At Orthodoxy in Dialogue we are thankful to God that the newly autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church seek friendly relations and cooperation where appropriate. At the same time we dismiss the rumour that the OCU envisions entering into “double communion” with the Orthodox Church and Rome.

His Beatitude Epiphanius of the OCU (L) and His Beatitude Sviatoslav of the UGCC (R)

On the morning of January 17, 2019 in the Golden Gates Hall of the InterContinental Hotel there took place a presentation of the book Dialogue Heals Wounds, by the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC), His Beatitude Sviatoslav.

At the invitation of His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius, attended the presentation.

Leaders and moderators of the presentation were His Beatitude Vladyka Sviatoslav himself and Mr. Mykola Kniazhytsky, head of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Culture and Spirituality. [Verkhovna Rada = Ukraine’s Parliament.]

In attendance at the presentation were President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, [several other government officials], Canadian ambassador to Ukraine Roman Washchuk, Polish ambassador to Ukraine Jan Pieklo, singer and composer Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, writers Oksana Zabuzhko and Ivan Malkovych, Ukrainian politicians, and other honoured guests.    Read More

For context glance over Archdiocese/Exarchate to Be Abolished (11/28/18), It’s Official: Ecumenical Patriarchate Dissolves Russian Archdiocese of Western Europe (11/28/18), Rue Daru Responds: Communiqué of the Archdiocesan Council of the Russian Archdiocese of Western Europe (12/1/18), the latter part of A Way Out of the Orthodox Church’s Present Crisis (1/2/19), and The Choice Facing the Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe (1/14/19).

Communiqué of the Archdiocesan Council – January 17, 2019

In recent days numerous priests and deacons of the Archdiocese have received a letter from the Greek metropolitan of the country where they reside, ordering them to cease commemorating their own Archbishop, to join the clergy of the Greek Metropolises, to consider that our parishes and communities are already part of these Metropolises, and finally ordering them to turn over all required documents and parish registries.

On this subject the Archdiocesan Council refers to its communiqué of this past November 30 and offers some clarifications.

This intervention by outside bishops in the very body of our Archdiocese, even if bishops of the same Patriarchate, is irregular with regard to ecclesiology and the law: indeed, His Eminence, Archbishop John [Renneteau], is the only legitimate ruling bishop of the Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe. On March 28, 2016 he was elected in a regular manner by the extraordinary General Assembly of Archdiocese, composed of all the clergy and lay delegates from the parishes which make up our ecclesial body; on April 22, 1016 the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate ratified this election. From that very moment Archbishop John was installed in a definitive manner in his functions. Since then he has neither resigned nor requested retirement, and he remains—by the very definition of episcopal ministry—the instrument of the diocese’s catholicity, and the president of the Diocesan Union, the legal entity according to French law which assures the communion of all the parishes and communities of the Archdiocese. 
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It’s with a heavy heart that we inform our readers, writers, and Patrons around the planet that, on January 31, 2019, we will suspend publication of Orthodoxy in Dialogue until further notice. We hope that this will turn out to be no more than a relatively short-term hiatus.

Please note that:

1. You have until the last week of January to submit your manuscript if you’ve communicated with us about writing something.
2. Orthodoxy in Dialogue will remain online and fully accessible.
3. We will continue to respond to emails sent to editors@orthodoxyindialogue.com.
4. On rare occasion we may decide to publish something that seems extremely important.

Accept our profound thanks for the enormous interest and support that have been shown over the past seventeen months. Read More

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 21^st-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