RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS



Church discipline against dissenters in Moscow patriarchate

PRIEST IN POLAR REGION PUNISHED FOR REFUSING TO COMMEMORATE PATRIARCH AFTER HIS MEETING WITH PONTIFF

Interfax-Religiia, 27 April 2016


Bishop of Naryan-Mar and Mezen Yakov inhibited from ministry a priest of the diocese, Alexander Borichev, who refused to commemorate the patriarch in the divine liturgy.

 

"Priest Alexander Borichev became a stumbling-block by posting on the Internet his video message with accusations of the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church," the diocesan press service reports.

 

As noted in the report, the dean of the Ust-Vashka district, Archpriest Vladimir Strelnikov, and parishioners of the city of Mezen "confirmed the fact of the schismatic actions of the cleric."

 

Earlier there appeared on the Internet a video report of this priest in which he accused the patriarch of the "heresy of ecumenism" after the meeting of the primate with Roman Pope Francis. (tr. by PDS, posted 29 April 2016)

 

REPRESSION IN RPTsMP GATHERS STRENGTH. CONFESSOR PRIEST ALEXANDER BORICHEV BANNED FROM MINISTRY

Moscow-Third Rome, 28 April 2016

The Arctic: Priest Alexander Borichev, who refused to commemorate the head of the RPTsMP in the divine liturgy after his meeting with the pontiff was inhibited from ministry. We note right off that any discipline on the part of a heretical hierarchy applied to a priest or layman, using the 15th rule* of the First-Second Council [Constantinople, A.D. 861], does not have force and submission to a false archpastor is not necessary. (tr. by PDS, posted 29 April 2016)

 

*Rule 15 of the 861 council: "But as for those persons, on the other hand, who, on account of some heresy condemned by holy Councils, or Fathers, withdrawing themselves from communion with their president, who, that is to say, is preaching the heresy publicly, and teaching it barehead in church, such persons not only are not subject to any canonical penalty on account of their having walled themselves off from any and all communion with the one called a Bishop before any conciliar or synodal verdict has been rendered, but, on the contrary, they shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the honor which befits them among Orthodox Christians. For they have defied, not Bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers; and they have not sundered the union of the Church with any schism, but, on the contrary, have been sedulous to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions." Source: "Canons of the Regional Councils; The First-Second Council"


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