Posted on 02/08/2007 7:01:33 AM PST by kawaii
08 February 2007, 11:26 Virgin Mary said to appear to an American lover of foul language and bless opposition to ROCORs unity with the Church in Russia
New York, February 8, Interfax - The anonymous creator of the ROCORNEWS website has stated that the Virgin Mary with a host of saints appeared to him during his night walk with his dog in the Central Park in New York.
The vision is now given all kinds of interpretation by irreconcilable opponents of unity between the Russian Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate, who see in this statement a sign of heavenly blessing given upon their further efforts.
A closer look at the website has revealed a stream of unprintable abuse on the ROCOR head, Metropolitan Laurus, and Moscow Patriarchate officials.
According to the web report, the saints walked barefoot, while the Virgin Mary wore a large red headscarf. She talked with the author for about a minute near the Metropolitan Museum informing him that you will soon choose new bishops for yourselves and Gods blessing will rest on those of them who will please the faithful.
According to the resources editor, this means that new, real, bishops are to appear soon because the bishops of the Church Abroad will sign the Act of Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.
Anyone posting who is neither Catholic nor Orthodox must now behave as if a guest in the other guy's church.
Thank you.
That Mary never physically left the Clositer suggests bilocation and the reality this happened is confirmed by many different events.
In any event, "The Lady in Blue" (The color of her Order's Habit) taught them the Gospel and they taught her how to make Chili. If that is not an example of a great cultural exchange,nothing is...
Within ROCOR.
Moscow and ROCOR are reuniting formally May 15th.
(see http://www.holyplacesandworldtravel.com/index.php?pilgrimages&reunification for some info on the details).
The process has been going on for years, and last year represenatives from all over ROCOR were sent to a meeting where they voted unanimously for reunification. Upon hearing the news some folks back home were less than pleased.
For a little history ROCOR was pretty well the church going remenants of the White Army folks who lost to the Soviets. Their children and grandchildren are the folks looking at this decision some happy to see the church restored in unity, some bitterly paranoid and against any sort of reunion.
The Indians got the better of the deal.
Barely.
;'}
Could you provide us guests/lurkers with a little background on who the various parties are? I presume one party is the Russian Orthodox Church, but who/what is ROCOR?
Now that's a tidbit I did not know ... explains the bad feelings. On the other side of the coin, getting ROCOR and Moscow back together can only be a good thing. IMO. Splits and schisms are bad. Again, IMO.
I know I am sorta high-jacking the thread, so, I will just post this one thing then stop. I mean, I love the Church and I love Chili, so, y'all have to permit me this leeway. Here is what purports to be the Chili the Indians taught "La Dama de Azul", "The Lady in Blue," to make.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/outdoorskills/cooking/article/0,13199,1126964-2,00.html
Me? Hostile?
According to Lady Gamecock I'm just a big Calvinist teddy bear.
Anybody else around?... (Eddie Murphy laugh)...
Basic history;
The Russian church got started in North America while alaska was still part of Russia. That missionary church was pretty wide spread and active by the time of the 1917 revolution.
During the 1917 revolution many priests and bishops managed to escape as the Soviets took control (sadly thousands did not).
Anyway in the subsequent years after the revolution the churches outside Russia were governing themselves until some point when the militant athiests would be gone and the church could be re-established.
This group split into two churches (over numerous issues polical and religious). The OCA (Orthodox Church in America also known as the metropolia) and ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, also call the SOBOR).
In the meantime Stalin allowed the church to reopen during WWII in Russia though it was compromised to say the least. This church became known as the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) (which sort of recycled a name that had already gone out of use before the revolution)
By 1970 the OCA was willing to look past this and re-entered communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.
ROCOR began pondering a similar step following the fall of communism but for obvious reasons no one was so naive to think that the church had overnight become free and independant of the government; discussions however have been in the works off and on since 1991 (and probably before then even).
In 2001 in response to moves toward reunification some anti-reunion folks literally came up to ROCOR in NYC at night and took the just retired Metropolitan Vitaly literally in his pajamas and drove into the night. Shortly thereafter ROCE (or ROCOR-V) emerged with Metropolitan Vitaly aledgedly at its head.
Last year it was announced that on May 15 of this year the two will be reunifying (not simply being in communion; ROCOR will again be part of the Moscow Patriarchate-Russian Church).
Many thanks for the history!
What are you talking about? It is very prudent to question any and all alleged apparitions. What is being said, who is saying it? Does it contradict the truth? That's why certain alleged apparaitions, such as Bayside, New York end up being condemned.
In a little more detail, ROCOR stands for Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
It was established by the Russian bishops outside Russia (many in North America which was canonically an Archdiocese of the Russian Church since our first Orthodox missionaries and bishops were from Russia) under a grant of authority from St. Tikhon, the first Patriarch of Moscow after the restoration of the office abolished by the Westernizing Tsar Peter. After his imprisonment by the Bolsheviks, St. Tikhon issued a ukase directing the bishops outside Russia to govern the Church until normal relations could be reestablished with the Patriarchate.
The fragmenting of Orthodoxy into ethnic 'jurisdictions' in North America, and outside of traditionally Orthodox countries generally, dates to this period: the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in the wake of the loss of the Second Greco-Turkish War, the Rape of Smyrna, and the forced exchange of populations, claimed juridiction over the Americas and established a parallel Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.
ROCOR, of course, gained numbers as Russian Whites went into exile (St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco led a great many Russians first to China, then to the U.S., and there was a diaspora a Russian Whites into Western Europe, esp. France).
In the 1930's the Russian church in North America split over a dispute between the local metropolitan and the ROCOR Holy Synod over the traditional rights of a local metropolitan. Those who followed the metropolitan are now called the OCA, and are regarded by Moscow, Bulgaria and the Church of Japan (though not by any of the ancient patriarchates or other national churches) as an autocephalous church.
It's not clear to me, though, how much of the schismatic wing of ROCOR are actually the children and grandchildren of marytrs and confessors of the Bolshevik yoke, and how much of it is rigorist converts. ROCOR had a great deal of attraction for a certain strain of convert, an a lot of them seem to align themselves with the anti-Moscow hardliners.
Of course, recent actions by the Moscow Patriarchate, most notably the proclaimation of the glorification of Tsar Nicholas and his family as the Royal Passion-Bearers (a specific class of saint who dies in likeness to Christ's Passion neither resisting not removing himself or herself from harm's way because of Christian convictions--in this case the coronation oath as Tsar--but is not killed for refusing to deny the Faith), and the glorification of numerous martyrs whose names and deaths are know from the now-opened KGB archives, have (I think rightly) been taken by the hierarchs of ROCOR as
meeting the conditions of St. Tikhon's ukase that normal relations with the Patriarchate can be reestablished.
i haven't met any converts singing the anti-moscow song but its worth pondering that angle as well...
Hostile Protestant??? Please!!! I'm really a sweet guy. Really!!!
Interesting. Thanks!
great story, never heard that before http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintm5z.htm
I suspect he might have been drinking something stronger than coffee at the time.
So that is where the OCA came from. Been wondering that.
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