Russian Holy Synod Adds China And Japan To Russian Orthodox Canonical

[Apotheoun]

China and Japan were added to the official list of countries that form the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church

 

Moscow, 6 February 2013 

 

According to the revised constitution of Patriarchate of Moscow, China and Japan are part of its canonical territory. 

 

The document was adopted by the Bishops’ Council, which took place in Moscow on February 2–5 and was published on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church on Tuesday. 

 

Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, the Baltic States and the States of Central Asia are also included as countries forming its canonical territory (all these countries, except China and Japan, had been included in the previous version of the constitution). 

 

 

Click the link to read the rest of the article:  Russian Holy Synod expands canonical territory

 

[Nihil Obstat]

What is the status of the Russian Orthodox Church in Japan these days?

[Apotheoun]

I think there are around 30,000 to 50,000 Orthodox Christians in Japan.  The Patriarch of Moscow visited Japan last year, and it is possible that some of the liturgical (and other videos) recorded during the visit are still available on the Moscow Patriarchate's youtube channel.

[Nihil Obstat]

Cool, thanks. I will have to look for some of those. Christianity in Japan has a very interesting 'flavour' to it.

[Apotheoun]

Patriarch Kirill celebrating liturgy in Hakodate, Japan.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jWdFhAADUA

On another note:  Christianity in general in China is tolerated, but the practice of Orthodoxy remains illegal.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Nihil Obstat]

Patriarch Kirill celebrating liturgy in Hakodate, Japan.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jWdFhAADUA

On another note:  Christianity in general in China is tolerated, but the practice of Orthodoxy remains illegal.

That was awesome. Patriarch Kirill has a great, powerful voice.

Do you know anything about the guy who was vested as a deacon, who did most of the chanting?

[4588686]

“The enemies of Holy Russia are everywhere,” says Ivan Ostrakovsky, the leader of a group of Russian Orthodox vigilantes who have taken to patrolling the streets of nighttime Moscow, dressed in all-black clothing emblazoned with skulls and crosses. “We must protect holy places from liberals and their satanic ideology,” he tells me. “The police can’t cope with the attacks ... crosses have been chopped down, there’s been graffiti on church walls.”

 

There is something of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Ostrakovsky’s fervor. Like the disgruntled main character of Scorsese’s epic film Taxi Driver, the vigilante sees himself in a fight against cultural degradation. “When I came back from serving in the Chechen War, I found my country full of dirt,” he says. “Prostitution, drugs, Satanists. But now, religion is on the rise.”

A few years ago, Ostrakovsky and his vigilantes seemed like marginal curiosities in Russia, burning copies of the Harry Potter books in protest of “witchcraft.” But as Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term comes into focus, the cross-wearing thugs are now right in line with the ideology emanating from the Kremlin—and from the Russian Orthodox hierarchy. After near extermination under Communist rule, the church and religion are back at the heart of the country’s politics. And they have been critical in helping Putin recast the liberal opposition’s fight against state corruption and alleged electoral fraud into a script of “foreign devils” versus “Holy Russia.”

Since Putin’s reelection, a parade of priests have been loudly denouncing forces aligned against the president. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, took to TV to say that “liberalism will lead to legal collapse and then the Apocalypse.” On another occasion, he called Putin’s rule “a miracle.” And Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov has warned in a media interview that “one needs to remember that the first revolutionary was Satan.”

The recent Pussy Riot trial, in which three female activists were given two-year sentences for performing a “blasphemous” punk prayer in Moscow’s central cathedral—which asked the “mother of God to rid Russia of Putin”—has been a godsend for the Kremlin as it seeks to whip up nationalist fervor. The sentence was condemned in the West, with everyone from human-rights groups to Paul McCartney and Madonna supporting the “Pussies.” But inside the country, it has been used by the radical right to reinforce the idea of a Russia under attack. “The puppets are having their strings pulled,” wrote the dailyKomsomolskaya Pravda, speculating the Pussies were following U.S. orders and that the U.S. State Department’s support of LGBT rights was a ruse to undermine Russia’s spiritual foundations. Russia’s foreign ministry went so far as to say that Western criticism of the Pussy Riot trial was evidence that Russia espouses “Christian values” forgotten in the “postmodern West.”

 

Continues

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/09/putin-s-god-squad-the-orthodox-church-and-russian-politics.html

 

 

Basically the same point that Belinsky made in his open letter he wrote to Gogol in response to the latter's publication of Selected Passages From Correspondence With Friends (a book praising the glory of the Orthodox Church and the importance of landowners beating their Serfs as a form of fraternal correction). The Russian Orthodox Church is an institution that has a nasty track record of lending moral legitimacy to the most thuggish and authoritarian elements of the Russian state.  

[Nihil Obstat]

Kitty cat riot. :hehe:

[Apotheoun]

Hasan has a right to his opinion about the Russian Orthodox Church, but I do not share it.  Have there been bad Russian Orthodox Christians?  Sure, just as there have been bad Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics, and Protestants (et al.), but the Russian Orthodox Church is a Church of martyrs to atheism and Bolshevism.  Atheists killed a whole lot of people in Russia, but I am sure Hasan knows that already.

[Apotheoun]

A Westerner - as far as the issue of Pus[i][/i]sy Riot's desecration of the temple of Christ the Savior in Moscow is concerned - would probably tend to see the act performed by that group as an innocuous exercise of free speech, but Orthodox Christians who suffered persecution and martyrdom under the old regime probably do not see it that way. In fact, they tend to remember that the place where this punk rock group decided to make their protest is a reconstructed copy of the Church blown up by the Stalinists in 1931. Perhaps the Orthodox are being too sensitive, but history is still fresh in the minds of many Russian Orthodox Christians, who had to witness the desecration of sacred buildings and icons (etc.) without any recourse.  Alas, those days are now over, and one person's right to free expression cannot be used to desecrate a building that others hold is sacred.  Pus[i][/i]sy Riot could have held their protest somewhere else, but they chose to offend Orthodox believers. Let us hope that they learned their lesson that the desecration of sacred buildings is no longer something that Orthodox Christians in Russia have to just passively accept.

Video showing the destruction of Christ the Savior Cathedral:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFlx55OANg8

[Apotheoun]

Because the video linked in my last post showing the destruction of Christ the Savior Cathedral by the Soviet atheists is a depressing one, I thought I would post a more uplifting video to balance it out:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XddLDufkaig