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You do a pretty good job of repeating communist propaganda. Rolf Hochhuth formerly of Hitler Youth and later a communist playwright would be sooooo pleased. Do you want to repeat Josip Brosz Tito's lying propaganda against Alois Cardinal Stepinac which will not prevent his canonization as a saint.

Maybe the roll over and play dead pacifism that you see as Orthodox dogma has something to do with their death toll at the hands of Lenin, Stalin, et al. Franco, as a Catholic, did not roll over and play dead. He fought the reds and anarchists and defeated them. Warren Carroll well documents the facts in his The Last Crusade which covers the Spanish Civil War. The reds and anarchists in Spain burned more than half of the Catholic Churches, raped and murdered countless nuns and murdered more than half the Spanish priests before Franco was able to overcome them and give them a small portion of what they had earned. He did not curl up in the corner whimpering that God must want him to be murdered. Instead he slaughtered the red and anarchist perps while some folks go around whining that they must kiss up to their communist bosses as though that were required of them by Christ. I take it that the woman who put a bullet in Lenin's frontal lobe was not Orthodox. She was not Catholic either but a member of the soviet central committee. There were few Catholics in Russia thanks to the xenophobia that prevails there. The Orthodox directly benefited from Stalin's theft of Catholic Uniate Churches in Ukraine. Again, if all the Orthodox were in the habit of resisting their communist bosses, they would have lost fewer churches and fewer Orthodox clergy and laity under their former seminarian Djugashvili who became Stalin.

Do you miss that pillar of virtue Slobodan Milosevic??? I did not think him worth wasting a single American soldier, probably not a single bullet. I don't think he or anyone ought to be tried by Euroweenies at the Hague. OTOH, I am certainly glad that Milosevic is dead. Maybe Serbia will have a chance for freedom but probably not. The bad habits of a millenium are too hard to break. I do know certain peace-obsessed and non-representative Catholics who admire Serbia as a colorful little satrapy, so picturesque, so thoroughly a throwback, so anti-American. The thrill just overwhelms and runs up what passes for their paleo-spines.

As to open resistance against the Nazi regime in Germany, try Cardinal Faulhaber, the Lion of Munich, who went after Hitler from the pulpit doing what few Orthodox leaders in Russia ever did. If Tikhon had behaved against the reds in Russia as Cardinal Wycinski (sp.?) did in Poland, maybe Tikhon could have died with his boots off in Russia as Wycinski did in Poland after participating in the overthrow of one red regime in the 1950s by calling his Church to the mountain at Czestechova for a display of the Black Madonna in defiance of the soviet stooge running Poland at the time. JP II was crucially instrumental in the fall of the Iron Curtain and openly cooperated with Ronaldus Maximus and Maggie Thatcher to that end, giving the RCC's answer to Stalin's impudent question: How many divisions has the pope?

Joseph Ratzinger was 16 years old when arrested by American troops. He was briefly detained and released.

Catholics and Protestants have every right to observe the collaborationist nature of the Orthodox church in Russia because it WAS collaborationist. You cannot very well celebrate as virtue the spineless cowardice of those who somehow see it as a moral imperative to refuse resistance by force of arms to tyranny and then whine about others complaining of that truth. If you wonder why the chronic moaning and groaning in SOME Orthodox circles is despised in the manlier circles of Christianity which have fought the beasts, just look at the way some of you are whining to tghis day over some generally forgotten (except by you) ancient slaughter of Orthodox (did they fight back? Did they bear arms?) in Constantinople many hundreds of years ago. When the Muslim navy threatened Europe at Lepanto, it was Catholic naval power that sent the Muslims to Davy Jones' locker. When Vienna was threatened by a Muslim siege, it was Catholic Jan Sobieski, a Lithuanian Catholic who was king of Poland who headed a Catholic army that lifted the siege of Vienna, with no help whatsoever ferom the Orthodox. We would all be caterwauling that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet if we depended on the Orthodox of the time.

You have no problem spouting Tito's communist propaganda against the RCC (and nuzzling Obamamessiah as preferable because of his potential to destroy our country by pacifism in the face of our nation's enemies and collaboration with them).

I knew a man in New Haven (now dead of heart trouble) by the name of Bill Kirkiles who was a Greek Orthodox partisan leader against Tito when Tito was stealing the children of Orthodox in Macedonia and Northern Greece to be sent off to Stalin for "re-education" when they were too young to resist so that they could form the next generation's communist cadre. See the movie/read the book as to Eleni, the mother who refused to allow her children to be kidnapped in such a manner and was murdered by the reds while people like you sat around whining about the evils of taking up arms and killing those reds who needed killing. Bill killed them and so did many Orthodox but not the kind who would embrace an Obama. Bill was one of the finest men I have had the privilege of knowing. His pastor was another.

The concordat negotiated with the German government (whose president was the non-Nazi Paul Hindenberg) was typical of Vatican concordats all over Europe. The Catholic Center Party of Germany which agreed not to resist Hitler was not much of a principled institution and not a very effective party. It serves as a useful whipping boy for the Church's enemies.

There was Lutheran resistance to Hitler in the form of heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who went back to Germany to be hanged by Hitler in the endgame of Nazi rule. There were Protestant heroes in families like the ten Booms. There were Catholic heroes galore. One was Franco who allowed an underground railroad through Spain for Jews to escape Europe and demanded of Hitler that his diplomats be allowed to remove from the death camps each and every Jew credibly claiming Spanish ancestry under Spain's law of return. There is a book regarding the Reichmann/Gestetner family of Hjngary and Germany and later the owners of Olympia and York. The writer was a Toronto business reporter. Although the book was about the rise and fall of Olympia and York's Reichmann family owners, it very well covers the cooperation of Franco and his government in saving Jews. The book was published in the 1990s.

Was there something you objected to in the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to communism? Do you not only like Tito but also his and Stalin's ideology??? Do you really wonder why people who share such views you are despised by civilized men???

When you accuse those who fought and resisted of "hypocrisy" and "ignorance," you have spent too much time looking in the mirror and you emit the same odor as Obama would if he claimed fiscal responsibility as central to his (and your?) ideology.

Finally, bear in mind that this entire tempest in a teacup 'tween me and thee emanates from some errant Orthodox buttinskis sticking their impudent noses into the internal affairs and governance of a Church, the Roman Catholic Church, which is quite obviously not their own. If the Orthodox whom I know personally be any guide (exemplary folks one and all), then one wonders whether the Orthodox Church is your own either but that is the business of the Orthodox Church and its authorities and none of mine. Maybe you should be treated as Fr. Jenkins should be treated and just as harshly. I really don't know. Run your own church if you can and mind your own business which does not include the RCC.

You do a pretty good job of repeating communist propaganda

You are amazing: I give you verifiable historical facts (form western sources) and you call it "communist" propaganda! Given that you seem to think so highly of Cardinal Stepinac, I could say, then, that you do a pretty good job of repeating fascist propaganda.

Do you want to repeat Josip Brosz [sic] Tito's lying propaganda against Alois Cardinal Stepinac which will not prevent his canonization as a saint

Alojzije Stepinac was a traitor and a collaborationist Catholic archbishop of Zagreb in the so-called Independent State of Croatia, a staunch ally of Hitler's Germany. That John Paul II canonized this monster is a shameful reminder that the Vatican can err, as it did when it helped many a former Nazi war criminal find safe heaven in the West.

Franco, as a Catholic, did not roll over and play dead. He fought the reds and anarchists and defeated them

Franco was Hitler's and Mussolini's friend and ally. You find that admirable?

The reds and anarchists in Spain burned more than half of the Catholic Churches, raped and murdered countless nuns and murdered more than half the Spanish priests before Franco was able to overcome them and give them a small portion of what they had earned.

No one is defending the reds. They have "earned" their reputation in Russia earlier in the century where they destroyed 98% of the churches and killed tens of thousands of clergy. Franco had every right to fight them. But Franco choose Hitler and Mussolini as the right guys to do business with. Right cause, wrong choice.

Here is your hero Francisco Franco and his buddy Adolf Hitler using their fascist salute to jar your memory.

I suppose you would say that just because Britain, France and the US did nothing to help Franco, they were "communist" too? Reptilian brains would think so.

He did not curl up in the corner whimpering that God must want him to be murdered.

The Russians didn't either, but the help that came was not sufficient to turn the red tide.

Instead he slaughtered the red and anarchist perps while some folks go around whining that they must kiss up to their communist bosses as though that were required of them by Christ

Apostle Paul says Christians are to submit to all authority, because authority is form God.

"For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves."—Rom 13:1-2

Now, Paul also says that he was given all this from Christ and last time I checked your Church agrees with that. So, I would say, that Christians really don't have an option in choosing to resist any authority except on their own authority, which is not from God and which carries a penalty according to St. Paul himself.

You have yet to make a biblical, or historical case for this belligerent attitude which you say is what the catholic Church teaches.

The Orthodox directly benefited from Stalin's theft of Catholic Uniate Churches in Ukraine.

Oh, yes, after losing 98% of the churches and tens of thousands of clergy, the Orthodox Church in Russia benefited greatly! LOL!

Again, if all the Orthodox were in the habit of resisting their communist bosses, they would have lost fewer churches and fewer Orthodox clergy and laity under their former seminarian Djugashvili who became Stalin

Your history is flawed. The Russians resisted the Bolshevik revolution as much as they could. Without effective outside help, decimated at the eastern front by the Germans, weakened by treason from non-Russian minorities, the Whites (pro-czarists) succumbed to the better organized Reds, and were defeated.

Do you miss that pillar of virtue Slobodan Milosevic

No. Do you?

OTOH, I am certainly glad that Milosevic is dead

Very charitable of you.

Maybe Serbia will have a chance for freedom but probably not. The bad habits of a millenium are too hard to break

You are right. Just pray tell which country has a history of freedom that goes back a millennium?

I do know certain peace-obsessed and non-representative Catholics who admire Serbia as a colorful little satrapy, so picturesque, so thoroughly a throwback, so anti-American

As compared to the sex-slave trading, drug-trafficking little puppet "state" of Kosovo that was illegally snatched away from a sovereign country in violation of all international conventions, but supported by war-obsessed allegedly "representative" Catolics like yourself?

As for Serbs being "so anti-American," I remind you that the freely elected government in Serbia is very much pro-American and that Serbia has been an American-sponsored satrapy since October 2000.

In fact, the first country Serbia's president visited was the US only two days after his election! I suppose you don't count the people there as pro-American except that they elect por-American officials despite the fact that only ten years ago American bombs killed over 5,200 civilians in three months of the bombing campaign over Serbia.

For being so forgiving, more like forgetful and opportunistic, Serbia is Europe's leading trailer trash country. No other country is so self-debasing.

Do you think Americans would forgive someone for killing an equivalent number of civilians in a war of aggression so that California can secede from the Union? I doubt it. Rest assured: based on their voting record, Serb citizens are more pro-American than Americans. In fact, Serbia should be our honorary pet country. You can kick her, starve her, spit on her, beat her, kill her offspring, and she wills till be your pet.

As to open resistance against the Nazi regime in Germany, try Cardinal Faulhaber, the Lion of Munich, who went after Hitler from the pulpit doing what few Orthodox leaders in Russia ever did

I never denied individual Catholic martyrs who stood up and even gave their lives for what is right. But, do you think close to one hundred thousand Russian bishops, priests, and monastics died because they supported communists? Don't be ridiculous. They died because they refused to cooperate with the monstrous Soviet regime.

JP II was crucially instrumental in the fall of the Iron Curtain

I have heard this bogus theory peddled before. It's rubbish.

Joseph Ratzinger was 16 years old when arrested by American troops. He was briefly detained and released.

And there were 16-year olds who resisted the Nazis and were punished for it. He wasn't enthusiastic but he wasn't actively resisting either.

Catholics and Protestants have every right to observe the collaborationist nature of the Orthodox church in Russia because it WAS collaborationist

In that case they should also recognize that the Catholic Church and Protestant communities were actively cooperating with the Nazi and fascist regimes.

You cannot very well celebrate as virtue the spineless cowardice of those who somehow see it as a moral imperative to refuse resistance by force of arms to tyranny and then whine about others complaining of that truth

Then you are calling spineless cowards all those Christian martyrs who died at the hands of various oppressors, beginning with protomartyr +Stephen, +Ignatius, +Peter and +Paul, and countless others. And you consider yourself a Catholic?

If you wonder why the chronic moaning and groaning in SOME Orthodox circles is despised in the manlier [sic] circles of Christianity which have fought the beasts...in Constantinople many hundreds of years ago...

Oh, testosterone! I should have known it would come down to that. How "Catholic!" With your mindset, I am surprised no one has yet condemned Jesus for being such a pacifist weenie to let himself be tortured and crucified. And all those weenie Christian multitudes letting themselves be slaughtered and eaten by beasts in the arenas. Bunch of effeminate pacifist weenies, right? And you call yourself Catholic? You are on the roll.

And as far as Constantinople is concerned, the pope tried to stop it when he learned of the travesty, and centuries later John Paul II apologized for it. Does that make him a "weenie" too?

When the Muslim navy threatened Europe at Lepanto, it was Catholic naval power that sent the Muslims to Davy Jones' locker

What "catholic naval power?" When exactly was the Catholic Church a naval power? The countries that participated in wars may have been Catholic countries, but their wars and politics were secular.

When Vienna was threatened by a Muslim siege, it was Catholic Jan Sobieski, a Lithuanian Catholic who was king of Poland who headed a Catholic army that lifted the siege of Vienna, with no help whatsoever ferom the Orthodox.

Um, well, that's because the Orthodox countries were under the Ottoman occupation mainly because the Catholic countries refused to come to their aid when they need them. The fact that the Polish army saved Europe form the Ottoman conquest has nothing to do with them being Catholic. Peter the Great defeated Sweden and no one says his were "Orthodox" armies! LOL! The Church did not participate in any of these wars. This is like someone saying that Shinto Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor! It's moronic! Do you understand that? I doubt it, bur I ask you anyway.

We would all be caterwauling that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet if we depended on the Orthodox of the time

The Orthodox survived five hundred years of Ottoman slavery and retained their Church and their Holy Tradition unchanged despite martyrdom and pogroms and lack of any help from the Catholic side. Unlike your Church, we did not commit liturgical suicide to the point of mocking God with clown masses and similar abominations.

As for "caterwauling," the show ain't over yet. Despite all the "Catholic" victories, Islam is the fastest growing religion on earth and almost neck and neck with the Catholics. What good is winning a battle if you lose the war?

You have no problem spouting Tito's communist propaganda against the RCC

I usually reference my factual claims (unless widely known) and I don't remember ever using Tito as my reference.

and nuzzling Obamamessiah as preferable because of his potential to destroy our country by pacifism in the face of our nation's enemies and collaboration with them

I don't remember endorsing any such person, nor his alleged collaboration with our enemies. You are either making ad hominem comments or you have me confused with someone else.

Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with me, the Orthodox Church and her teachings? People do what they wish to do, but neither Christ nor the primitive Catholic Church professed any taking up arms and killing people. In fact, the Greatest martyrs in the Church would qualify as pacifist weenies in your book.

The concordat negotiated with the German government (whose president was the non-Nazi Paul Hindenberg) was typical of Vatican concordats all over Europe

So?

There was Lutheran resistance to Hitler in the form of heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who went back to Germany to be hanged by Hitler in the endgame of Nazi rule

As I said, many Christian martyrs, individually did resist and paid with their lives for the sake or righteousness, but their communities and the Catholic Church, as institutions, collaborated with the Nazi regime.

Was there something you objected to in the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to communism?

I don't remember ever suggesting that it did. Are you in a habit of smearing people with your unsupported insinuations? I don't remember, however, the Catholic Church resisting communism by picking up arms. On a practical level, the Church learned how to "live" with communist regimes while being opposed to communism in principle.

Do you not only like Tito but also his and Stalin's ideology??? Do you really wonder why people who share such views you are despised by civilized men???

When and where did I say I liked Tito's ideology? You are suggesting things I never said. There is nothing civilized about people who make up lies. There is nothing Catholic about them either.

It is you who consider Christian martyrs "weenies" and not "manly" enough. You are so full of hate, spilling it out as personal insults that I can't imagine how you can live with yourself, or go to church, if you go to church. I truly pity you.

Run your own church if you can and mind your own business which does not include the RCC.

Last time I checked, this is not a Catholic-caucus article, but rather an open forum for all to participate with their views. I think you are confused as to the rules of the Religion Forum. But after reading your hate-filled responses I wouldn't be surprised if you just don't care. Perhaps it's not "manly" enough to care; only "weenies" care, right?