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The Holy See and the Patriarchate of Moscow are pleased to announce that, by the grace of God, His Holiness Pope Francis and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will meet on February 12 next. Their meeting will take place in Cuba, where the Pope will make a stop on his way to Mexico, and where the Patriarch will be on an official visit. It will include a personal conversation at Havana’s José Martí International Airport, and will conclude with the signing of a joint declaration.
- Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace;
- His Eminence Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon, representing the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church;
- Prof. John Schellnhuber, Founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
As we all know, Fr. Volpi, Apostolic Commissar for the Franciscans of the Immaculate, has been exercising a sort of Anti-"Crypto-Lefebvrian" Inquisition, let us call it an “inquisitio haereticae pravitatis”..., and one of the measures he has imposed is the formal acceptance of the Second Vatican Council according to the authority which the Magisterium of the Church attributes to it. One might therefore ask, does the Church consider the Second Vatican Council an ecumenical council? What is the authority attributed to it?The late Melkite Patriarch Maximos V did not, as seen in 30 Days (no. 2, 1997). Maximos declared it “unthinkable” to treat the second millennium “Councils of the Western Church” (!) as a condition for unity with the Orthodox, “including papal infallibility”(!!). And: “...it must be recognized that all the Councils after the first millennium, including Vatican I and II, cannot be described as ecumenical... . The decisions taken in those assizes cannot regard the Eastern Churches which did not participate in them.” (A whole set of theological presuppositions, not to mention lack of historical rigor, lies behind those statements. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the metropolitan of Kiev and about 60 Greek bishops co-defined the Filioque and the Roman primacy at Florence in 1439. See the standard exhaustive treatment in Joseph Gill, SJ, of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, The Council of Florence, Cambridge, 1959).In a similar vein, over a decade later, we have world-renowned Byzantine scholar Fr. Robert Taft, SJ, professor for 38 years at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (now retired), who indicates that the Catholic Church could “specify more clearly” which councils are ecumenical. “Are the purely Roman Catholic post-schism councils to be considered ecumenical councils of the undivided Church? If so, says who?” (Interview, “Building Bridges Between Orthodox and Catholic Christians,” in Sophia, Summer 2013, pages 7-9, reprinted from The Holy Land Review.)Fr. Taft summarizes the “new” Catholic “Sister Churches” ecclesiology as a “startling revolution in how the Catholic Church views itself: we are no longer the only kid on the block, the whole Church of Christ, but one Sister Church among others.” In former times, the Catholic Church considered herself as the original and true Church from which others had split, and “Catholics held, simplistically, that the solution to divided Christendom consisted in all other Christians returning to Rome’s maternal bosom.” In the next lines, Taft qualifies the earlier view as “historically ludicrous, self-centered, self-congratulatory”.That Vatican II was an ecumenical council will certainly not be foreign to the minds of the Franciscans who will sign what Fr. Volpi puts in front of them in the name of Church and obedience. And probably many readers of this blog would obey a Commissar of the Roman Pontiff, if they were religious and clerics, because they firmly hold what Fr. Taft and many well-read and clerical Catholics today dismiss as “ludicrous”. With divine faith and human perplexity, we ask Pope Francis and the Curial inquisitors over the Franciscans of the Immaculate, what kind of communion with the Church is that?Optional adherence is either open to all or to none.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid his first official visit to the Vatican on Thursday and met with Pope Benedict XVI.
The sides were expected to discuss bilateral and religious ties, global affairs and cooperation within the framework of various international organizations.
After the meeting, Medvedev introduced his spouse, Svetlana, and other members of Russian delegation to the pope.
The aide to the Russian president, Sergei Prikhodko, said earlier on Thursday the president and the pope were expected to discuss a dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
A Russian diplomatic source told RIA Novosti that a meeting between the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and the Pope now appears "more realistic" than it did several years ago.
He did not say, however, when or where such meeting would take place.
Neither Pope Benedict nor his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has visited post-communist Russia.
It is understood that in the circle of priests homosexuality is unthinkable. Even the simplest carnal sins are obstacles to the Priesthood. The Saints of our Church believe that even the smallest hair in the eye of a person causes tingling and pain and it takes many tears to remove it from the eye. So also the candidate for the clergy, and much more the active clergyman, cannot rest in his priestly ministry, but is tormented and suffers, if there is the slightest carnal sin.
Homosexuality is the heaviest sin, which irrevocably and definitely prevents one entering the Priesthood (and of course the Church does not allow any homosexual to be elevated to the priesthood, even if he has stopped the sin for years). Basil the Great considers homosexuality or lesbianism a beastly sin: "Abusers of themselves with mankind and with beasts, as also murderers, wizards, adulterers, and idolaters, are deserving of the same punishment" (Canon 7 of Basil the Great). Saint Gregory of Nyssa characterizes homosexuality as "unnatural" in his 4th Canon. Saint John the Faster observes in his 19th Canon, according to the compilation of The Rudder by Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, the following: "A boy who has been ruined by any man cannot come into the holy priesthood. For although on account of his immature age he did not sin himself, yet the vessel of his body was rent and became useless in connection with the sacred priesthood."
"It is very likely that the new Pope will be italian, as before John Paul II": it is the prediction given to public television Vesti 24 by Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. ... "I hope that the new Pope is a traditionalist," he concluded. [Italian news agency ANSA]
The Catholic churches of the Holy Land plan to observe Easter according to the Orthodox calendar, the head of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land has announced. The change could come as early as next year.Father Pierbattista Pizzabella explained that the change was prompted by a desire to strengthen ecumenical ties between Catholics and Orthodox, and also by pastoral concern for the many families in the Holy Land that include both Catholic and Orthodox believers.The Orthodox churches set their liturgical feasts according to the old Julian calendar. For some years the Orthodox observe Easter on the same day as Catholics; in other years the dates may differ by either one week (as it does this year) or 5 weeks.The change in the liturgical calendar for Catholic churches would not apply to the basilicas in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which draw thousands of Catholic pilgrims for Easter and Christmas every year. Those basilicas are governed by agreements that date back to the Ottoman empire, and include detailed accords on when feasts are to be celebrated.
He assured all those doubting that the Council will not be the Eighth Ecumenical Council and will not rescind or review the decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. “The Council will not cancel fasts, nor will it introduce married episcopate or allow a second marriage to clergyman. It will not recognize the authority of the Pope of Rome over the Orthodox Church or sign union with the Catholics. The long and short of it is that the Council will do nothing of that what some “defenders of Orthodoxy” fear, displaying zeal that exceeds reason. In case something adverse to the spirit and the letter of the Seven Ecumenical Council happens, the Russian Orthodox Church will renounce this Council and its decisions as she renounced the Council of Ferrara and Florence in 1441. I believe, however, that the other Local Orthodox Church (sic) will renounce it, too.”
