The Shepherd, January 2005
NEWS SECTION
IRAQI CHRISTIANS SUFFER
FOR MORE THAN 1,400 YEARS, Christians and Muslims have lived side by side in Iraq more or less peacefully, and of course the Christian community there is the older, having been established in the first century. Even during the rule of Saddam Hussein, Christians were able to worship there openly without fear of sectarian violence. The destabilisation of the country, which has followed on the Western invasion last year, has ended that. Churches of all denominations have been bombed and the dwindling Christian community there, thought to number about 800,000, has been attacked by hardline Muslim extremists and lives in fear. Many have resorted to praying at home or in small private gatherings rather than attend the churches. As in Kosovo, we see that the result of ill-advised Western intervention has been to open the way for those determined to destroy an ancient Christian culture.
ROCA-MOSCOW RAPPROCHEMENT
IN AN INTERVIEW given to “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” last month, Archbishop Mark disclosed that at the third round of negotiations between the two jurisdictions, they had discussed Sergianism again, spoken of the matter of the Ecclesiastical Missions in Jerusalem (where as recently as 1997 (Hebron) and 2000 (Jericho) church properties had been violently seized from ROCA by the Palestinian Authorities and handed over to the Moscow Patriarchate), and discussed the problems caused by the irregular reception of each other’s clergy without canonical release. Asked how he rated the results of these talks, the Archbishop said: “As always, talks held between people who have had no communication for a long time for one reason or another prove difficult. But I view the results of this serious task in a positive light.” He acknowledged that there were influences abroad hindering rapprochement. He said that he believed that some of the arguments raised by those not in favour of rapprochement now would be answered by the documents already adopted in the process of the discussions thus far, but explained that these documents would be published only after exhaustive ecclesiastical consideration. He told the magazine that for the Church Abroad an All-Diaspora Council would be convened in late 2005 or early 2006, with the participation of clergy and laity to consider the the matter. This would act in an advisory capacity and would be followed by a Council of the Bishops who would adopt a decision.
ECUMENICAL CONGRESS IN ISTANBUL
HIS ALL-HOLINESS the Œcumenical Patriarch, Bartholomeos I, opened the 23rd Ecumenical Congress of Bishops at the end of November. The Congress which was timed to coincide with the return of the sacred relics of St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian to Constantinople, was attended by fifty bishops of various denominations (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syro-Orthodox, Apostolic Armenian, Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran), all friends of the Focolare Movement. One does wonder what St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian would have thought of it all!
GOOD NEWS AND SAD FROM RUSSIA
HIS HOLINESS Patriarch Aleksii II of Moscow spoke out strongly on 15th December at a diocesan conference against the spirit of commerce penetrating the Church. He warned against the deplorable practice of clergy charging for administering sacraments, especially Baptism. “The Orthodox mind is secularising,” he said. “The ecclesiastical spirit is receding. Spiritual blindness is coming in. Commerce is getting stronger in many aspects of parochial life as an alarming token of all those evils. Material interests come into the foreground ever more often and strangle everything living and sublime. Nothing frightens the flock off religion worse than the clergy’s cupidity. It is not for nothing that greed for money is known as an abominable deadly passion, an infernal sin-betrayal of the Lord on a par with the sin of Judas.”
The Patriarch also roundly condemned the sin of abortion. “To kill a baby in its mother’s womb is the most heinous of deadly sins. That precept has always been part and parcel of Church doctrine.” Linking this horror with other manifestations of modern life, drug-taking, heavy drinking, and increasing suicides, the Patriarch rightly explained that these things derive from “godless life, forgetfulness of the good and ignorance of moral duty.”
On a much sadder note, it is also reported that the Dalai Lama visited Russia at the end of November. He was visiting Tibetan Buddhists in the country, but was also greeted by His Grace Bishop Zossima at the Orthodox Cathedral of the Virgin of Kazan in the city of Kalmykia. The Bishop extended to the Dalai Lama an invitation to visit the Patriarch in Moscow, although such a meeting was not possible on this trip. It is reported that “as a sign of extreme respect, the Dalai Lama was even led behind the iconostas” in the cathedral. Although this may have been an unfortunate mistake, it is, sadly, in contravention of Orthodox practice, which does not permit those who have no liturgical reason to be there to enter into the holy place, much less those who are not washed in holy baptism.
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