Leading Orthodox Official Urges World Council of Churches to Challenge Secularism, Radical Islam

Catholic Culture ^ | 11/5/13

[marshmallow]

Addressing the World Council of Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church’s leading ecumenical official questioned the effectiveness of the ecumenical body and warned that Christians must face the challenges of secularism and radical Islam.

“The World Council of Churches today remains a unique instrument of inter-Christian cooperation that has no analogy in the world,” said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. “However, the question arises as to how effective this instrument is … While we continue to discuss our differences in the comfortable atmosphere of conferences and theological dialogues, the question resounds ever more resolutely: will Christian civilization survive at all?”

The “two fundamental challenges which the Christian world today faces in varying degrees,” he said, are “the militant secularism which is gathering strength in the so called developed countries, primarily in Europe and America,” and “radical Islamism that poses a threat to the very existence of Christianity in a number of regions of the world, mainly in the Middle East, but also in some parts of Asia and Africa.”

Addressing the challenge of militant secularism, Metropolitan Hilarion said:

In the countries of the former Soviet Union, in particular in Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and Moldavia, an unprecedented religious revival is underway. In the Russian Orthodox Church over the past twenty five years there have been built or restored from ruins more than twenty five thousand churches. This means that a thousand churches a year have been opened, i.e. three churches a day. More than fifty theological institutes and eight hundred monasteries, each full with monks and nuns, have been opened.

[MUDDOG]

It would have done more good if the Patriarch in Constaninople had acceded to Emperor Nicephoras Phocas' request in the 10th century that any Byzantine soldier killed in battle against the Moslems be considered a martyr.

But the Patriarch wouldn't do it.

[Pontiac]

More than fifty theological institutes and eight hundred monasteries, each full with monks and nuns, have been opened.

And Russian birth rates at below replacement rate.

Just injecting a little humor to the mix, don’t get excited.

[Dalberg-Acton]

World Council of Churches was founded as a Soviet front.

[Ransomed]

Well, something weird is going on there. Just search ‘Orthodox Church leaves World Council of Churches.’

Pretty strange.

Freegards

[GarySpFc]

And Russian birth rates at below replacement rate.

I'm not certain this is still true. I'm married to a Russian lady, and we have an apartment in Volgograd. The wife said the last two or three years she has never seen so many pregnant women there. The economy has been booming,, and the results are :)

[GarySpFc]

And Russian birth rates at below replacement rate.

I'm not certain this is still true. I'm married to a Russian lady, and we have an apartment in Volgograd. The wife said the last two or three years she has never seen so many pregnant women there. The economy has been booming,, and the results are :)