Yes, that is amazing and puzzling. Which is what makes Kolokotronis and other Orthodox posters here wonder why is it the Protestant West determined to bury or destroy Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
No one is doing that but yourselves. Why didn't the EO go after Ante Pavelich living in luxury in Spain themselves as the Jews went after other NAZI war criminals. They didn't whine about it -- they took action.
And when the Serbian army was pursuing the KLA terrorists in Kosovo, where was the vocal support from the EO Church, or your EO brethren in Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans and Eastern Europe??? Why not blame them for not supporting the Serbs??? Where were they??? And here in America I heard not a whimper from any EO church and when I asked people who were EOs, they all looked at me as if to say that's their problem.
Your EOs want to be left alone -- but then when in trouble they want someone else to rescue them. Which is it???
According to your own EO religion the Serb military action against the KLA was a grave sin. They had to go to war to kill Muslims to protect the very EO ecclesiastics who criticized them for doing so. Your religious theology is your problem -- not someone else's.
And before you refer to the West as the "Protestant West", I suggest that you do some actual study on the actual religious makeup of the West. The majority of the Protestants in the West are of liberal denominations and have the same view of scripture that you EO and the RC do.
If you really want to know who to blame for the Ratlines that enabled those responsible for the Serbian Holocaust to escape to the West, go read John Loftus' book and you will find that, among the culprits, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta were right in the middle of it all. So put the blame where it belongs --
“...where was the vocal support from the EO Church, or your EO brethren in Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans and Eastern Europe???”
You had moved to another planet during the Kosovo war, right UC?
Forgive me, but this shows how na&iunl;ve you are. Things are not that simple. The EO's were enslaved by communism brought on by the Yalta (1943) agreement between Roosevelt Churchill and Stalin, which carved up Europe as spoils for the big powers' influence after the war.
In fact, initially, Yugoslavia was to be split like Germany, eastern part (Serbia, Montenegro) to the Soviets, and the western part (Croatia, Slovenia) to US/UK influence.
In all fairness, Roosevelt was against this. But Roosevelt's own Vice President (Wallace) was himself a communist (in fact he ran in 1947 on a communist ticket for President), and probably had undue influence in his Administration.
It was immediately after Yalta that Allied supplies to Yugoslav resistence groups began shifting towards supporting communists, giving them the upper hand that was instrumental in the eventual communist takeover.
Also don't forget that in 1944, the Soviet Red Army entered Serbia through Bulgaria and began pushing Germans, along with Yugoslav communists (partisans) westward, but also establishing communist control over the country.
After the war, the communist regime led by Josip Broz Tito, a Croat) was busy cleaning up pockets of Royalist (anti-communist) resistance in the country, creating a one-party system, and putting down Albanian revolt in Kosovo (over a failed promise made by communists to them in 1943).
By that time, the US did not care to hear what communist Yugoslavia wanted, even though I am sure demands for extradition of Pavelich were made plain to the west. The communists had their own ax to grind with the Ustashe, so it wasn't being done out of compassion for the suffering Serbs.
Really? There was plenty of vocal support, and that can be proven through simple research. Serbian Unity Congress sent repeated letters to the Clinton White House and the Defense Department with no avail; and the media largely ignored Serbian responses. The truth was simply "filtered out" in American media, and the Iranian-British Christianna Amanpour, Richard Holbrooke, and others were given free reign to disseminate whatever lies they chose.
That's why you didn't hear about it. It was also distorted with fabrications that turned out to be propaganda disinformation (such as VP Gore's assertion that 100,000 Albanians have been killed; to this day less than 3,000 bodies from all ethnic groups have been recovered).
No one was interested in the Serbian side of the story. In fact, Serbia's own TV station (a civilian object)was targeted by the NATO bombers because it was a source of "propaganda" because it was showing things we didn't want our viewers to see. Our media were equally biased, which is obvious from watching different channels (i.e. FoxNews blatantly supporting the Republican and MSNBC being equally blatantly pro-Democratic) I am sure an attack on CNN or Fox or any other TV station would have been termed a terrorist act.
If democracy cannot defend its moral higher ground with truth, then how are we better than others? He who is innocent should never resort to lying, and lying (such as playing bombing runs at three times the speed to make it look like the train was hit accidentally is big time lying) is an indication that we also can't handle the truth.
In keeping with the earliest fathers' writings, the Church established by Christ will never endorse war, just as the Church will never endorse sin. But people sin and that is the reality of the fallen world. Just because we continue to sin, doesn't mean the Church can in principle say it's okay.
The majority of the Protestants in the West are of liberal denominations and have the same view of scripture that you EO and the RC do.
The numbers are irrelevant. It's what influence is exerted by certain groups because of the power structure.
read John Loftus' book and you will find that, among the culprits, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta were right in the middle of it all
If that is the case, we should use his irrefutable "proofs" and put the Vatican on trial for war crimes, since war crimes never go out of date. Obviously, either there is either not evidence evidence for such a trial, or because such a trial would be undesirable from a pragmatic point of view.
We have evidence that Turkey committed genocide on its Christian Armenian population in the 1920's and we refuse to this day to acknowledge it officially because it is a "sensitive" issue with our long-time important ally. It sort of follows Roosevelt's logic—to paraphrase him, they may be thugs but they are our thugs.
It's much easier to be an "idealist" and see everything through the lens of Hollywood make-believe fairytales then to face the reality we cannot live up to for pragmatic reasons.
The Knight of Malta... LOL! If it weren’t for the Knights of Malta and actions by other “Papists,” Europe would have been Islamic in 1650. Too bad the Europeans squandered their opportunity, since they’ll be largely Islamic by 2050 - a delay of 400 years.