The Shepherd, April 2010
APOLOGY
BECAUSE we have, of necessity, prepared this issue before Holy and Great Week, there are several news items which we have had to hold over until the next issue. Notable among them are the conclusion of the legal case concerning the Oxnard Parish in California, and the transfer of the Holy Archangel Michael Serbian Parish in Toronto to the American Exarchate of the Synod in Resistance. We apologise for this, and, D.V., will report of them in our May issue.
NEWS SECTION
ARCHBISHOPS’ GRAVES DESECRATED IN CYPRUS
CYPRUS police have arrested a Romanian man suspected of vandalizing the tombs of three Archbishops in a cemetery in the capital city of Nicosia. The 34-year old man confessed to removing the marble slabs covering the graves of the churchmen, police said. The remains of two of the bishops first appeared to have been stolen, but the bones of one of them were, in fact, buried elsewhere years ago. The graves of the Hierarchs, Kyrillos II, Sofronios III, and Kyrillos III, who led the island’s Greek Orthodox Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were discovered to have been tampered with after police officers responded to a pre-dawn fire at a Nicosia church. The suspect is reported to have had “issues with the Church and holy ground,” according to Nicosia police chief, Kypros Michaelides. The suspect faces charges of sacrilege, trespassing and causing malicious damage at grave sites (Source: BBC News Channel).
PROMINENT MEMBER OF THE MOSCOW
PATRIARCHATE SYNOD STATES THAT HIS CHURCH RECOGNIZES R.C. MYSTERIES
“TO ALL INTENTS and purposes, mutual recognition of each others Mysteries already exists between us. We do not have communion in the Mysteries, but we do recognize each others Mysteries”, declared Archbishop [now Metropolitan] Hilarion (Alfeev) during a broadcast of the programme “The Church and the World” on the television channel “Russia”, on 17th October, according to Vertograd. He was speaking of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Roman Catholic Church. Vertograd’s report continues: “‘If a Roman Catholic priest converts to Orthodoxy, we receive him as a priest, and we do not re-ordain him. And that means that, de facto, we recognize the Mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church’, explained Archbishop Hilarion.” [In fact, it does not! - ed.]. “Responding to the question of whether Roman Catholics can receive Communion from the Orthodox, or Orthodox Christians from the Roman Catholics, Archbishop Hilarion said that such giving of Communion should not take place, inasmuch as ‘eucharistic communion has been broken’ between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics. But, at the same time, he made clear that in some cases such Communion is possible: ‘Exceptional cases occur, when, for example, a Roman Catholic is dying in some town where there is no Roman Catholic priest at all in the vicinity. So he asks an Orthodox priest to come. Then in such a case, I think, the Orthodox priest should go and give Communion to that person.’” [This is a return to the ‘sacramental hospitality’ theory which the MP endorsed about forty years ago, but then later wisely repudiated - ed.]. According to the Vertograd report, His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow stated that the MP had “suspended dialogue” with the Roman Catholic Church, but on 18th September the then Archbishop Hilarion went to the Vatican to talk with Pope Benedict XVI, and “confirm the close relationship, friendship and more collaboration between the RCC and the MP.” The fact that Archbishop Hilarion was raised to the Metropolitanate after expressing these views and engaging in these talks would seem to indicate that he has patriarchal approval. It appears that contrary statements are made by MP spokesmen, so that those who embrace Ecumenism and those who reject it are both well satisfied. The ecumenist can happily look to the advance of dialogue, the proliferation of receptions, conferences, joint-prayer services and instances of “sacramental hospitality” (which are, in fact, much more numerous than Metropolitan Hilarion would seem to think). And those who see the present ecumenical movement as flawed and a betrayal of Orthodox confession can console themselves that the “official” line of their Church is enshrined in its Synodal decrees, and that the former things happen without official sanction.
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