The Shepherd, October 2009
NEWS SECTION
VATICAN-MOSCOW RAPPROCHEMENT
TWO RECENT EVENTS have led to much speculation about the thawing of relations between the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate. The first of these was the audience of His Eminence, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokalamsk, the MP’s chairman of the Department of External Affairs with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome. The other was a statement made by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Moscow, Archbishop Pezzi, who stated: ““Basically we were united for a thousand years. Then for another thousand we were divided. Now the path to rapprochement is at its peak, and the third millennium of the Church could begin as a sign of unity.” He said there were “no formal obstacles” but that “everything depends on a real desire for communion.” We must assume that this was a sound-bite statement for the press, for otherwise it shows an extraordinarily naive understanding both of Church history and of the things which separate Roman Catholicism from Holy Orthodoxy. For his part, Archbishop Hilarion confined his speculations to supporting the Pope in his struggle for the assertion of Christian values in a de-Christianised world. So in fact one Archbishop skates over the theological issues, and another avoids them altogether. One suspects that any rapprochement that might in time ensue from these exchanges will parallel that which, on a much smaller scale, was effected between Moscow and the Synod of Metropolitan Lavr in 2007, wherein the “desire for unity” simply blotted out any responsibility faithfully to address the confessional differences and their implications.
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SERBS IGNORED
NATO-formed Albanian police have prevented some 80 members of the families of Kosovo Serbs kidnapped and killed in the province between 1998 and 2000 from reaching Velika Hoča to attend unveiling of the memorial to Serb victims of Albanian insurrection and terror. Kosovo and Metohija Minister Goran Bogdanović said “This puzzling move is deeply offensive, at the same time demonstrating that the temporary Kosovo institutions have no respect whatsoever toward the families of those killed and kidnapped. It also reveals their position toward the non-Albanian victims who died during the conflict in Kosovo.” Meanwhile, the Raška-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija Diocese reports that, in addition to the Peć Patriarchate and monasteries Gračanica, Gorioč and Devič, Priština Albanians have cut electricity off to the other Serbian Orthodox shrines and monasteries, including the Holy Archangels Monastery, the Church of St. George, the Sts Cyril and Methodius Theological University and Diocesan Residence in Prizren. Furthermore, even the United Nations has noted the international problem of the Serbian province of Kosovo has been prematurely & unjustifiably dropped by the mainstream media. It is indeed odd that none of this is reported in the world media, though inconsequential items and trivia fill our papers and the airwaves.
CODEX SINAITICUS FIND
ZENIT.ORG reported on 7th September that a “fragment of the Biblical text considered to be one of the two most ancient in the world, the Codex Sinaiticus, was discovered by chance a few days ago in St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai in Egypt. The man who found the fragment, Nikolas Sarris, a 30-year-old Greek student, happened upon it while he was doing research in the monastery for his doctoral studies on manuscripts of the 18th century. Sarris was a member of the team in charge of the online edition of the Codex Sinaiticus, launched in July through the initiative of the British Library, the Leipzig University Library and the National Library of Russia, in conjunction with the Orthodox archbishop of Sinai, Damianos, abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery.… The fragment corresponds to the beginning of the Book of Joshua. The discovery was confirmed by the monastery librarian, Father Justin.… The Codex is a manuscript of the Bible written between 330 and 350, according to tradition, at the request of the Emperor Constantine. Along with the Codex Vaticanus, it is considered the most ancient text of the Bible in the world.”
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 
|
