[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n its surface, the debacle gripping the Orthodox Christian world between the Patriarchate in Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate in Russia seems to be a territorial dispute over who has control over the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine.
In reality, the Moscow Patriarchate is standing against Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople giving millions of Ukrainian Orthodox faithful over to an unrecognized and out of communion apostate political church. Not just any old apostate church mind you, but shortly after its founding this one blessed and consecrated its members that committed the worst atrocities of WWII and all the way through the 1950’s until the OUN was finally defeated in Ukraine.
Now, this apostate church wants to control the religious life of the same people it condemned to torture, starvation, and murder. Let that sink in and consider the facts.
The Orthodox Church (Prava Slava) traces its lineage through bishops back through at least one of the original 12 Apostles to Jesus Christ. Any church claiming the Orthodox faith must be able to do the same to have fellowship in the faith.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church was started in the 1920’s to glorify the death of Nazi heroes and prepare the way for more. The only thing it was concerned about was the creation of a Ukrainian state. Its adherents manned the levers at the death camps and were considered overzealously cruel by the German Nazis.
The Ukrainian nationalists which fathered the Ukrainian nationalist Orthodoxy saw religion as the perfect political vehicle to manipulate the masses. They took religious absolutism and channeled it into politics.
The religions of Ukrainian nationalism are real Christian religions recast as nationalist politics. These changes remade good into evil. Faithfulness and patriotism to your country become unquestioning robotic murder under nationalism. Concepts like love are turned into degeneracy because you are expected to spy on the people you love and turn them over to the state when they disagree.
This philosophy continues today and a bishop of the church of Jesus Christ (Orthodox), considered a first among equals, is trying to give control and responsibility of another Bishop’s flock to a political religion that gave up ties to Jesus Christ, His apostles, and the church in 1993.
A Brief History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church- Kyiv
Let’s start at the end. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev is a post-1991 import from the USA and Canada. Before 1991, it existed in what is now Ukraine for a couple of years during the early 1920’s and again when Hitler’s forces occupied the Eastern European region.
The Ukrainian Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches were founded with only three things in mind. The first was destroying Czarist Russia which then became the Soviet Union. The second was setting up a single Ukrainian nation out of the murkiness of border politics dependent on a victorious Austro-Hungarian empire in WWI and afterwards the 3rd Reich in WWII.
The third was to make Ukrainian nationalism the only ideal worth dying for. For Ukrainian nationalists, they did that in spades.
Stepan Bandera
Religious and political nationalism was the most impressive and lasting development of the Hapsburg empire (Holy Roman Empire). They did this to keep their border countries from joining the Romanov’s Russian empire. After 1917 it kept them from joining the Soviet Union. The Austro-Hungarian empire designed nationalist ideologies for all their border holdings and paid special attention to the religion.
Until the end of WWI, Vienna was the seat of the Hapsburg’s Holy Roman Empire. They knew a little bit about redesigning religion to serve the empire’s needs and they may have lost the war but the ramifications of what they did are still reverberating today in Eastern Europe and the Levant.
Their great contribution to world history is two-tier nationalisms. Nazi (nationalist) ideologies and political religion go with all their former holdings today in Central and Eastern Europe.
The way it works is “Each citizen’s identity had to wrap around the exceptionalism as defined by the leaders of their country. Each citizen was first and foremost entirely devoted to the nation, demonstrated by national sacrifice or heroism. To be entirely devoted to nation involved an almost cultic devotion to the Emperor and the Empire that the nation was part of and belonged to and Galician Ukraine became the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s poster child.“- Ukraine | Why Bandera Have the Largest Geo-Political Voice in EU
According to OUNb Ukrainian Diaspora sources; Ukrainian Nationalist (nazi) Orthodox priests went through the different countries that would eventually make up Ukraine in the 1920s and preached a gospel of nationalism. This was how Nazi thought gained the ground it did across central and eastern Europe. These regions gave backing to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s 3rd Reich.
According to the documents, in the 1920’s it took time for the priests to break the concept of what Ukraine would be to people living away from the border regions.
“Sometimes, listening to these sermons, it became terrible both for the preacher and for the listeners-we, living in the province, could not think that somewhere in Kyiv, under the Soviet regime, such a patriotic content was pronounced, and densely saturated with nationalism.”
The one clear point is the Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches existed to supply Ukrainian political parties with sacrificial bodies to develop a single country they would call Ukraine.
This was a developing political religion based on an ideology.
In the late 1920s-30’s the Ukrainian Orthodox Church disappeared from what would become “Ukraine” under Joseph Stalin.
The Birth of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-Kiev)
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he movement to start a politicized Ukrainian church was drawn up in apostasy, not canon. The last moves the Hapsburgs made are tragic for every country worldwide. A not so well-known fact of WWII is Japan came into the war on Hitler’s side in hopes of restoring the Hapsburg empire. They were partners in the Prometheans groups which promoted nationalism worldwide.
What is clear is the Ukrainian Orthodox church- Kyiv never developed on Ukrainian soil and remains heretical today.
According to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada, “Most of the first Ukrainian settlers came to Canada from [Galicia]Halychyna (where they were Greek Catholics) and from Bukovyna (where they belonged to the Orthodox Church[Russian Orthodox Church). The Halychany, settling in Canada, where visited once in a while by Greek-Catholic priests, but the Vatican wished to attach them to the Roman- Catholic Church already in existence, which would have assimilated them.
The Bukovynians arriving in North America usually incorporated themselves into the Russian Orthodox Mission, which was already in existence. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian immigrants desired to have a Church with a Ukrainian character(nationalist), which would be closer to the spiritual and cultural needs of the Ukrainian people, and this led to the formation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA has the same ultranationalist beliefs and history. All that’s required to succeed is a provable hate for all things Russian. Until recently, they didn’t require their priests or officials to have any religious training. If you were a Ukrainian nationalist (read OUNb Bandera), that’s all that was required to move ahead with a career in the churches.
The harm in this is that both of these Ukrainian political churches teach their children to idolize the monsters of WWII.
“Can Waffen SS officers and mass murderers like Stepan Bandera be Catholic patron saints in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Stamford CT, or Boston in the year 2015?
“On October 16,2011, members of the 54th branch of CYM “Khersones” in Stamford, CT attended a mass and requiem service in honor of the great Ukrainian hero and freedom fighter, Stepan Bandera. It was the first time since its’ inception that the branches’ members took part in an organized activity together with the greater Ukrainian community of Stamford.
The SUM members and the faithful present that day enjoyed a beautiful and emotional homily about the life and achievements of Stepan Bandera delivered by Reverend Bohdan Danylo, Rector of St. Basil’s Seminary in Stamford. He instructed the children on how they can model their own lives on Bandera’s by following his example of self-sacrifice and unwavering dedication to his country. Following the homily, Father Bohdan distributed candles to each child which burned brightly during a stirring execution of the prayer “Vichnaya Pam’yat” in honor of the great hero of the Ukrainian nation …CYM Geelong(Australia) under the patronage of Stepan Bandera celebrated Stepan Bandera Day in remembrance of the OUN leader…CYM Geelong opened up the event not only to its members but also the wider Ukrainian community not only to remember Stepan Bandera but for all our Ukrainian heroes who lost their lives in the fight for Ukraine’s independence. Druh. Marko Tkaczuk showed video clips of the work of OUN and the life of Stepan Bandera…”- Divisions within the Ukrainian-American Community: When Nazi Hands Rock American Cradles
No matter what your religious affiliation is or lack thereof, does the world need to live through the precursors that set up WWI and II again? Is this what we want children taught from our religious institutions? If yes, this is the prayer of their political religion.
The prayer of the Ukrainian nationalist
“Ukraine, Mother of Heroes, go down to my heart, Come Caucasian storm wind, noise Carpathian surety, glorious battles Conqueror Father hop tukom guns and triumph of the Revolution, joyful hum Sophia bell. May I be reborn in You, I will glow with Your glory, for You are my whole life, for You are all my happiness.
Call me a clatter of chains, scratching the gallows in the rubbish of the wound, bring me cries of torture in the cellars and prisons, and in exile, so that my faith will be granite, so that enthusiasm grows, the power to safely go to battle, as the heroes follow for You, for Your glory, for Your Holy Ideas; To revenge the shame of bondage, the tomb of honor, the tone of your curses, the innocent blood of those who were martyred under Bazar, Kruty, Kingyr and Vorkuta, the heroic death of the heroes of the Ukrainian Nation, the Ukrainian National Revolution – Colonel Yevhen Konovalets, Basarabova, Golovinsky, Shukhevych, Bandera and the glorious death of Danylyshyn and Bilas, and thousands of others unaware of us that their bones are dirty or secretly in need
They burned the life-giving fire with all the slavery in my heart. I do not know the fear, I do not know what a hesitation. Hold my breath, harden your will, dwell in my heart in your heart! In prisons and hard minutes of underground life, grow me to clear ranks. In the ranks of those, let me find death sweet, death in torments for You. And I will fall in you, and I will live forever in you. THE EVE OF UKRAINE, CAN AND SOBORNAY!”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Churches which in North America were not accepted into communion with Orthodox Churches until recently because is it is still a political church devoted to Nazi belief.
This is the religion the Ecumenical Patriarch (EP) Bartholomew I is trying to force on the people of Ukraine.
In 1993, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church USA (UOC-USA)entered into secret agreements with the Bishop of Constantinople. In 1994, Bartholomew I made a deal with the Russian Orthodox Church to recognize the UOC-USA and the entire Diaspora church in fellowship under the EP if they renounced their independence and didn’t interfere with the church in Ukraine.
What is the reasoning behind trying to break the UOC away from the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) oversight? It is strictly political.
Today the ROC oversees 12,300 Ukrainian Orthodox church parishes across Ukraine. The UOC-Kiev has 5000 apostate (broke communion with their mother church) church parishes in Ukraine. If Bartholomew I grants the UOC-Kiev canonization and fellowship, the break will destroy the existing churches by making them strictly political, instead of spiritual entities.
“This time we arrived in Ukraine with an extraordinary mission,” Constantinople exarchs Archbishop Daniel of Pamphilon and Bishop Ilarion of Edmonton told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko yesterday during a meeting in Kiev.
“We personally represent Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and at the same time the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in order to continue working on the fait accompli that the beginning of the process of granting autocephaly (independence, canonization, and fellowship) to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church(-Kiev) has begun. We are on a straight line heading for the finish line,” Bp. Daniel added.
Who is Filaret the Apostate?
From Novorussiainform.org –“In December 2017, Filaret stated that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate would never return to the Moscow Patriarchate .
Let us note that the false patriarch Filaret regularly speaks out scandalous statements to the Donbass and Russia. In the winter of the current year, the dissenter Filaret called on the “ATU warriors” not to fear death in the name of Poroshenko .
Earlier, on one of the sermons, Filaret stated that the Donbas must redeem his guilt with blood, and in the spring he called on citizens of Ukraine to starve to defeat Russia. Recall that earlier the Patriarchate of Constantinople refused to Ukrainian schismatics in autocephaly (independence).”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in Ukraine that are in communion today are rightfully terrified. Who could have conceived a Bishop of their church giving over a community of millions of churchgoers to an apostate?
If Bartholomew I tries to push this through, many of the churches are vowing to protect their churches and parishioners even if it means shedding blood. Going along with it peacefully would mean their religion, life, and the lives of their families today and those that fought the OUN Bandera in WWII and afterward was worthless.
It would mean their families are criminals for not supporting Adolf Hitler. The millions of the men, women, and children that suffered under OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) hands in the concentration camps were criminals. The millions more that are suffering and will suffer today are criminals.
It means they were right, there was a Holocaust, so what?
“In February 2017, Poroshenko started the festivities by putting up a memorial at the site of World War II’s first Holocaust. The first massacre of the Holocaust was in Kiev, Ukraine at Babi Yar. The massacre was committed by the OUN Ukrainian nationalists.
Instead of the promised Holocaust Remembrance Memorial, he promised to spend millions on, Poroshenko put up a memorial to the Killers of the Jewish people at Babi Yar. In his defense, Poroshenko ONLY promised to put up a memorial commemorating the massacre. So I guess this counts.”- Filaret was there to bless the Ukrainian nationalist monument. – No Nazi’s in 2017 Kiev? Ukraine Thinks You are a Moron or a Fascist
Giving the Orthodox people of Ukraine that are consecrated to God over to the Ukrainian nationalist politicians and Filaret is a heresy that risks beginning a Holy War in Europe which will to dwarf any conflict since WWII.
We are talking about the lives and religious beliefs of tens of millions of people that will be forced to defend themselves and their children from nationalism disease.
Every Orthodox believer will feel a bond to protect those families in Ukraine because the nationalists will do the only thing they know; slaughter, torture, rob, and rape. I am not an Orthodox Christian, but as a Christian, a family member, and a friend, I will stand with them once again because this is too important not to. Even if you aren’t religious or Christian, think about the ramifications if you don’t.
We started seeing this happen when Islamist terrorists with the same political ideologies as nationalist Ukraine started taking over Muslim countries. They fight for Ukraine in Donbass and Ukraine is fighting for them in Syria. I wasn’t quiet about it then, I surely won’t be quiet now. Neither should you.
In 2018, is mocking Christian religion and mimicking the events that usher the last day the best we can do? Don’t be in such a hurry Patriarch Bartholomew I, depending on how you deal with this, meeting Jesus might not be a good move for you right now.
