• Russian Orthodox Church cut ties with Constantinople
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/15/russian-orthodox-church-cuts-ties-with-constantinople Who schismatic now and this may get some Old Believers finally got what they want.
So let me see if I've got this all straight (note that I knew basically nothing about Eastern Orthodoxy until I saw these threads and got into a wikipedia binge, but turns out humans are humans and basically everyone gets stupid and political in the same stupid political ways; I'm not even gonna try to use formal theological jargon since I'd get it wrong and just confuse everyone): There's three Orthodox churches in Ukraine. One is controlled (somewhat loosely?) by the Russian Orthodox Church, which itself is completely controlled by the Russian government. It's popular only in the eastern parts of Ukraine (ie. the parts Russia is occupying, though it had this sort of split before the whole invasion thing), but is (was?) recognized by the other Orthodox churches. The second is larger, particularly in the west, was formed when the USSR collapsed, and was until now treated as schismatics by the global orthodox churches; they were recently recognized by at least the primary orthodox church, that of Constantinople (unsure if the other patriarchs are on board with it?). The third is a small but loud group that's still butthurt about changes from four hundred years ago, who can basically be ignored as irrelevant to this discussion, they're like the Orthodox version of sedevacantists. If that is all true... it sounds like the Russian church should have gotten the boot long ago, for being de facto state-controlled. It definitely makes no sense to cut the non-Russian-controlled Ukrainian church, since AFAICT there's no theological disagreements, it's just Russia didn't want them recognized for political reasons so they weren't. And if the Russian church is the only one objecting to the Ukrainian church's independence, I can't even see a procedural argument against it - it is irrational to require permission to split from the one you are trying to split from. And it definitely doesn't call for hysteria about splitting a thousand-year-old church, because Orthodoxy is basically a thousand years of splits and reconnections, often for really petty reasons. I'm curious as to whether this will affect the American orthodox church, which somewhat bizarrely is recognized as independent by the Russian church, but not Constantinople, under some fairly dumb procedural arguments that are humorously similar to the ones Russia is making now. It might make sense to just take all the Russian-controlled churches that don't want to split and either reshuffle them under someone else, or make them independent. And since this seems purely political, I imagine only the Russian church itself will want to.
Pretty much of religious politics in nutshell. And this will make Putin as Modern day Eastern European equipviment of Henry VIII in Eastern Christian world over his reasoning of why Russian Orthodox Church is becoming so politically toxic over higher power in their denomination.
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