Now, as OCU teaches, we should not love our enemies but shoot them instead?

Mykhailo Zinkevych. Photo: Left Bank

The OCU has once again produced a set of astonishing statements. In his interview with the Lutsk channel Konkurent TV, Mykhailo Zinkevych declared the need for unification with Catholics and “perfected” Christ’s teaching on love and enemies.

Back in March, the Volyn “metropolitan” had already said he was expecting a new Tomos for a single “Church” together with the Uniates. Now he repeated this striking idea: “Lock the Greek Catholics, the OCU, and the UOC in one room and choose one primate.” At the same time, he sincerely believes that “nothing divides us,” and that what distinguishes Orthodox Christians from Catholics is merely “small manipulations.”

Zinkevych claims that he himself was the ideologue behind the OCU’s appeal to the Phanar, calling for the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church to be stripped of the patriarchate due to the so-called “heresy of the Russian world.”

In other words, uniting with Catholics (whom the Church considers heretics) is, in the opinion of this “hierarch,” perfectly canonical, while the “Russian world,” which contains not a single word about dogma, is supposedly heresy.

But the most astonishing part of the “hierarch’s” interview is not even that – it is his new “interpretation” of Christ’s commandment on love and enemies.

A direct quote: “Those who love us – them we love. The rest we will try to love. And if they have time to repent before we shoot them, then maybe we will manage to forgive them.”

Now let us recall Christ’s own words: “You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?… Therefore, be perfect, just as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:43–47).

Christ speaks plainly: if we love only those who love us, we receive no reward. And if we wish to resemble God (which is the very purpose of our earthly life), then loving our enemies is essential – without exceptions or conditions. The Savior gives no indication that in times of war it becomes permissible not to love our enemies but to shoot them.

Thus, Zinkevych has proclaimed something directly opposite to the words of Christ.

And now let us recall that the word “heresy” means a claim or teaching that contradicts the doctrine of the Church. Should we really be surprised any longer?

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