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The New York Times Blogs
(IHT Rendezvous)
April14, 2012 Saturday
Ripples on the Surface of Easter
by HARVEY MORRIS
As Orthodox Christians the world over celebrate Easter this weekend,
there are tensions within the Eastern Churches over religion and
politics and the relationship with other faiths.
ISTANBUL - A happy Easter to all our Orthodox readers.
The Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations celebrated the
most solemn Christian festival last week. But, by the impenetrable
astronomical calculations that govern this moveable feast, the
Orthodox Easter falls on Sunday, April 15.
>From Addis Ababa to Athens and from Moscow to Jerusalem, devotees of
Eastern Christianity will be observing the festival of the
resurrection with celebrations and, one hopes, without fisticuffs at
the traditional site of Christ's tomb.
The Easter Saturday ceremony at the Church of theHoly Sepulcherin
Jerusalem sometimes gets out of hand when the Greek and Armenian
Patriarchs, sealed up together in the gloomy tomb, struggle to be the
first to extract the Holy Fire.
Thismiraculous manifestationof the Holy Spirit, according to
believers - skeptics say the prelates enter with matches or a lighter
- is then used to light thousands of candles in the teeming and
cavernous church.
The ancient ceremony often leads to scuffles among the thousands
crammed inside in which Greek Orthodox Palestinians, Armenians and
Syriacs usually take the lead.
These millenarian rivalries are not the only tensions within the
Orthodox Church, which predominates in Russia and the Balkans and
among the Christians of the Middle East.
The Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul), the spiritual leader of
the world's Orthodox Christians, stepped into adispute within the
Greek Churchbefore Easter over a statement by one of its leading
clerics, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus.
The offending Greek divine delivered an "anathema" in March against
the Pope, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and those who seek greater
dialogue among the world's religions.
He thundered against the "fallen arch-heretic," Pope Benedict XVI, and
"all heretical offshoots of the Reformation." He also attacked "rabbis
of Judaism and Islamists," and "those who preach and teach the
pan-heresy of inter-Christian and inter-religious syncretistic
ecumenism."
The Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, wrote to Archbishop
Ieronymos of Athens and All-Greece, to express concern that "such
opinions evoke anguish and sorrow by running counter to the Orthodox
ethos."
He wrote: "They risk unforeseen consequences for church unity in
general, and the unity of our holy Orthodox church in particular."
Seraphim of Piraeus is not the only Orthodox prelate under pressure
these days. A number of scandals are enveloping the Russian Orthodox
Church, a frequent target of allegations of corruption and involvement
in politics.
In thestrange case of the missing watch, on which Michael Schwirtz
and Robert Mackey reported over at The Lede blog, the Russian Church
admitted this month to doctoring a photograph on its Web site of its
leader, Patriarch Kirill I.
Kirill, who backed Vladimir V. Putin in the Russian presidential
election last month, had admitted to owning the offending timepiece, a
top-of-the-range Breguet Réveil du Tsar model, which had been
airbrushed out of the photograph, but he claimed to never wear it.
From: Baghdasarian
(IHT Rendezvous)
April14, 2012 Saturday
Ripples on the Surface of Easter
by HARVEY MORRIS
As Orthodox Christians the world over celebrate Easter this weekend,
there are tensions within the Eastern Churches over religion and
politics and the relationship with other faiths.
ISTANBUL - A happy Easter to all our Orthodox readers.
The Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations celebrated the
most solemn Christian festival last week. But, by the impenetrable
astronomical calculations that govern this moveable feast, the
Orthodox Easter falls on Sunday, April 15.
>From Addis Ababa to Athens and from Moscow to Jerusalem, devotees of
Eastern Christianity will be observing the festival of the
resurrection with celebrations and, one hopes, without fisticuffs at
the traditional site of Christ's tomb.
The Easter Saturday ceremony at the Church of theHoly Sepulcherin
Jerusalem sometimes gets out of hand when the Greek and Armenian
Patriarchs, sealed up together in the gloomy tomb, struggle to be the
first to extract the Holy Fire.
Thismiraculous manifestationof the Holy Spirit, according to
believers - skeptics say the prelates enter with matches or a lighter
- is then used to light thousands of candles in the teeming and
cavernous church.
The ancient ceremony often leads to scuffles among the thousands
crammed inside in which Greek Orthodox Palestinians, Armenians and
Syriacs usually take the lead.
These millenarian rivalries are not the only tensions within the
Orthodox Church, which predominates in Russia and the Balkans and
among the Christians of the Middle East.
The Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul), the spiritual leader of
the world's Orthodox Christians, stepped into adispute within the
Greek Churchbefore Easter over a statement by one of its leading
clerics, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus.
The offending Greek divine delivered an "anathema" in March against
the Pope, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and those who seek greater
dialogue among the world's religions.
He thundered against the "fallen arch-heretic," Pope Benedict XVI, and
"all heretical offshoots of the Reformation." He also attacked "rabbis
of Judaism and Islamists," and "those who preach and teach the
pan-heresy of inter-Christian and inter-religious syncretistic
ecumenism."
The Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, wrote to Archbishop
Ieronymos of Athens and All-Greece, to express concern that "such
opinions evoke anguish and sorrow by running counter to the Orthodox
ethos."
He wrote: "They risk unforeseen consequences for church unity in
general, and the unity of our holy Orthodox church in particular."
Seraphim of Piraeus is not the only Orthodox prelate under pressure
these days. A number of scandals are enveloping the Russian Orthodox
Church, a frequent target of allegations of corruption and involvement
in politics.
In thestrange case of the missing watch, on which Michael Schwirtz
and Robert Mackey reported over at The Lede blog, the Russian Church
admitted this month to doctoring a photograph on its Web site of its
leader, Patriarch Kirill I.
Kirill, who backed Vladimir V. Putin in the Russian presidential
election last month, had admitted to owning the offending timepiece, a
top-of-the-range Breguet Réveil du Tsar model, which had been
airbrushed out of the photograph, but he claimed to never wear it.
From: Baghdasarian