What does a priest who breaks down church doors teach?
OCU cleric breaking the gate at the UOC church in Zastavna. Photo: UOJ
Yet another video of a church seizure in Bukovyna. Yet another OCU cleric using a crowbar to personally break through the gate, and then the door of a UOC church.
He leads an enraged crowd, shouting and jeering as they trample, shove, and humiliate elderly female parishioners of the UOC.
And this is not judgment – it is confusion. How can this man, the next day, preach to his parish about Christ’s commandment to love, to forgive, to be at peace? What meaning can such words possibly have, when his actions say something entirely different?
In another village in Bukovyna – Dubivtsi – an OCU priest did exactly the same: after leading a violent church seizure, the very next day he was gently teaching about “goodness and love.”
There may be endless debates over whether members of the OCU have apostolic succession, or whether Patriarch Bartholomew was justified in calling them clergy. But why argue? Words are not the only way we speak. Would we entrust our child to a teacher who swears, and during lessons teaches kids how to steal, rob, and shoot up? Likely not – even if that teacher somehow received a diploma from Harvard or the Sorbonne.
Such a “teacher” will lead a child not to knowledge, but to the gutter – or even prison. So why do we assume different logic applies in the Church?
Read also
Why are a rabbi and an exarch pleading for corruption suspects?
The rabbi and the exarch are both highly intelligent men and cannot fail to understand that their actions are dealing a serious blow to their reputations. Yet they still went to court. Why?
The Lavra: Who is the master of the house?
Neither the authorities nor the OCU actually need Orthodox churches. What they need is to show who is in charge of them.
On Patriarch Bartholomew's secret meetings with an anathematized person
Patriarch Bartholomew held negotiations with a man whose anathema he himself had officially recognized.
NABU exposes Presidential Office media playbook – what’s the Church link?
Another scandal involving alleged corruption at the highest levels of government is unfolding in Ukraine: NABU has accused Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Iryna Mudra of money laundering and bribing judges.
On the forced mobilization of Metropolitan Serhiy of Tulchyn
TRC officers abducted a metropolitan whom the state itself had stripped of citizenship.