Constantine, you may also want to note that in the link to the article by the aforesaid Russian Orthodox Metropolitan he calls our Eastern Catholic Churches “a complete failure”, but in the context of being a vehicle for unity (which we have long ago disavowed anyway). As Cardinal Husar long ago pointed out: this excuse that Ukrainian Catholics are THE reason for Moscow not engaging Rome is pretty well a lame excuse, or something to that effect. O.K. Met. Hilarion also uses a term banned on CAF to describe our Church.
In any event, I would take what this particular Russian Orthodox Metropolitan says with a heavy, heavy grain of salt, as, from what I read elsewhere by the late Venerable JPII’s biographer George Weigel, this same Russian Orthodox ecumenist astoundingly approves Stalin’s liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1946, the KGB enforced pseudo-synod that murdered in cold blood our bishops and clergy and sent many to the Gulag.
As here:
‘More disturbing still were remarks made in Washington in February by Metropolitan Hilarion, the Moscow patriarchate’s “external affairs” officer—Russian Orthodoxy’s chief ecumenist. Hilarion is an impressive personality in many ways: He is entirely at home in English, he displays a nice sense of humor, and his curriculum vitae includes a large number of publications and musical compositions. Yet when I asked him whether the L’viv Sobor (Council) of 1946—which forcibly reincorporated the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine into Russian Orthodoxy, turning the Greek Catholics into the world’s largest illegal religious body—was a “theologically legitimate ecclesial act,” Hilarion unhesitatingly responded “Yes.” I then noted that serious historians describe the L’viv Sobor as an act of the Stalinist state, carried out by the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB); Hilarion responded that the “modalities” of history are always complicated. In any event, he continued, it was always legitimate for straying members of the Russian Orthodox flock (as he regarded the Ukrainian Greek Catholics) to return to their true home (i.e., Russian Orthodoxy)’
firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/03/rome-and-moscow
Some ecumenist for us. It is Lent and there is no point at least in arguing here but I believe we should know exactly what the object of this thread in Eastern Catholicism actually believes about Eastern Catholics, namely us. It also pays to know that those parts of Ukraine on which the Ukrainian Catholic Church existed before Stalin annexed them in his alliance with Hitler in 1939 never historically belonged to Tsarist Russia, nor the Soviet Union until 1939 and then 1945. (And Mr. Weigel makes a mistake here too in using the word “reincorporation” into the Russian Orthodox Church as the Church in Transcarpathia, Halychyna, even when Orthodox, never belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church or Moscow, so “reincorporation” is wrong).
A rather ironic view now that we are supposed to be celebrating the enthronement of a new Patriarch for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
If the subject of this thread is Rome and Moscow, and the belief that Eastern Catholics are a failure, then it doesn’t belong under Eastern Catholicism obviously but non-Catholic religions imho.
