RU 15/2006 - SWEDEN, RUSSIA

- SWEDEN: The Lutheran Church in Sweden, "State's Church" up to short time before, is being penetrated by the adoration of the golden veal, i.e. homosexuality. In October 2004, the Swedish Lutheran bishops, during their meeting at Upsala, had decided unanimously (!), upon strong pressure by the State to which it remains intimately linked up, to institute a liturgy of blessing of homosexual partners. On this behalf, it is a notorious fact that, on the 12 Lutheran bishops in Sweden, two are women who overtly live with a concubine, and other bishops are several times divorced, of which the one of the bishopric of Visby on Gotland who lives with his 3rd wife. This situation creates a big scandal in the "High Church" of Sweden which unites, somehow like in England, the conservative wing, in order not to say the traditionalist wing, of the Swedish faithful. The first conversions of pastors - in a double way "Protestants" - towards the Catholic Church are getting known, while observing that they move naturally rather towards the conservative wing, or traditionally thinking wing, in the Catholic Church, as they are disgusted of everything that looks from far like Luther and the consecutive revolts. But reactions don't limit themselves to some individual conversions: the moral affront causes also the ruin of the ecumenical dialogue, for example by the rupture of "all bilateral relations" on behalf of the Orthodox Russian Church. The patriarch Alexij II declared on this behalf: "The blessing of homosexual partners is in fact the approval of a distortion of God's image in man, of a distortion of his very nature" (declaration published on December 28th, 2005, by the Patriarchy of Moscow). According to Alexij II, the Church of Sweden marks "a gap from the main values of Christian morals, undermining the foundations of the European civilization, which is an irreparable stroke to its spiritual radiance in the world". Nothing less than that! This is a reaction corresponding to the depth of the mistake, facing a "Sister Church" whose chiefs prostituted themselves. - Note by the way that all the debacle comes from the Swedish MPs who gave to the homosexual "couples" the same legal rights than to the traditional ones, including the right to adopt children, but excluding - for how much time yet? - the genuine homosexual marriage, if one can yet use the word "genuine" in this context. - Welcome to the Swedish pastors to the Catholic Church, unsinkable boat, even though it seems "to take water from all sides", according to the severe word of Cardinal Ratzinger on Good Friday 2005 in Rome! - (ru; cf. EdM Apr.1, 2006)

- RUSSIA: Here are some new numbers about the Orthodox Church, published lately by patriarch Alexij II: 132 dioceses (including those of the autonomous Church of Ukraine and those which are located abroad), 26,600 parishes (of which 12,665 in Russia itself), 688 monasteries (433 in Russia), about one hundred schools of different levels of theology (of which 34 seminaries); twenty-five monasteries, situated in different regions of Russia, depending directly of the Patriarch, as well as 117 priories, most of them situated in the Moscow region. - For the rest, the Orthodox Church - in Russia and elsewhere - is deeply shocked by the "protestantizing" tendency in today's Catholic Church, culminating in the refusal of the patriarch Alexij II to receive the pope in Russia. One can only recommend - and promote - a contact between the "conservative" tendencies in the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy. Or let's say it clearly: Mgr Fellay of the FSSPX, "no-schismatic bishop in the Catholic Church" as it has been specified lately by several cardinals in Rome, should visit, one by one, the orthodox Patriarchs in the European east and in the Orient, in order to testify of the One, Saint, Catholic and Apostolic Church. These Patriarchs don't even know that this is yet existing, according to the words of the Georgian patriarch Ilja II face to a delegation of the UNEC pilgrimage there in September 2004. This would be the true "oecumenism" which didn't even start yet, i.e. the one of the return towards the unique Church of Christ "subsisting" in the Catholic Church. Honestly, we are living an exciting period! - (ru; cf. EdM Apr. 1, 2006)

- - A.M.D.G. - -