[CS-FSLUG] NI: Russian Orthodox bishop appeals for Catholic-Orthodox alliance

[Fred A. Miller]

On Tuesday 04 October 2005 7:06 am, dmc wrote:

[snip]

> Given the history of Roman Catholic and Orthodox abuse of government
> power to violently repress other denominations, and recent history of
> the Orthodox church doing (or attempting) precisely that in Russia and
> other former Soviet client States, this is not necessarily good news.

Considering what I know of what happened in the Soviet States, I have to take 
exception with this as it relates to Orthodoxy. I happen to KNOW that there 
was a great deal of protection given to other Christians during that time. 
I'm sure not everyone who carried the "Russian Orthodox" title was guiltless, 
and in fact I know that there were some who weren't. Man is temptable and 
totalitarian gov'ts are VERY good at it.

>  > ... "alliance to negotiate with European institutions and members
>  > of other faiths on behalf of "traditional Christianity."
>
> Sounds like code words for re-establishing the unholy church-state
> alliance wherein which legalist tradtionalism is forced upon all.

NOT at all.

> This is not to suggest that most in Orthodox and Roman Catholic
> churches have such imperialistic desires, just to remind folks
> that there has been a historic abuse among a certain subset at
> high levels of leadership.

In the Catholic church, yes......in the past. I'm not so sure it would be the 
same today.

> The non-Biblical Crusades are just one result of unaccountable
> leadership confused by the unholy mixture of church and state,
> a mixture that always results in bad consequences for Biblical
> Christianity.

There's much about the Crusades you obviously don't know. There's much that 
was done in the name of our Lord that was wrong, but there's a great deal 
that WAS correct. The biggest cause WAS Islam. The MOST ruthless were 
Muslims.

Fred

-- 
Planet Earth - a subsidiary of Microsoft. We have no bugs in 
our software, Never! We do have undocumented added 
features, that you will find amusing, at no added cost 
to you, at this time.