Religion from Washington: Ukraine abandons Orthodox Christmas for Western approval

Объясняет Readovka

("Religion from Washington: Ukraine abandons Orthodox
Christmas for Western approval")

+ Anton Zhitkov, Drink my blood: How Ukraine has lost Christ and whether it can find Him again (Scroll down)

Modern Ukraine will do anything to become closer to the West. When it comes to foreign lords, no Jesus can command - this is what Mr. Zelensky decided, obviously, and wished the citizens Merry Christmas... on December 25, according to the western Catholic tradition. This, of course, is not an amateurish act, but a formalized state policy.

Canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine is being destroyed with the full approval of the authorities - no ties with Russia are allowed, churches and monasteries are regularly raided, and sectarians and dissenters from the PCU and the Uniates, who are essentially the agents of the Western agenda, are brought to the fore with the help of administrative resources. The other day they proposed another reform of the church calendar - the non-Orthodox should abandon the "imperial" Julian calendar and switch to the "democratic and European" Gregorian calendar, thus changing the date of Christmas from January 7 to December 25.

Also this year the PCU sect, which for some reason is called the church in Ukraine, officially allowed all Ukrainians to celebrate Christmas according to the Western rite in peace. Such trifles as canons and rules obviously do not interest these metropolitans of Washington and London. This issue is purely political in the context of Ukrainian society, and has nothing to do directly with Christianity, like the PCU itself. There are exactly two religions in Ukraine today: the cult of Ukrainianism and the sect of Euro-integration, to which all institutions, including spiritual ones, are actually subordinated. Both of these heresies are very active, and that is their main danger.

Already now, not only Bandera, but even Western politicians are being sacralized at a rapid rate, and the percentage of those who approve of the postponement of Christmas has risen from 26 percent to 44 percent in the past year. Those who cannot be brainwashed by constant propaganda will either be driven out of the country or simply killed off.

Drink my blood: How Ukraine has lost Christ and whether it can find Him again

In recent days we have witnessed a real SBU crusade against the Orthodox in Ukraine. Zelensky's henchmen have been searching the monasteries and churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) for several weeks in search of red-hot anti-Ukrainian thoughts. The victims of the searches included the Cyril and Methodius Convent near Mukachevo, churches in the Sarny diocese of the UOC, the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Ivano-Frankovsk, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, and many, many others. During "counterintelligence measures", Ukrainian security forces confiscate literature from churches and arrest priests. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, Andriy Yusov, said he would hold the detained priests hostage for later exchange. It did not take long for the persecution to reach a new level - first a petition to ban the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine gathered the necessary 25,000 signatures, and then Zelensky himself legislated against any religious organisations that disagree with the generally accepted Ukrainian agenda and are affiliated with Russia.

Today everything Russian in Ukraine is being destroyed absolutely mercilessly - here Kiev sees no difference between killing people and demolishing monuments to poets. Whether living now or dead centuries ago - there must not be any Russians in Ukraine and the Russian word must not be heard. Of course, the Church, even though it was linked to Russia in the past, has not been spared.

The situation with Orthodoxy in Ukraine is very complicated and complex. If we translate the church issue into the political plane, we can reduce it to the usual formula for Ukrainian statehood - "East versus West". For the Ukrainian authorities, everyone who is in one way or another connected to Russia, primarily clerics and parishioners of the UOC, are on the side of the conditional "East. And although in May of this year the UOC declared its independence and stopped commemorating Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, this did not help - it is the temples of the UOC that are now under attack by the Ukrainian authorities.

However, it is necessary to make some clarification - the UOC itself is divided into the Moscow (UOC MP) and Kyiv (UOC-KP) patriarchates. The ecclesiastical split of the Ukrainian church happened back in 1992. The person who wanted to fish for independence in troubled waters of general chaos was found quickly - it was Filaret Denysenko who, as his life story shows, is much more concerned with politics than with spiritual matters. Holding a grudge against Russia, Filaret had a high chance of becoming patriarch of Moscow and was even included among three candidates for the patriarchal throne in 1990 but lost out to Alexy II. Mykhailo Antonovych Denysenko, or as the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia was called in the world at the time, returned to Ukraine and decided to realize his ambitions in Kyiv, the time for all kinds of shenanigans was most fertile.

The first president of independent Ukraine Kravchuk concerned himself rather quickly with creating an autocephalous church, and as early as November 1991, Denysenko presented "The New Concept of Ukrainian Orthodoxy" at a newly formed UOC council in Kyiv. The decision on independence from Moscow was taken by Ukrainian clerics, of course, unanimously. Previously, it is true, Filaret himself was against any church separatism, but remember the old, and out with the old. The response to the demarche of the UOC was the canonical Council of Bishops of the ROC in April 92, which decided to deny autocephaly to the dissenters and then Filaret was removed from the ministry. Omitting some details of the Ukrainian church bureaucracy we shall say that in the end Filaret became the head of the schismatic UOC-KP. For this and other tricks Denysenko was anathematized in 1997, which, it should be noted, was recognized by all local Orthodox churches.

As the years passed, the activities of the schismatics became more and more active. Particularly vehement statements came, of course, during the Maidan years. Here are just a few sayings of the servant of God Mikhail Denisenko to complete the portrait:

● "Ukraine needs to close the border and eliminate all terrorists".

● "The root of evil is in those people who live in Donbass".

● "Where is the truth, behind the Ukrainians or behind the separatists who want to sell Ukraine instead of being grateful for the fact that the Ukrainian land gave them shelter, gave them life. They lived, ate Ukrainian bread, received life, and now they want to give land which does not belong to them to Russia".

Denysenko also claimed that he collaborated with the KGB during the Soviet era. However, the freedom-loving Ukrainians did not seem to notice this statement.

Another major religious hierarchy in Ukraine is the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU), which officially emerged in 2018. Essentially a schismatic sect with incredible political ambitions, the PCU is spreading its influence over the Ukrainian flock more and more each year. The year 2019 was a particularly fertile one for the sectarians when the Ukrainian schismatics were granted a tome of autocephaly from the hands of the Constantinople patriarchate. Tomos is an ecclesiastical diploma entitling individual church dioceses or regions to become independent. The event was widely covered in both Ukrainian and world media and became one of the main elements of Poroshenko's election programme against Zelensky. But the devil, pardon the pun, lies in the details.

Receiving the PCU's tomos from Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople was primarily and only a political act. The document is addressed to Ukraine as a state entity, as indicated, for example, by the personal mention in the text of Petro Poroshenko. Church laws have been violated quite thoroughly - at that time in Ukraine there was the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate under Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv, which, of course, did not and could not give any consent to the autocephaly of the PCU. Another important point is also the violation by the Constantinople Patriarchate of the principle of sobornost. As we know, the Orthodox Church does not presuppose a leading figure like the Pope, and all the key decisions are made at the Ecumenical Council, which was not convened in the case of the granting of the tomos to the PCU. It turns out that the Constantinople Patriarchate made the decision for everyone. A funny fact: since 1992 the Ukrainian church had more independence from Moscow than the newly formed PCU has today from Constantinople.

The Uniate community stands quite apart, representing an absolutely outlandish entity. Uniatism itself as a phenomenon appeared on the territory of Rzeczpospolita at the end of the XVI century after the Brest Church Union in 1596, when the Russian Uniate Church was created. The Vatican succeeded in winning over a part of the inhabitants of these territories, which resulted in the emergence of a simulacrum of Eastern rite and veneration of the Pope. Needless to say, the acceptance of the headship of the Pope was the first priority in the Uniatic communities, and the conventional Orthodox part of the liturgy was only a screen for the expansion of the Holy See into new territories.

Uniatism, in essence, is the crystallized embodiment of the "West" in Ukrainian church life. Moreover, it was created primarily as a weapon against Russia and remains in this role to this day. Today Ukrainian Uniates are represented by the UGCC - the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. After Ukraine received its independence, the influence of the Uniates grew rather quickly - at the beginning of zero years the UGCC expanded its presence beyond Galicia. Three new exarchates were formed in the structure of the Kyiv-Halitsky metropolitanate, covering the central regions, the south and the east of the country. As of 2001 Uniates had in Ukraine more than three thousand parishes and almost as many churches, about two thousand priests and eight Uniate dioceses: Lvivska, Ivano-Frankivska, Kolomynska-Chernivska, Ternopilska-Zborovska, Sambirska-Drohobychska, Buchatska, Stryska, Sokalska-Zholkovska.

We can speak at length about moral qualities of Uniatic leaders, but it is better to let them tell everything themselves. Here is the statement of the leader of the Ukrainian Uniates, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, about the Pope, who commented on the murder of Daria Dugina by Ukrainian terrorists in August 2022, calling her "an innocent victim of war":

"He is a man who is in a certain field of information politics and the information environment of the same Italy. He watches TV and listens to the news, like all people. Not only those that are served to him by Vatican diplomatic service structures. And he reacts to them spontaneously, in a purely human way... We have been waiting for a long time for a Vatican document to clearly say who is the aggressor and who is the victim.

With such a patchwork map of religious life in Ukraine we come to the present day. The picture is greatly complicated by the decision of the UOC-MP to become independent. Not all dioceses, however, accepted the Council's decision in May to cut all ties with Russia - for example, the Rovenky and Sverdlovsk dioceses of the UOC in the LNR decided to remain under the patronage of the Moscow Patriarchate. For its part, the Russian Orthodox Church responded to the decision of the UOC MP with a resolution of the Holy Synod: "... support and understanding for the archpastors, pastors, monastics and laity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is subject to unprecedented pressure from representatives of the schismatic structures...". The UOC MP is thus currently in a state of limbo between independence and association with Russia, which, in turn, draws the attention of the Ukrainian security service. Thus, on 28 March this year, a draft law on the complete banning of the UOC as such was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada.

Yes, of course, it is easy to accuse the UOC MP of schism. In an attempt to clear itself of claims of ties with Russia, the church leadership of the UOC has decided to declare independence. Obviously, in the hope that questions will fall away and punishment in the form of the Ukrainian siloviki will pass by. Of course, such flirting and conformism could not end with anything other than a barrage of repression, which is what has turned out in the end. Zelensky, unlike his predecessor Poroshenko, did not play the religious card, and the UOC could feel relatively safe. Times seem to have seriously changed, and no one in Ukraine cares about declarations and words anymore - absolutely everything Russian must be destroyed, even if "according to the documents" there are no threads leading to Russia officially. On the other hand, we can think of this.

Today in Ukraine the UOC and its parishioners are almost in a hostage situation: on the one hand, they are pressured by the PCU that is increasing its power, on the other - the Uniates, and because there is also a huge number of Ukrainian "pagans" who do not understand what they believe in. The UOC, as paradoxical as it may sound, remains the only thin link between the insanity of Ukrainianism and canonical Orthodoxy. Yes, not right now, but in the long term the UOC might turn out to be the institution with which, at least in theory, a dialogue can be established.

There are more than enough dangers for Orthodoxy in the lands of Ukraine today, and many of them lie in the political plane. For example, the topic of presenting Ukraine as a kind of "Other Russia" project is increasingly heard, and the crackdown on the church may speak of a decision to promote this narrative further. With the full support of the international community Kiev may try to present itself as the cradle of the Russian civilisation and everything will be used - from the tomos to ancient quasi-historical plots about 'Kievan Rus'. In a world of victorious post-modernity, as practice shows, surrogates fit very well into the empty heads of the average "mass spectator".
In the days when the churches of Donetsk and Luhansk are being mercilessly destroyed by Ukrainian artillery fire with the approval of sectarian "fathers" with methodological manuals from Washington, while in front of the St. Vladimir Cathedral, painted by Russian artist Vasnetsov, Ukrainians with new-age delusion in their heads shout their slogans, one can only recall the words of Christ himself:

"But He answered, 'Every planting that is not planted by My Father in heaven will be plucked up by the roots'" (Matthew 15:13).

(Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

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Source: Объясняет Readovka (Telegram) + Автор: Антон Житков. Image 1+2: Readovka
AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2022/12/25/religion-from-washington-ukraine-abandons