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
On how the OCU scorns its own rent-a-crowd
According to Zoria, the OCU looks down on staged crowds – for them, “what matters is truth, not the number” of parishioners. And yet, for every one of Epifaniy Dumenko’s traveling services, people are bused in by the coachload.
Persecution of UOC and liquidation of UGCC in 1946: Are there parallels?
After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of Western Ukraine, the leadership of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) initiated negotiations with Soviet authorities concerning the future of its ecclesiastical structure.
On the mobilization of a priest as a sniper
A man who has chosen the path of the priesthood has no right to join the army and take up a weapon. And the very idea of killing another human being is all the more absurd.
On statistics: how many Orthodox, Muslims and Jews we have
Trust in the Razumkov Center's research methods on the topic of Orthodoxy is minimal.
Why helping children with cancer is a threat to state security
We should have long got used to the antics of some MPs, especially those who furiously hate the UOC. But they don't stop surprising us.
Is Ramadan closer to the authorities than Great Lent?
Have Muslims and Jews – who together make up just over one percent of the country’s population – become a privileged class? And yet Ukraine is widely seen as a Christian country.