IT’S TIME TO STAND DOWN ALREADY, MR. POROSHENKO! by Giacomo Sanfilippo

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President Poroshenko with the Tomos. St. Sophia’s Cathedral, Kyiv. Christmas Day, January 7, 2019.

With the calligrapher’s ink and the Patriarch’s signature barely dry on the Tomos of Autocephaly, growing numbers of Orthodox Christians in the West have had about as much as we care to see of President Poroshenko’s irrepressibly impish grin front and centre of everything.    To be clear, I mean those of us who support Ukraine’s independence from Russia. We wish very much to see the nation thrive politically, economically, culturally, and spiritually. Yet the optics of Mr. Poroshenko’s minute-by-minute ubiquity in what should have begun as—and should remain—strictly an ecclesiastical matter are just as troubling as the questions left unanswered by this ongoing spectacle.

First and foremost of these questions is whether Mr. Poroshenko truly represents Ukraine’s gradual embrace of the best of Western civic ideals—among these a broad separation of church and state—or little more than the Ukrainian version of Putinism and 21st-century “Byzantine symphonia” à la russe as soon as the opportunity arises. One is hard pressed to discern much difference between the media’s photos and videos of Putin and Patriarch cozying up to each other a little too close for comfort and those of Poroshenko and Metropolitan. Frankly, the overzealous characterization of Mr. Poroshenko as “the new St. Volodymyr” has caused at least as many shudders around the Orthodox world as  that of Mr. Putin as “a miracle of God.” Read More

VIDEO: BEAUTY AND MEANING TODAY ~ AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW GOULD by Jonathan Pageau

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In this 45-minute video, Jonathan Pageau interviews Andrew Gould, discussing his work and philosophy in the field of Orthodox church design as well as many other areas. It particularly addresses how Andrew adapts historical styles for modern needs, while keeping them fresh and approachable.

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SOURCE: PARISHES LEAVING MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE FOR ORTHODOX CHURCH OF UKRAINE by Paul D. Steeves

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St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, Kyiv. Seat of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue has just discovered the website Russia Religion News, an unadorned, bare bones goldmine of English-language translations of media reports on religious life in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. RRN is curated by Dr. Paul D. Steeves, emeritus professor at Stetson University in DeLand FL. 

Of particular interest to our readers is RRN’s continuously updated archive of articles (here) chronicling the steady transfer of Moscow Patriarchate parishes in Ukraine to the newly autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

For those unfamiliar with the Ukrainian language we offer the following guide to RRN’s two most common acronyms:

PTsU (Pravoslavna Tserkva Ukraïny) = OCU (Orthodox Church of Ukraine)

UPTsMP (Ukraïns’ka Pravoslavna Tserkva Moskovs’koho Patriarkhata) = UOC-MP (Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate)

Scholars and general readers alike who follow ecclesiastical events in Ukraine will find Dr. Steeves’ website to be an invaluable resource. Read More

TOMOS OF AUTOCEPHALY: THE FULL TEXT

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PATRIARCHAL AND SYNODAL TOMOS FOR THE BESTOWAL OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATUS OF AUTOCEPHALY TO THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN UKRAINE

Bartholomew, by God’s mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch:

“You have come to Mount Zion . . . and to the Church of the first-born” (Heb. 12.22–23), as the blessed Paul, apostle to the nations, declares to all the faithful, appropriately likening the Church to a mountain to affirm conviction and recognition as well as steadfastness and stability. For although the Church of God both is and is called one flock and one body of Christ—everywhere sharing the confession of Orthodox faith, the communion through the sacraments in the Holy Spirit, and the constancy of apostolic succession and canonical order—already from the earliest apostolic times it also consists of local and native Churches internally self-administered by their own shepherds, teachers and servants of the Gospel of Christ, namely, their regional Bishops, not only for the historical and secular significance of these cities and lands, but also for the particular pastoral needs of these places.

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