This is perhaps why the church attendance is extremely low.
Russia's 1993 Constitution states that all religious associations are equal before the law. However, the preamble of the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, enacted in 1997 under President Boris N. Yeltsin to define the state's relationship with religion, says respect should be accorded firstly to Orthodoxy, and secondly to Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and [non-Orthodox] Christianity.
Non-Orthodox Christian groups in Russia are seen as rooted in the United States in particular and the West in general, and competing with the Orthodox Church for membership. And both the government - for which a key priority is to protect "Holy Russia" from "foreign devils" - and the Orthodox Church, which is allegedly closely associated with the government, are anti-West.
The Russian government also seeks to restrict the functioning of independent organizations that are not allied with it or show any sign of dissent.
The relationship between the Kremlin (the official residence of the President) and the Orthodox Church is partly based on their common nationalistic ideology which seeks to restore Russia’s might after the Soviet Union's fall. The 1977 law on religious associations, commonly known as the religion law, was enacted at a time when missionaries from Protestant faiths in the West began working in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Russian Orthodox Church was born in 988 AD with Prince Vladimir being baptized in the River Dnieper with all the inhabitants of Kiev. Since the conflict between the Patriarch of the East and the Pope of the West was at peak at the time, the Russian Church and people inherited the Eastern Church's antagonism to Rome and the West and shared its isolation from the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of modern concepts of social Christianity, explains a 1961 article by Paul B. Anderson in the Foreign Affairs magazine."
http://www.persecution.org/2012/10/05/why-russia-persecutes-non-orthodox-christians/
>> Notice the essential dishonesty of this response (well, ALL your responses are essentially dishonest). I cite articles talking about CATHOLICS and Protestants in the plural number, and you reduce it down to a single Priest you claim is a Nazi, and therefore, I suppose, deserves kidnapping. Tell me, thou enemy of Christendom, are all Non-ROC churches Nazi organizations? <<
I looked up the sole example in the primary news source that reported the issue. Yes, it’s an anecdote, but no, it’s not a cherry-picked anecdote. And since I *AM* a Catholic, obviously I don’t think that Catholic churches are typically Nazi... but this is the ONE priest that they actually interviewed. I can’t address any of the situations involving the other four Catholic priests who were detained because there is absolutely no other information about them, other than that they were quickly released.
>> However, people’s association with the Russian Orthodox Church is apparently more symbolic than representative of their commitment to the substance of the faith. This is perhaps why the church attendance is extremely low. <<
Church attendance is low in the ROC because it is not mandatory. The requirement for weekly Church attendance is a wise, but modern, Western requirement. Like divorce, I don’t approve, but I can’t condemn people as hypocrites when they don’t live up to standards that they don’t assert; all I can do is say “well, that’s (one reason) why I’m Catholic, not Orthodox.”
As a Catholic, I’m well experienced with Protestants presuming that any Catholic or Orthodox isn’t a Christian at all, and is presumptively guilty of idolatry, worshiping the anti-Christ, etc. These idiots frequently make outrageous, false assertions about the beliefs of others, and yes, Russia does protect the ROC — and other churches — from slander. Also, I’ve also encountered many idiots on FR presuming that communism is a product of the ROC, when the communists murdered 85,000 ROC priests, leaving only 1,000 alive. With these attitudes, I’m not in the slightest surprised that Russia doesn’t welcome them with open arms.
I want to make it clear that I do not approve of the treatment of the Holy Trinity Pentecostalist congregation, and that I recognize that ROC congregations would not be treated the same, but your sources do not include the fact that Moscow had been pressing the Church for seven years for leaving the building in an incomplete stage of construction for seventeen years, and they had been warned repeatedly not to occupy the premises, and that the illegal structure could be destroyed. That greying of the issue doesn’t make it right, but how does the incident compare with ministers being arrested in Canada and across Europe for objecting to gay marriage (for instance)? Where the howls of protest when the government of Canada seized all the Catholic schools in Quebec, and subjugated them to state control? Have any of the European nations which seized Catholic monasteries or church lands returned them? (No... and that’s just about every government in Europe went through their anti-clerical phase at one time or another.) Or how about the IRS constantly threatening churches which speak out against abortion, while black churches hold campaign rallies for Obama?
Not that two wrongs make a right, but the vitriol and hatred outpoured on Russia just seems a little out of scale to the wrongs committed in Russia... like your ridiculous example decrying Russia because Russian women are lured into slavery and pornography... by Americans in America for Americans.