RPTs BISHOPS SWITCH TO VOCABULARY OF UPTsKP IN SPEAKING OF THE NEED FOR A "JUST PEACE" IN UKRAINE
Religiia v Ukraine, 4 February 2015
On 2-3 February a Bishops' Conference under the chairmanship of Patriarch Kirill was held in the cathedral church of Christ the Savior in Moscow, in which the bishops of UPTsMP, led by Metropolitan of Kiev Onufrey, participated. Several resolutions were adopted as the results of the conference, Religiia v Ukraine reports, with reference to the UPTs website.
After listening to Patriarch Kirill's report, which lay at the foundation of the work of the conference, the bishops in the first resolution expressed thanks to Patriarch Kirill and the synod of RPTs "for the labors borne by them in the time since the Bishops' Council of 2013 and support for all their undertakings."
The second resolution of the conference says: "The bishops gathered in the conference beseech God to send down a just peace on the land of Ukraine, to stop the tragic bloodshed on it, and to guard it from further afflictions and to bring to repentance and mutual forgiveness those hating one another. The conference participants unanimously express support to His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kiev and all-Ukraine Onufrey and the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox church in their labors for preserving church unity and overcoming schisms. We see as important for ending the current conflict a move to large-scale dialogue which would allow people of various political views and convictions and cultural and language preferences to determine together the future of the country. At the same time it is important that no social forces be excluded from the process of decision making. The children of the Russian Orthodox Church are called to pray for peace and to provide all possible aid for innocent victims of the armed conflict. Members of the conference urge everybody on whom it depends to immediately devote efforts for ending bloodshed and taking of human life."
It is noteworthy that Patriarch Kirill's proposed petition for a "just peace" actually echoes statements by the head of the opposing Ukrainian confession, UPTsKP Patriarch Filaret, who regularly says the Ukraine needs not "simply peace," but a "just peace." UNIAN reported that Filaret said after the all-Ukrainian prayer service in Holy Wisdom cathedral of Kiev on 24 May 2014: "A just peace for Ukraine means the preservation of its community and independence in all of its territory and the cessation of interference on the part of Russia in Ukraine's affairs." Filaret repeated these words in September 2014: "We want peace, but a just peace, and that means that both Crimea and the Donbass are ours, Ukrainian."
On the lips of the head of UPTsKP, this means that peace on the conditions offered to Ukraine by Moscow and its satellites, the DPR and LPR, do not satisfy the leadership of the Kiev patriarchate. Similarly, one may conclude that for the leadership of the Moscow patriarchate, the peace plan proposed by Poroshenko also is not just. Both patriarchates, calling for the end to bloodshed, actually put it off until the arrival of a "just peace," which each understands in its own way.
Among other things, the RPTs Bishops' Conference expressed "support for believers of the Orthodox Church of Moldova who are speaking out in defense of the traditional family and evangelical moral ideals lying at the base of their national self-awareness. In connection with this, we are alarmed by the circumstance that recently on the territory of Transnistria several politicians have made persistent attempts to revise the above-mentioned values."
One of the last resolutions of the RPTs Bishops' Conference expresses "profound concern of the members over incidents of blasphemy and desecration of things that are sacred for adherents of various religions. Welcoming measures of legal protection of the religious feelings of believers and the sacred things they revere, members of the conference call for respect for these sacred objects and feelings in news and cultural media." (tr. by PDS, posted 5 February 2015)
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