Source: Russia Today
October 3, 2018
The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate Metropolitan Filaret, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his wife Maryna © Mykola Lazarenko/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/ / Reuters One of the most contentious and significant controversies in the world today is also one of the least-well understood.
In part, this is because it involves matters of faith and church governance, the importance of which many people, especially some of a secular mind who scorn mere “religion,” tend to underestimate.
That is a mistake, certainly with respect to the storm that seems on the verge of plunging Ukraine into a new cycle of violence. That may happen if, as seems quite possible, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople recognizes an “autocephalous”(completely self-ruling) Orthodox Church in Ukraine over the objections of the Russian Orthodox Church, of which the Ukrainian Church is an integral part.
This question is often misreported in the Western media as Constantinople’s response to a request from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for autocephaly. This is inaccurate. The only Ukrainian Orthodox body recognized as canonical by the rest of the Orthodox Christian world – even including Constantinople at this point – is the autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church under the authority of Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev, which is not asking for autocephaly.
So who is making such a request? People who have no authority to do so...
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