Eminence Front

​Point-by-Point Response
To Moscow’s Attack on Orthodoxy

A so-called ‘Autocephalous Church’ cannot stop the commemoration of another Church for reasons of secondary importance, particularly the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Such a state-of-affairs constitutes ‘ecclesiological heresy’.

​The fratricide of the Moscow Patriarch towards the rest of the Orthodox church is objectively far more wounding to the security and unity of Orthodoxy than any other external interventions in the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We should be outraged if not scandalized by Moscow's behavior, which signals an ecclesiastical and moral divergence from Orthodox phronema. Patriarch Cyril is resolved to create a para-synagogue from genuine Orthodoxy.
​
If for decades, legitimate autocephalous churches accepted, out of economia, the false status Moscow claims... namely autocephaly, is it not time now for akrivia to be reclaimed by the competent church? Regardless of whether the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted a tomos of autocephaly to Moscow, for which there is no evidence, the question relevant to today's Orthodoxy is whether the self-proclaimed modern Moscow Patriarchate (1945) with no clear ecclesial patriarchal lineage to her foundation in 1589 can claim autocephaly and determine its own Patriarchal status (1917) and autocephaly (?).

Contemporary criticism of the Kremlin-centric Russian Orthodox church is ostensibly curbed due to the obscene persecution of Soviets in the last century. The Kremlin exploits this mindset and utilizes the body of the church to further its campaign of misinformation. 

Read More