Since Russia assumed control of Crimea, authorities have enforced Russian laws that require religious communities to register for formal approval. To date, Forum 18 has found, no religious communities in the region have been registered.
Because only formally registered communities are allowed to have ministers from other countries, Catholic priests and religious from neighboring countries will be required to leave. When questioned by Forum 18 about the difficulties these rules would cause for Catholic (and other) communities in Crimea, a Russian immigration official replied: “I don’t know. It’s not my problem.”
Ah, another sign of the winsome and welcome nature of Putin and Putin's Russia! But of course it is not really religious persecution since the targets are Christians and the world has turned a blind eye to persecution or discrimination aimed at Christians! It may not be the problem of the Russian immigration official quoted but it is most certainly a problem and our problem!
16 comments:
No doubt it's troubling - but I think this is more political/ethnic than religious. The nationalist Russians, after all, are big supporters of the Orthodox. So now that Crimea is Russian again, they want it to be religiously Russian Orthodox and not leave a fifth column of Ukrainian Roman Catholic Priests around. You'll recall that the Ecumenical Patriarch spent a lot of his time before the Pope's Synod on the family talking about the scourge of Uniatism!
Another question: ave the Ukrainian priests refused to register because of politics? I don't know.
+HRC
My question: did Ukrainian Catholic priests really not register, or were their forms completed in pencil?
You Lutherans astound me. You are shocked and demand the Orthodox stop "sheep stealing" from Lutheran areas of this country, but when it happens in a country that is historically Orthodox, you get all bent out of sheep and decry them for lacking religious diversity.
"You Lutherans astound me. You are shocked and demand the Orthodox stop "sheep stealing" from Lutheran areas of this country..."
What Lutherans complain about that? Generally when people talk about "sheep stealing" they are giving an indication that they don't take truth seriously enough.
David,
YOu must either be in a cave on Mars with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears, but I have heard this complaint so many times from Lutherans, particularly Lutheran pastors both on and off of the blogosphere. Fr. Peters may not be one of them, but there are enough within the LCMS hierarchy who regularly decry this without any evidence that such happens.
So what you seem to be saying is you can't point to an example of such. But as I observed the whole idea of "sheep stealing" is corrupt and I don't care who is asserting it, Lutheran or otherwise.
Read any number of pr. McCains rankings on the subject. His blog cyber brethren no longer exists, but there was plenty of what I described. And he is the head if Concordia publishing and I think his views are pretty common among LCMs pastors on this matter.
Unknown,
When you mentioned Lutheran complaints about Orthodox "sheep-stealing," it was obvious to me that you were referring to Pr Paul McCain, who is famous for such complaints. But Pr McCain is the only one I know of who uses such language about the Orthodox.
When you read the substance of Pr McCain's complaints, however, it becomes clear that "sheep stealing" is a rather poor term for what he is complaining about. He is not talking about one pastor filching congregants from another pastor, where the two pastors preach substantially the same faith (that would be "sheep stealing", properly); he is complaining about members being lured from what he regards as an orthodox congregation to a congregation that he does not regard as orthodox. Pr McCain's real problem is not the filching of members, it is the propagation of (what he regards as) heterodoxy.
In any case, in my more than two decades in the LCMS I have never heard a pastor other than Pr McCain complain about "sheep stealing."
If I am understanding David Gray correctly, the problem is that "sheep stealing" seems a rather tame word for the phenomenon of believers leaving one confession for another. It suggests that pastors of different confessions are no more than purveyors of different "brands" of the same generic product, and that it is somehow ungentlemanly for them to go after each other's customers.
In reality, however, a person who leaves one confession for another is either embracing the true faith or abandoning it (or, sadly, perhaps only trading one heterodoxy for another). In either case it is a serious matter, not a case of impoliteness in religious marketing.
Chris,
That is pretty much spot on. Thanks!
It is not stealing when the sheep volumtarily leave one cote for another regardless of comfession. We should worry more about feeding sheep and cleaning up cotes, and perhaps fewer would wander.
It is not stealing when the sheep volumtarily leave one cote for another regardless of comfession. We should worry more about feeding sheep and cleaning up cotes, and perhaps fewer would wander.
Chris,
There are many more. Pr. Chris Esget is another; William Weedon to a lesser extent.
To Kirk, you are right; it is not sheep stealing when one voluntarily agrees to leave. But people like McCain et al. don't see it that way and refuse to. They think that the very existence of the Orthodox in this country is to lure others away from the truth (i.e. Lutheranism). The thing that they don't want to engage or believe is that Lutheranism in this country is in such a state of disarray both confessionally and in praxis that others would want to leave.
Pr Esget I do not know personally. But Fr Will Weedon is a personal friend of many years' standing, and I have never heard him make any remark whatsoever along these lines. Attributing such sentiments to Fr Weedon casts doubt on the credibility of what you are saying.
I will have to ask you to provide specific citations of Will Weedon accusing the Orthodox (or anyone else) of "sheep stealing."
I am a former member of the Orthodox Church, and consider myself very much a friend of Orthodoxy to this day. It is entirely understandable for you to defend your Church against the baseless attacks (as I see them) of Pr McCain -- and I applaud you for it. But it is a great mistake to look at one man's theological hobby-horse and decide that his view is widespread in our Church. It is not.
Chris,
I've known Pr. Weedon for years as well and have had many discussions with him on this subject. So don't give me this crap of because you didn't experience it, it didn't happen. Most of my discussions were in email form from the past so I'd have to dig for them. He may not be as vitriolic as McCain, but he shares many of the same sentiments.--Chris
because you didn't experience it, it didn't happen
Of course, that would be a fallacy. But remember to avoid the converse error, that if you have experienced it, what you experienced must be widespread and even typical of the wider Church body.
In any case, all David and I are asking for is a couple of specific citations to support your contention that Pastor McCain's accusations against Orthodoxy are widespread in the Missouri Synod. Otherwise, as my friend Bill Tighe is fond of saying, quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
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