EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis). Is there anyone here who can blame Putin for making this claim? I doubt it… After many years of the Pope and the Patriarch supporting (openly or secretly) recognizing “homosexuality”, after decades of the entire West supporting the Leftist ideologies about gender and “identities”, is there any doubt that Russia is the biggest protector of Orthodoxy and Christianity?
=============
Putin claims Moscow is the Third Rome
According to the head of the Russian Federation, Russians are “true Christians.”
In the documentary film “Russia. Kremlin. Putin. 25 Years,” Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on matters of religion.
According to him, Prince Vladimir accepted Baptism because he “simply decided to draw closer to the superpower of that time – Byzantium.”
“Soon after, we quickly found ourselves involved in the conflict between the Roman See and Byzantium. In Rome, Christianity was reformed, but not in Byzantium. And we came to believe that we are the successors of true Christianity. Moscow is the Third Rome, and there shall be no fourth. So we are the true Christians,” Putin declared.
He claimed that Catholicism became a tool for the West to “civilize” the lands of Rus’, and that Ivan the Terrible was slandered because of his devotion to Orthodoxy.
“As soon as Ivan the Terrible said, ‘No, we will remain Orthodox,’ the legend immediately arose that he was a cruel tyrant, completely insane, and so on,” Putin said.
In his view, “Catholic and Protestant culture always places material well-being first,” while in Russia, it is different – “there they always speak, in the broadest sense, of moral principles.”
Putin also showed journalists a small “home church” on Kremlin grounds, where he sometimes comes to pray.
He insisted that Russians, unlike people in the West, “think more about something eternal, something boundless, something higher.”
“Even atheists believe in that – or so it seems to me. And that’s why a person with such views, with such convictions, with such a moral code, occasionally feels a desire to turn to the Most High, to make the sign of the cross. For Christians – to cross themselves; for Muslims, to call upon God in their own way – ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.’ Jews – in their own way, Buddhists – in theirs. In any case, to turn to the Most High. And I too have that inner need from time to time,” Putin said.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that, according to U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Putin went to church to pray after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Given the Uniate mindset and the quantity of “Papal hand-kissers” within the Synod of Constantinople, “Rome 1″ and Rome 2” have just about joined forces into a single merged entity…
The “Rome 2” and even “Rome 3” concepts have always been a bit of a fairytale for kindergarten naptime anyway…
The Church was born in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and as such if any Patriarchate was to be called “1st in [chronological] order” it would be Jerusalem. The rest is nonsense that fuels egos and causes division. The bad news for the Roman Catholics is that everyone knows where St. Peter was on that day of Pentecost, too…so much for Papal primacy.
Markos
The Jerusalem Patriarchate did not come into existence until 451 A.D. Christianity had taken root in Jerusalem, but it was a bishopric. not a patriarchate. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. deserted the city completely. After Christians began to re-settle Jerusalem, mainly from Greece where they had sought shelter, the church was under the bishop of Caesaria. Rome is the undisputed first patriarchate.
Bob,
Coolaid from Constantinople isn’t the healthiest drink these days…check the origin before imbibing too much of it…
Wasn’t there a bishop of Jerusalem on Day 1? St. Iakovos, remember? Did you ever hear of him “submitting” to St. Peter, or calling St. Peter “the first”? He also wrote down the oldest liturgy we have, remember? Do you think St. Peter “tele-ported” or took a flight to Rome on that fist Day of Pentecost to ensure that the “myths” that the Roman Catholics are spewing for centuries hold true that they were the “first” from “Day 1”? Did you ever hear of “patriarchates” being mentioned in St. John’s Revelation, or were individual local bishops mentioned instead as heads of actual “Churches”? What “Rome is the undisputed first patriarchate” are you preaching here? Isn’t their entire dogma based upon the idea that “Peter is the rock”, and he happened to die in Rome, despite having helped establish multiple Churches (bishops) along the way? What if he had taken a boat to Jerusalem and died there, much like what happened to the famous St. Andrew of Crete who is not actually buried in Crete because he died on a boat?
Your logic doesn’t hold any historical or ecclesiastical merit. The technicality of “when” the “bishop of Jerusalem” started being referred to as a “Patriarch” is blatantly immaterial to the question of “first, second, third”. Was there no Church prior to someone being called a “Pope / Patriarch”?
And here is the “zinger”…Even the most ancient Canons of the Church FORBID even the “Patriarch” from sitting upon the “ανω καθεδρα” of a “local bishop” when visiting that jurisdiction….do you have any clue what that means, and why this ancient Canon exists? And what about the ancient Apostolic Canon still theoretically in force that bans one bishop from performing official acts in another bishop’s jurisdiction (obviously without permission of the local bishop)? Perhaps the words of Revelation are a lot more “revealing” on exactly how Church governance was originally intended than they want to tell us nowadays, aren’t they? We won’t even dare talk about the anti-traditional and anti-canonical ridiculousness of elevating individuals to the rank of a “bishop”, but not giving them a flock or jurisdiction (other than an old titular jurisdiction in Asia Minor that has no parishes), and having them hang around as “assistant bishops”, siphoning fat salaries from the “donation trough”….
Ecclesiastically there are only 3 ranks of clergy…Deacon / Presbyter / Bishop (sometimes referred to as Arch-priest – Αρχιερευς). PERIOD.
As far as the most ancient liturgies, services, and Canons show us, Bishop = Bishop, even if later some started being “cloaked” by fancier administrative titles (metropolitan, etc), and those with more “prestigious” jurisdictions ended up with some administrative or liturgical priviliges (i.e. only the Patriarch of Jerusalem performs the ceremony for the Holy Light each year…if Rome is “first”, why didn’t Rome perform that ceremony? You know the story with the cracked pillar when they tried that once, right?). Jerusalem always had a bishop, even if the Romans exiled him for a bit (even today the Patriarch of Antioch resides in exile in Damascus, remember? Does that mean that there is no “Patriarch of Antioch”, because Antioch was on the Turkish side of the border after the collapse of the Ottoman empire?)…
The way they assigned “primacy” has only caused imperialistic division, unfortunately. As a matter of fact, there is a growing discussion and academic consensus that one of the reasons at least “some (a subset) of” the bishops who refused to go with the 4th Ecumenical Council decisions was not so much a “monophysitic dogma conviction”, but because they vehemently refused to acknowledge the “elevation” of Constantinople to 2nd in Rank (above Alexandria), which was also one of the decisions of that Council. A.k.a. “Greek ego”. Of course many of them were monophysitic – no contest there – but it is possible some bishops may have become schismatic as a result of the Constantinople vs. Alexandria primacy debate. While there is a definite need for the Synodal governance of the broader Orthodox Church to be healthy, that will never be achieved when we claim that one Patriarch is “first among equals” (or “first without equals”-Elpidophoros)… Those unfortunate phrases came later in history (that’s the point your are trying to make but you missed), and we should all take a step back and understand why ONLY THE LOCAL BISHOP WAS ALLOWED TO ASCEND TO THE ΑΝΩ ΚΑΘΕΔΡΑ OF THE SYNTHRONON from Day 1. When we accept that this is our true, original, patristic Orthodox tradition, we will stop this hypocritical, egotistical, non-canonical, imperialistic, worldly, non-Christian “schoolchild bickering” and propaganda that we are shamefully observing within modern-day “Patriarchal synods” who aspire to be “the first”…
Don’t forget, just the other day, the entire globe witnessed the shameful distortion of what was once a “spiritual Synod of Rome” into an embarrassing “worldly Synod” nowadays called the “Conclave”… In the West, bishops were stupidly persuaded somehow that they must do “obedience” to another SUPREME “INFALLIBLE” BISHOP, abolishing the synodal concept that the Church was established with on the day of Pentecost….ecclesiastically and historically that’s wrong and disgusting, but the “diva patriarchs” and “wannabe patriarchs” of the East today (and their various propaganda puppet-followers) are also trying hard to convince us otherwise, ignoring the illuminating, most ancient Canon about the Ανω Καθεδρα, and the clear examples from the Book of Revelation which fortunately have not been erased from the scrolls…
Well Jesus said in the Gospels to Peter- You are Peter Kifas and on this stone πετρα I will build my church!
The Catholic Church ruined itself by commanding the priests to stay celibate which exposed the innocent children to their abuse and their convictions by courts bankrupted the Catholic Church!
I believe Moscow is the third Rome. The carrier of the great spiritual heritage of Constantinople from which it received the faith. Russia is the only Orthodox country that cannot be bullied by the west.
We Greeks forget the Russians have helped us during the ottoman yoke (Catherine the Great’s victory over the Turks and the demand that Orthodox under the Ottomans be protected).
The Russians went to war in 1853 for the Orthodox rights in the holy land and would have liberated Constantinople if the British and French had not intervened.
Once upon a time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was supported by the Russians. How tragic this Patriarchate colludes to carve up the Russian Church.
In 1915, the Russians were ceded Constantinople by the British. The communists ruined everything. Is there a Greek who would not have rejoiced to see Russian troops enter Constantinople?
Yes, Russia is the third rome which builds Churches and Monasteries while the west pressures Greece to accept gay marriage.
The Greeks would NOT have rejoiced to see Russians in Konstantinople. Greeks were hoping that they would possess it. The Russians felt the same way towards the Greeks. WWI was a great opportunity for the Greeks and the Russians. . The Ottomans were alligned with the Central powers. Venizelos wanted to bring Greece into the war on the Entente side. The Ottoman empire was a ripe fruit, ready to fall. The Balkan wars had proven that Greece could harbor hopes for the City, which we considered ours. If the Russians had taken it, then Greeks would have lost all hope. We always considered the City ours. How can we rejoice when someone else takes it.
Constantinople as part of Russia would have been better than the Turks,no? A Greek community would still exist and the Patriarchate would be in better condition spiritually and politically with Russian bishops serving with the Greeks.
Hagia Sophia would be serving as a Cathedral again with both Russians and Greeks serving together.
At the time of WWI, Russia and Greece, both had national aspirations for Konstantinople. Russia, being a great power would not have relinquished the City to the Greeks, if she had taken it. The Ottoman empire on the other hand, was at the point of destruction. If that had happened, Greece’s hopes had a much better chance of realization, than Russia having taken it over.
What would have happened, if Russia had taken it, is an unknown. Looking at the rest of Russia under communism, Greeks would have been moved, or massacred, as they were moved and massacred from other parts of the USSR, in order to squash any pro-Greek sentiment.
Russians were helpful to the Greeks during the Greek revolution. However, once PanSlavism took hold, they favored the Slavs of the Balkans, over the Greeks. The Greeks considered PanSlavism as a greater threat than Turkey, especially after Venizelos signed a peace treaty with Ataturk, and the issue of the ethnic minorities was solved by the exchange of populations. Cyprus fight for independence and the English “divide and rule” concept of pitting two different faiths against each other, by stirring up Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, where none existed previously, is what brought the Turkey-Greece conflict back into dangerous territory.
The Vatican represents a “Second Rome”, representing the vestiges of the Frankish “Holy Roman Empire” of Charlemagne, a now defunct empire that was neither holy nor was it actually Roman.
In the same footsteps of Charlemagne, the Russian Tsar Ivan III invented the mythology of Moscow as “Third Rome” to justify his 1467 schism with St. Patriarch Dionysius I of Constantinople, a Russian schism from Orthodoxy that would last nearly one hundred years. As with Charlemagne, Tsar Ivan III’s empire was neither Roman, nor was it holy, as it’s genesis was in schism from Holy Orthodoxy.
I agree with you about Cyprus and the British. You make some good points about pan slavism but overall I disagree on the Russians.
Greece has never had the opportunity to explore serious relations with Russia. One historical fact that everyone seems to have forgotten is how the Church of Greece became autocephalous. The British and the Germans took control of post independence Greece and insisted on eliminating any chance at Greek Russian friendship.
The Russians were supporters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at the time and opposed western efforts to carve up the Greek Church. The Church of Greece was taken from the Patriarchate much like the way the Patriarchate today colluded to take the Ukrainian Church from Moscow.
Greeks have unfortunately chosen the west against the Russians. Patriarch Bartholomew’s intervention in Ukraine and the unfortunate support by Greece for the west against Russia demonstrate that neither the Phanar nor Athens are free.
Look how few Greeks live in Constantinople today. If the city were held by Russia do you think there would be pogroms and ethnic cleansing against them? And I am talking about Christian’s Russia had the Bolsheviks not seized power.
The Bolsheviks were murderous against Greeks. But they were not Orthodox.
Lenin was the one who renounced the agreement that Constantinople would be given to Russia.
Unfortunately, the western powers had no intention of letting Greece have Constantinople so I think Russia was the best hope for a liberation of Constantine’s city.