Monday, January 15, 2007

Me and the dead Lenin: from Russia with love...


It was a windy morning in Red Square at dawn, but somehow I found myself there in the former evil empire while praying the Leonine prayers said after Low Mass!

My prayer intention that day was simple: that Russians might read Soloviev!

Soloviev notes that the Russian Orthodox Church just goes on and on with their (forever the same) polemic against the Latin Church while everything they say has, “no positive element.”

For example: the Spirit does NOT proceed from the Son, Mary was NOT immaculate from the instant of her conception, the pope has NO claim to juridicial primacy. He writes: “The pseudo-orthodoxy of our theological school consists of polemic negations.” “Your entire ‘orthodoxy’ and your ‘Russian concept’ are merely a nationalistic protest against the universal authority of the pope.”

“If the Russian and Greek churches cannot express their solidarity by actions in life” (which, according to Soloviev, they cannot do because they are national churches for whom a universal council would be impossible), “then their ‘unity in faith’ is merely an abstract formula that accomplishes nothing and has no binding power.”

Vladimir Soloviev, Russland und die universale Kirche [Russia and the Universal Church], 1954.

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