Mr
James Jatras has a great article uncovering this:
“Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the
soul of soulless conditions. It
is the opium of the people.” So Karl Marx wrote in 1843. For three
generations over the course of the 20th century his atheist
disciples violently sought to break their subjects of this “opium” addiction.
They
failed. In many though not all parts of the former communist bloc Christianity
not only survived but provided the impetus for national and social revival. In
some countries, like Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania, this meant Roman
Catholicism. In others, like Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia, this means
Orthodoxy.
For
the no-less-godless successors of the commissars now ruling most of Europe
through the twin bureaucracies of NATO and the European Union, religion – or at
least Christianity – remains a retrograde force that needs to be overcome. They
are helped by the fact that in western Europe (and increasingly in the United
States) consumerism, feminism, LGBT, multiculturalism, and other materialistic
post-modern alternatives have proved to be far more corrosive of Christianity
than dynamite, bullets, concentration camps, and punitive psychiatric
hospitals.
There
is also a geopolitical element. Because NATO/EU’s biggest target is Russia, and
because revival of the Orthodox Church is central to Russia’s revival –
including its military determination to resist western
aggression as it has
so many times in the past from Germany, Sweden, Poland, France, etc. – the Orthodox Church is itself in the
crosshairs. From the soulless perspective of western bureaucrats
Orthodox Christianity is nothing more than an instrument of the Kremlin’s soft
power. According to one person rather new to the relevant
issues but nonetheless considered authoritative by the State Department:
‘The
Church, for its part, acts as the Russian state’s soft power arm, exerting its
authority in ways that assist the Kremlin in spreading Russian influence both
in Russia’s immediate neighborhood as well as around the globe. The Kremlin
assists the Church, as well, working to increase its reach. Vladimir Yakunin,
one of Putin’s inner circle and a devout member of the ROC, facilitated in 2007
the reconciliation of the ROC with the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (which
had separated itself from the Moscow Patriarchate early in the Soviet era so as
not to be co-opted by the new Bolshevik state), which reconciliation greatly
increased [Patriarch of Moscow] Kirill’s influence and authority outside of
Russia. Putin, praising this
event, noted the
interrelation of the growth of ROC authority abroad with his own international
goals: “The revival of the church unity is a crucial condition for revival of
lost unity of the whole ‘Russian world’, which has always had the Orthodox
faith as one of its foundations.”’
Thus
the 250-million-plus-member Orthodox Church needs to be brought to heel, or
better yet, broken. Over the past few years we have seen several episodes
pointing to that end:
·
Removal of Bishop Artemije of Raška and Prizren, the Serbian Orthodox
eparchy that includes the NATO-occupied province of Kosovo and Metohija. In
2010 Vladika Artemije, an
outspoken opponent of ecumenism, was accused on spurious corruption charges for
which he’s never been brought to trial, expelled from his eparchy without an
ecclesiastical trial, and later reduced to the status of a simple monk. (He
insists that he is the true
Bishop of the Raško-Prizrenska Eparchy in Exile, leading to his being
falsely being accused of schism.)
The
real reasons for this were transparently political. Vladika Artemije was
punished for his forthright opposition to US, NATO, and EU policy in Kosovo and
his spearheading a Washington lobbying effort to oppose creation of that
terrorist-mafia pseudo-state (and hotbed of Islamic
jihad) under NATO
protection. In addition, he sued
the NATO powers in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and in 2009 sought to bar a visit by then-US Vice
President and current 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden (a belligerent proponent of war
against Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo and of detaching Kosovo from Serbia, not to mention a Ukraine profiteer via his son Hunter Biden) from visiting Visoki Dečani monastery – a
decision overturned by the Serbian Church at the behest of the Serbian
government, then headed by western quisling Boris Tadic. The Biden snub
reportedly prompted a high NATO official (probably US Admiral Mark P.
Fitzgerald, then Commander, US Naval Forces Europe and Africa, and Commander,
Allied Joint Force Command (JFC) Naples) to demand: “What we need here is a
more cooperative bishop.” The soon got it, with the shameful submission of the
Serbian Church under pressure from Washington, Brussels, and Belgrade
officialdom. (As noted below, the Serbian Church leadership’s betrayal of
Vladika Artemije has now come back to haunt them in Montenegro.)
·
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church schism. A year ago His
All-Holiness, Bartholomew I, the Patriarch of Constantinople, recognized as a new
“autocephalous” (entirely self-ruling) “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (“OCU”) persons who had up
until then been universally shunned as schismatics and frauds by all Orthodox
jurisdictions. Since then Constantinople, with the overt help of the US State
Department and the Greek government, has been able to round up a few additional
endorsements, notably from the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa and the
Archbishop of Athens (both dependent on Greek state subsidies) but pointedly
rejected by many of the bishops, clergy, and faithful in the African and Greek
jurisdictions. A number of Churches, notably Antioch and Serbia, have been
outspokenly supportive of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which
remains an autonomous part of the Russia Orthodox Church.
US
officials who wouldn’t know Orthodoxy from orthodontia have taken a keen
interest in the Church’s internal canonical arrangements, insisting that
creation of the bogus “OCU” is an exercise in human rights and “religious
freedom,” despite violence against clergy and believers of the canonical Church
and plans to seize churches and monasteries. Among the outspoken supporters of
the OCU are celebrated theologians like US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who placed a personal call to the “newly elected head of the “OCU” “Metropolitan Epifaniy” (Dumenko),
Geoffrey Pyatt (current US Ambassador to Greece, who was also Ambassador to
Ukraine during the 2014 regime change operation), Sam Brownback (US Ambassador
at Large for International Religious Freedom), and – recognizable to many
Americans from their impeachment testimony – US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt
Volker and US
Ambassador in Kiev Marie Yovanovitch (noted for her over-the-top LGBT promotion in Ukraine). Pyatt and Brownback are notable for
their round-robin visits to Orthodox Church
leaders, notably in the
Balkans, to “encourage” their recognition of the Ukrainian schismatics.
. . .
The
whole article is at http://www.monomakhos.com/how-the-u-s-state-department-is-breaking-the-back-of-the-orthodox-church/ (via the Orthodox
England blog, http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/the-us-state-department-versus-christ/).
Remember,
Southron: The above is what ‘religious
freedom’ means when you hear those words used by Pres Trump, VP Pence, Mr Tony
Perkins, or any of their ilk. Religion
is nothing to them - it is simply another tool in the box to keep the world in
thrall to Washington City, a forerunner of Antichrist.
May
God protect His Church, the Orthodox Church, and may He bring all His enemies
to repentance.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
No comments:
Post a Comment