You are delusional Joseph. The nuns and monks in Estonia are vocal about their unwillingness to leave the MP for the Constantinople. Are you suggesting that the monks and nuns are a threat to national security? I suggest you stop treating the real orthodox Christians in Estonia and Ukraine as traitors. They do not want to go under the woke Barto even if beaten up or killed, so stop telling us that they ask Barto to take them from MP and put them under his jurisdiction. This is pure propaganda, and it’s all lies, so stop.

Joseph,

The overwhelming majority of Vatican-like (Uniate) behavior the faithful see these days seems to come from Constantinople, which has
– been acting against the 150 year old condemnation of ethnophyletism,
– acting unilaterally on several divisive matters and disregarding the other autocephalous Churches and the Synodic tradition of Orthodoxy,
– who promotes bishops who make heretical claims such as “primus sine paribus”, or even recite the Filioque at their ordination,
– whose bishops have been openly recorded “kissing the hand” of the Pope, and violating the Canon that forbids obtaining a blessing from a heretic…
– who allowed the Pope to engage in common prayer during Divine Liturgy (by reciting the Lord’s Prayer) on several instances in Constantinople,
-Etc, etc…

It is obvious you also support ethnophyletism and by extension the Uniate “long game” that ethnophyletism plays into these days, so it makes sense that you are presenting yourself online a cheerleader of Bartholomew’s anti-traditional actions, but your stated position above is propagandized “hogwash”.

Back in the old days when the majority of Constantinopolitan hierarchs were authentically Christ-loving & courageous, and not Pope-loving & corrupt Vatican vassals, rhetoric such as yours would have likely resulted in formal excommunication, and anyone speaking it would be labeled a Λατινοφρονας. After all, ethnophyletism was condemned as a divisive heresy. The Pope-kissing fan-club supporting Epiphanios and his Uniates is you are cheerleading for… “congratulations” for supporting such “winners”, but we aren’t falling for the self-condemning (Titus 3:10-11) “emetic” rhetoric you stubbornly continue to regurgitate in this forum.

Markos, it is a fact that granting autocephaly is not Vatican-like behavior. Granting autocephaly is not representative of ethnophyletism either.

Not everybody needs autocephaly for their local church. Yet sometimes Governments and wars threaten to cause divisions within the Body of Christ for stated “national security reasons”.

If a government deems autocephaly, or some other form of independence, as an acceptable solution, then having this independence protects the freedom of the church.

Joseph, the Canon regulating autocephaly includes the clause that the remaining autocephalous churches will concur / agree with the granting of the tomos. That aligns with the Synodic tradition of the Orthodox Church. In the case of the Ukraine, every autocephalous Church was asking Bartholomew not to grant it, and he did, ignoring the Canon. And ignoring Canons is precisely Vatican-like behavior.
Those are “facts”, sir…not the Uniate propaganda that you are continuing to vomit all over this forum every chance you get…

Markos, the “canon” you reference has never been approved by any council. It was omitted from the Crete Council and mostly because the Russian Church objected to it. Remember that the Russian Church has “unilaterally granted” four different autocephalies: to Georgia in 1943, to Poland in 1948, to Czechoslovakia in 1951, and to America’s OCA in 1970. The autocephaly of the OCA is still not recognized by the majority of Local Churches.

There was a lot of hope that the Russian Church would unilaterally grant autocephaly to Ukraine also. This was even the hope of Constantinople, and it largely explains the patient reticence of Constantinople from getting involved.

In 1991, all of the Ukrainian bishops unanimously requested autocephaly in a letter to Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow. That request was denied. The result of that denial was schism in Ukraine, and that schism has persisted from 1991 even until today.

Joseph,
Your examples are not sound. We have repeatedly mentioned in the past that the 70 or so years of hard Bolshevik / Communist takeover of Moscow with its anti-canonical forced replacement of hierarchy and clergy with KGB agents cannot be used as a standard to emulate. Much of what was done was illegitimate, and KGB-man Philaret himself is an example, with his lavish lifestyle, concubines, and illegitimate children, all of which resulted in him being deposed when Communism fell… We all know that OCA started as a “Communist Moscow counterweight” to rival ROCOR, that Moscow had cut communion with because they were loyal to the Czar…politics cause schisms, period. But after ROCOR and Moscow reconciled after the fall of Communism, guess what….OCA has found itself in a precarious position…not really aligned with any of the 14 (not 15) legitimate Autocephalous Churches as they stand today, and waiving some Moscow “tomos” document that nobody recognizes, not even Moscow today, in fact… But that’s a different topic for a different day…

And yet, you bring up the 1991 “autocephaly” request to Alexios, which is strangely timed with the “long visit” of the deposed Philaret in the Washington D.C. downtown district, together with other KGB defectors? You consider all these facts non-related, coincidental or immaterial? Why don’t you ever comment on the 1992 and 1997 Bartholomew letters that we have already provided to you to examine, confirming that Kiev is under Moscow’s jurisdiction?

Bottom line…we have a Synodic Church. When the entirety of the Church doesn’t agree, a single bishop can’t go off and override them. When he does, that results in Schism. And to squash any delusions aligned with Elpidophoros’ twisted, heretical ecclesiological conclusion that the bishop of Constantinople is “primus sine paribus”, we can remind folks of the following:
1) In the book of Revelation, instructions for the “Church of Philadelphia, Church of Ephesus, etc are telling…(each had a bishop but in the 1st century the feeling of bishop = local church was evident),
2) The Apostolic Canons forbid one bishop to officiate (or meddle) in another bishop’s territory.
3) There is a Canon on the books that forbids ANY visiting bishop, including the Patriarch from sitting upon the ανω καθεδρα of the “synthronon” in the altar…do you even realize what this Canon means, and how it provides historical evidence that the “Vatican-like” nonsense we are seeing today out of Constantinople is totally against Orthodox tradition?

Finally, Constantinople always added a clause to the verbiage of each tomos (Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc), that explicitly stated that the proclaimation of autocephaly would be made «εν Οικουμενική ή και μεγάλη άλλη Συνόδω εν πρώτη ευκαιρία συνερχομένη» (in an Ecumenical or Great Synod convening at first opportunity…) Some will use this phrase to argue that technically autocephaly for Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc has not been fully completed, and similar arguments were used by Bartholomew against Christodoulos of Athens when he ceased commemorating the latter in the diptychs for a period of time over the “New Lands” controversy. However, once a new primate is commemorated universally in the diptychs of all Orthodox jurisdictions, it’s pretty much a done deal. That is NOT what we have going on today. Even in Greece, the Synod has not officially voted to modify the diptychs…The commemorations of Epiphanios are done arbitrarily. It’s a similar situation with Cyprus…a divided synod (aka schism). The importance of this verbiage though «εν Οικουμενική ή και μεγάλη άλλη Συνόδω εν πρώτη ευκαιρία συνερχομένη» is clear…it preserves the Synodic Tradition of the Church…if the larger Synod of Orthodoxy disagrees with something, it won’t be legitimized…if one party “forces his will” over the other bishops, this will cause Schism, which is PRECISELY what we have…