EXPAND YOUR READING!!

"Today the concept of truth is viewed with suspicion, because truth is identified with violence. Over history there have, unfortunately, been episodes when people sought to defend the truth with violence. But they are two contrasting realities. Truth cannot be imposed with means other than itself! Truth can only come with its own light. Yet, we need truth. ... Without truth we are blind in the world, we have no path to follow. The great gift of Christ was that He enabled us to see the face of God".Pope Benedict xvi, February 24th, 2012

The Church is ecumenical, catholic, God-human, ageless, and it is therefore a blasphemy—an unpardonable blasphemy against Christ and against the Holy Ghost—to turn the Church into a national institution, to narrow her down to petty, transient, time-bound aspirations and ways of doing things. Her purpose is beyond nationality, ecumenical, all-embracing: to unite all men in Christ, all without exception to nation or race or social strata. - St Justin Popovitch

Monday 7 March 2016

AN ORTHODOX APPEAL FOR RECOGNITION OF THE 1946 LVIV ‘SYNOD’ AS A SHAM MARCH 6, 2016


APPEAL FOR RECOGNITION OF THE 1946 LVIV ‘SYNOD’ AS A SHAM
MARCH 6, 2016 
(thanks to Jim Forest)

It is urgent for Orthodox Christians to recognize the terrible truth of March 10, 1946

One of the bishops at the pseudo council of 1946 in the St George cathedral, Lviv.
One of the bishops at the pseudo council of 1946 in the St George cathedral, Lviv.
On March 10, 1946, at Lviv, the Orthodox Church of Russia, under pressure from the Soviet government, forcefully integrated the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and claimed jurisdiction over it. When the participants in the synod on March 8 and 9, voted for the “reunification” of their Church with the Patriarchate of Moscow, all the Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops were behind bars in prisons. The 216 priests and 19 laymen, assembled in the Cathedral of Saint George in Lviv by the NKVD, the ancestor of the KGB, were at the mercy of a “group of initiative” led by two Orthodox bishops, Antony Pelvetsky and Myhailo Melnyk, and an orthodox priest Gavril Kostelnyk. The archives reveal that it was Stalin himself who decided to eliminate the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in February 1945, twelve days after the Conference of Yalta with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Fr Gavril Kostelnyk, one of the organizers of the Lviv pseudo synod
Fr Gavril Kostelnyk, one of the organizers of the Lviv pseudo synod
All serious historians and theologians have no doubts that the 8-10 March 1946 synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church at Lviv was only a sham. Bohdan Bociurkiw, who was a professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa, wrote a comprehensive survey on this matter and it has never been contradicted. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of it in 2006, referring to it as a “pseudo-synod” which “seriously harmed Church unity”. Nicolas Lossky, a French Orthodox theologian who is a member of the Patriarchate of Moscow, also recognized that this was a false synod. Because of its suppression in 1946 and until 1989, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which counted more than 5 million adherents, became, in fact, both the principle victim and the principle force of opposition, within the borders of the USSR, to the Soviet regime. Thus we make an appeal to the present day Orthodox authorities in Russia and Ukraine and elsewhere, to recognize the invalidity of the tragic decisions of the council of Lviv.

The Orthodox Church of Russia as a whole cannot be held responsible for decisions taken by ecclesiastical authorities who were manipulated or terrorized by the NKVD-KGB. However we, as Orthodox Christians, living 70 years after the events, feel responsible for the culpable silence surrounding the destruction of this Church by the Soviet regime with the participation of the Patriarchate of Moscow. We know that millions of Orthodox Christians in the world firmly condemn the anti-religious persecutions of the Soviet government and of Joseph Djougachvili in particular.

Thus, on this commemorative day of March 10 1946 and on the eve of Sunday, March 13 2016, Sunday of the Great Pardon in the Orthodox liturgical calendar, we assure the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of our solidarity, of our prayers for all the innocent victims of this Church who were imprisoned, tortured, deported and assassinated by the Soviet government with the complicity of the Patriarchate of Moscow. We humbly ask their pardon for all the injustices they have suffered under the cover of the Orthodox Church and we bow down before the martyrs of this Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Antoine Arjakovsky, Orthodox Christian, Paris
Andrey Chernyak, Orthodox Christian, Moscow
Taras Dmytryk, Orthodox Christian, Lviv
Jim Forest, Orthodox Christian, Amsterdam
Fr. George Kovalenko, Orthodox Christian, Kiev
Inga Leonova, Orthodox Christian, New York
Fr. Christophe Levalois, Orthodox Christian, Paris
Fr. Michael Plekon, Orthodox Christian, New York
Olga Sedakova, Orthodox Christian, Moscow
Constantin Sigov, Orthodox Christian, Kiev
Cyrille Sollogoub, Orthodox Christian, Paris
Daniel Struve, Orthodox Christian, Paris
Natallia Vasilevich, Orthodox Christian, Minsk
Bertrand Vergely, Orthodox Christian, Paris
Andri Yurash, Orthodox Christian, Kiev
For additional background, see the film “To Understand and to Forgive”:

No comments:

Search This Blog

La Virgen de Guadalupe

La Virgen de Guadalupe

Followers

My Blog List

Fr David Bird

Fr David Bird
Me on a good day

Blog Archive