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Isa_Almisry
Guest
yes, so much so that the core of the Orthodox Church in America are uniates who returned to Orthodoxy. Archbishop Ireland is the father of Orthodoxy in this country.Interesting. Is there anyone in Italy that considers themselves oppressed by Rome? I assure you there are many Catholics today oppressed by the Orthodox.
I know plenty of Eastern Catholics–UGCC-- here in the US and none of them is coerced. They love being Catholic.
As I stated, I know people personally, whose Churches were taken from them in Czechoslovakia. Btw, the Church is mainly uniate returnees, and that core is those who returned in the intrawar period, not under the communists.The Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church (Czechoslovak Orthodox Church up to 1993) traces its roots to the Church of the Czech Brethren of the 1920s.Almost all of the members of the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church were 20th-century converts from Roman Catholicism or Greek-Catholicism. The faithful included Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks and back then Rusyns (Carpatho-Ukraine was a part of Czechoslovakia up to 1945) who felt disenfrachised by the Latin priests,their ranks quickly grew from almost no Eastern Orthodox faithful to 145,000 by the 1931 census (including some 120,000 Ruthenes in Carpatho-Ukraine).
In 1942, the head of the church, Bishop Gorazd, was arrested, tried, tortured and executed by the Nazis. His offense was harboring the conspirators who had assassinated Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich. This involvement caused harsh reprisals for Eastern Orthodox faithful in German-held Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Some 256 Orthodox priests and prominent believers were either executed or deported to slave labor camps in the Third Reich.
Following the end of the war, in 1945, the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church held a memorial service for Bishop Gorazd. Prominent citizens of Prague of all faiths paid their respects to the murdered cleric in the Orthodox Cathedral of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. He is now known as Saint Gorazd, recognized as a martyr by Orthodox Christians throughout the world.
I can name other areas, but you get the point. The Latins aren’t as benign Vatican II would spin.
As for Italy, having eliminated them, there are no native Orthodox to oppress now, is there? Latinization was a “success.”