THE POLITICS OF PRAYER IN KOSOVO
from: Politico.eu

(5 Oct.) Pristina’s newest cathedral is not just a religious monument; it’s a political symbol. In the rectory of Kosovo’s Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa, a few days ahead of the consecration ceremony in September, Father Lush Gjergji can hardly contain his excitement. Casually clad in shirtsleeves and clerical collar, the diminutive but ebullient priest eagerly hands me an English translation of one of his many books about Mother Teresa.

Gjergji is something of an expert on the region’s most famous Catholic, who was born in Skopje, now the capital of Macedonia, when it was still a part of the Kosovo province of the Ottoman Empire. He met her more than 20 times — in Kolkata (then Calcutta), Kosovo and Albania — and accompanied her to Oslo when she was awarded the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

And so it’s only appropriate that Gjergji is the general vicar of a Catholic diocese dedicated to her memory. The cathedral is the first to have been built in the capital of Kosovo since the city was sacked by the Ottomans in the late 1600s.

An outsize Italianate building at the heart of Pristina’s concrete cityscape — whose consecration was attended by Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi, and an Albanian representative of the Vatican — the building is not just a religious monument; it’s also rich in political symbolism in a Muslim majority country. [read more...]

TWO CHRISTIAN BOOK TITLES BANNED IN RUSSIA
by Victoria Arnold: Forum 18 News Service

(29 Sep.) It appears that almost any negative portrayal of another religion or its adherents can lead to a text being declared "extremist", regardless of whether this is accompanied by the incitement of violence or discrimination.

Bryansk Region Military Prosecutor's Office requested that all copies of Hearts of Fire: Eight Women in the Underground Church and Their Stories of Costly Faith and Islam: a look beneath the mask be outlawed as extremist. Judge Viktor Rukhmakov of Sevsk District Court upheld the two separate suits on 12 April 2016, and the Justice Ministry added both titles to the Federal List on 20 April 2017.

According to the written verdicts, seen by Forum 18, the FSB border service had seized the two books "as part of a planned operation" from two men travelling to Russia from Ukraine, after being tipped off by customs officials who had seen "signs of incitement to extremist activity on religious grounds" in the texts. Igor Balashov and Venyamin Yakubovsky, from whom the books were confiscated, do not appear to have been prosecuted on any administrative charge. It is unclear how many copies of the book the FSB seized.

The books were subjected to psychological and linguistic analysis by the Justice Ministry's Bryansk Laboratory of Judicial Expertise. According to both verdicts, "experts" found them to contain "a combination of linguistic and psychological signs of the incitement of religious enmity and hatred." The verdicts give no further details of the "expert analysis" and quote no parts of the texts which were deemed "extremist." No representative of the authors, publishers, or owners of the books appear to have been present in court. [read more...]

BISHOPS OF THE UOC OF THE USA PRAY FOR THE VICTIMS IN LAS VEGAS
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine

(3 Oct.) "We find ourselves this day filled with compassion for the families of the victims who perished in the worst massacre of human life in the history of our nation. We find within ourselves this day an insatiable desire to pray for those victims, that our Lord will grant them a place of rest where the Light of His Countenance shines upon them as they await the great and final judgment.

"And oddly, we find ourselves this day in a state of shock that such a horrific attack can take place once again without any warning, without any obvious reason and without anyone who will really be capable of explaining. We will hear theory after conjecture, after just plain guesswork on the part of pundit after pundit after pundit. We will, however, probably never fully comprehend why such a horror as this Las Vegas attack can happen or how man can be so cruel to man," reads the statement issued by bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the United States of America.

They addressed the faithful with the appeal about prayer. "We need this day, dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, to fall down on our knees before that God of Love. We must pray fervently that the Lord will “deliver us from all blindness, forgetfulness, despondency and all hardened insensitivity”

It is by this common prayer on the part of each and every one of us – each and every day or even more than once a day – that the terrorism of this modern age can be crushed. Bigger and better weapons of mass destruction, huge numbers of them, have failed to crush it. The power of faith and trust, however, is beyond and above the power of those man-made weapons.

The God of Love, a God Who will not allow us to completely destroy His Creation or ourselves, can and will respond to our prayers – prayers, which we must not consider to be strictly the domain of Orthodox Christians, but those of all mankind. Faith and trust in that God, dearly beloved brothers and sisters, will bring His intervention and healing to a suffering world. [read more...]

RUSSIA: SOCIALISM, THE OPIATE OF GODLESS PEOPLE
from: Daily Caller

(5 Oct.) Socialism begins with a premise that is antithetical to Christianity: there is no God. Fyodor Dostoevsky observed this connection between atheism and socialism long ago: "Socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today, the question of the Tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from earth, but to set up Heaven on earth."

In other words, socialism is much more than an economic or political question. It is a spiritual question if only because it denies the very existence of the spiritual. A former socialist revolutionary, Dostoevsky knew his subject well. Upon his conversion to Christianity, he did more than renounce his atheism; he renounced socialism, because it was, in his view, atheism masquerading as political philosophy.

In his great novels Demons (also known as The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky predicted that if Russia’s communists (think, socialists) ever gained control of the levers of power, it would lead to the expulsion of Christianity from public life, and with it, the annihilation of morality, the rise of totalitarianism, and the proliferation of state-sponsored genocide. He would prove prophetic.

[T]here are many who confuse socialism with Christianity. Such people usually have only a cursory understanding of what one or the other really is. Typically, this is predicated on the erroneous notion that Christianity’s chief purpose is in meeting physical needs. This is not so. Christianity’s main object is the regeneration and development of the soul. That Christianity and socialism are often confused, however, has not escaped the attention of socialists who have frequently sought to capitalize on the misunderstanding. As for "Christian Socialism," it is only a name. One may be a Christian or he may be a socialist; but he can no more be a Christian and a socialist than he can be both a Yankees and a Red Sox fan. At least, he cannot be simultaneously faithful to each party.

Indeed, far from being compatible with Christianity, socialist regimes have historically sought the expulsion of Christianity from public life. Christianity, by its very nature, is subversive insofar as it teaches that there is a God whose laws supersede those of man — any man. [T]his goes far to explain the antipathy of communist and fascist regimes to Christianity. They well understand that Christians do not recognize the power of the state as absolute. Moreover, where temporal law and eternal law are in conflict, the Christian may, in good conscience, violate the former while clinging to the latter. [read more...]

A GODLESS SOCIETY WILL NOT CONQUER EXTREMISM, SAYS VATICAN REPRESENTATIVE IN RUSSIA
from: Interfax-Religion

(6 Oct.) The Roman Catholic Church believes that the religious factor is necessary in fighting terrorism and extremism. "It's impossible to conquer fundamentalism, extremism and violence while betting on secularism and ignoring religion,"Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's apostolic nuncio to Russia, said at a meeting of the committee of representatives of Orthodox Churches in the European Union in Moscow. The Vatican representative said that the responsibility of members of religious communities needed to "save of extremist ideas in religion" increases in this situation.

Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the external church liaison of the Moscow Patriarchate, said that the Russian church "gives special attention to the development of dialogue with traditional religious communities and is actively working in the Russian Inter-Religious Council to counter the terrorist threat and thanked local churches for supporting the canonical Orthodox Church which is being persecuted in Ukraine," saying he hopes that they will continue supporting it. [read more...]

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH SENDS LETTER TO TILLERSON OVER RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT
from: Sputnik News

(29 Sep.) The Moscow Patriarchate has sent a letter to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with the regard to the recently published report of the State Department suggesting that religious minorities faced discrimination in Russia, the deputy chairman of the Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations (DECR) said Friday.

"The letter has been sent to the US Embassy to hand over to the addressee," archimandrite Filaret said, stressing that it was not an open letter. According to Filaret, the department's website would publish the main arguments of the Russian Orthodox Church, in connection to the report, after the letter has been received.

Dmitry Safonov, the head of the sector for interreligious contacts in DECR, said Tuesday that the Russian Orthodox Church was preparing the letter in connection with the report, which it consideres "quite subjective and obviously biased."

According to Safonov, the paper did not adequately report on the problems of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), a self-governing branch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Safonov said that the document "does not mention multiple cases of churches set on fire, priests beaten up and the draft laws that are being prepared for adoption in Ukraine, completely discriminatory toward all religious groups that do not have centers in Ukraine." [read more...]

DOES MODERNIZATION MEAN SECULARIZATION?
from Ukrainian Weekly

THE POSITION OF UKRAINE’S PROTESTANTS IS DIFFERENT THAN RUSSIA'S
from Russian Evangelical Alliance

REFORMATION AND MODERN WORLD DISCUSSED AT ODESSA INTERFAITH CONFERENCE
from Religious Information Service of Ukraine

COMPASSION MINISTRIES HELP FAMILIES IN NEED
from Mission Network News

LUKASHENKO SUGGESTS ORGANIZING MEETING BETWEEN PATRIARCH KIRILL, POPE IN MINSK
from Interfax-Religion

DISPUTES WITHIN RUSSIAN ORTHODOX ACTIVIST COMMUNITY
from RIA Novosti

PRIMATE OF RUSSIAN CHURCH CELEBRATES CONSECRATION OF DORMITION CATHEDRAL IN TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN
from Russian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate

ZULFIYA’S STORY: RESCUED FROM DRUG ADDICTION
from Mission Eurasia

BACK FROM THE OTHER WORLD: VASILY LAZAREV DIED, SAW CHRIST AND CAME BACK TO LIFE
from Orthodox Christianity

MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE’S FAILURES HAVE OPENED WAY FOR ORTHODOX RADICALISM
from Eurasia Review

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH TAKES AIM AT FILM ABOUT LAST TSAR'S AFFAIR
from Hollywood Reporter

This issue is highlighting the consequences of secular humanism for society: when a man has no spiritual foundation, he can resort to mass murder as easily as eating a pizza. Our news articles BISHOPS OF THE UOC OF THE USA PRAY FOR THE VICTIMS IN LAS VEGAS and RUSSIA: SOCIALISM, THE OPIATE OF GODLESS PEOPLE as well as A GODLESS SOCIETY WILL NOT CONQUER EXTREMISM, SAYS VATICAN REPRESENTATIVE IN RUSSIA and our headline DOES MODERNIZATION MEAN SECULARIZATION? all point to the moral morass modern society finds itself in.

Every society needs to have an anchor, a central belief or ideology that provides its raison d'etre, its reason for existing. When the idea of modern democracy was introduced a few hundred years ago, Western society held a basically Christian worldview. But the democratic ideal opened the door to other belief systems: very soon sub-Christian beliefs such as Deism, Christian Science, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses sprouted up that denied basic Christian doctrines. These were allowed to spread in our "tolerant democratic" society.

Then came Darwinism and Scientism, the ideas that man has no need of God or gods because random chance and human knowledge of the material universe can supposedly explain everything. However, as I wrote in my last essay "Dark" or Unseen Matter and Energy, only a very tiny portion, 0.4% to be exact, of the universe is luminous matter that we can comprehend. The other 99.6% of the universe is unseen and unknowable by us humans.

But just as a multi-polar world in politics does not last long, so also a multi-polar "tolerant" mix of mutually contradictory belief systems cannot last long. Sooner or later one belief system will become the dominant center, the anchor. We have moved from a basically Christian to a sub-Christian to a post-Christian now to an anti-Christian core of politically correct beliefs and behaviors.

Oct. 6, 2017 - Majority of Quebec caregivers approve killing dementia patients

Oct. 5, 2017 - Called a Pervert for Advocating Purity

Oct. 4, 2017 - Man comes out of ‘permanent vegetative state' after 15 years

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