Shepetovka, Ukraine, September 15, 2020
"Bishop" Adrian Kulik with Petro Poroshenko. Photo: gordonua.com
Those who remain loyal to Christ in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church cause a kind of “schizophrenia” in the Ukrainian people and are, in fact, enemies of the Ukrainian nation. Moreover, they practice a sectarian form of Orthodoxy, while Greek Orthodoxy is purer and “more civilized,” believes “Bishop” Adrian Kulik of the schismatic-nationalist “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU).
In an interview with Emigrant Radio yesterday, the “bishop” shared his view that there are a lot of outspoken enemies of the Ukrainian nation among the population of Ukraine.
“Look: the state is the body, and the Church is the soul. Therefore, if the body and soul are Ukrainian, this is a normal, integral person. If the soul is foreign—Russian or some other people—and the body is Ukrainian, this is a direct path to schizophrenia,” Kulik explained.
Thus, in his view, the very idea of establishing the OCU is “an existential question of the survival of our people.”
The “transition” of churches from the canonical UOC to the OCU has significantly decreased lately, Kulik is sure, because of the mentality of Ukrainians, who “for generations were brought up to believe that Ukrainian is bad and that everything good, that grace comes from Moscow or somewhere else.”
The canonical UOC “wants to revive the empire, and the Church, accordingly, also services to restore this empire. It’s a religious front, and the fight is going on in all directions… Unfortunately, we have very many open enemies of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian nation, among our population,” Kulik declared.
Further, he believes that those who belong to the Moscow Patriarchate practice a form of Orthodoxy that is closer to a sect, while the OCU should draw nearer to other denominations of Christianity.
Ukrainians adopted Orthodoxy from the Greeks, and from there it extended to Moscow and other lands, as far as Alaska, Kulik recalled. “When it began to return to us from Muscovy, it came in a different form,” the schismatic hierarch believes. “It was a perverted form of Orthodoxy, perverted Christianity.”
The Russian Church has a dogma that says that “obedience is higher than fasting and prayer,” Kulik said. “By and large, this is not Christianity. If someone is not quite clean or smart enough to obey, it becomes like a punishment,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Greek Orthodoxy is “more civilized,” Kulik believes.
At the same time, “Orthodoxness” is perceived as some kind of sect or isolationism, Kulik said, thus the OCU needs to “approach Christianity.”
“After all, we, according to the idea of Christianity, should unite around Christ. Therefore, even if we have to communicate with Catholics or other Christian movements, we must always remain Christians first,” the “bishop” continued.
“And Russian Orthodoxy—it’s: ‘You’re Orthodox, but all of them are heretics, renegades. They are dying, but we are the only ones, we are the chosen ones, we are saved.’ The technique of imposing occult sect-gurus on their adherents suggests that you are the chosen ones, because you are with me, you were chosen by God,” Kulik summed up.
Kulik himself is a problematic figure, having been a priest in the “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church,” then joining the OCA in America, then the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church of North and South America and the Diaspora, then returning to the UAOC, before finally being admitted into the “Kiev Patriarchate” in 2013 and the OCU in 2018.
