Does OCU have the right to call itself a Christian organization?
Instead of respecting the shrines, adherents of the new structure demonstrate only hatred of the Church, utter ignorance and puppet consciousness.
On the morning of April 12, in the village of Kurozvany in the Goshcha district of the Rovno region, OCU activists broke down the doors of the house church of the UOC. Parishioners of the recently seized temple organized a church in an old church house. The "activists" seem to have already received a large temple – what else is needed? However, proponents of the OCU did not stop there. Having penetrated into the church house converted into a temple, the burglars threw out onto the street the property belonging to the UOC religious community, including the Throne with the Holy Gifts.
Archpriest Vladimir Koval, the abbot of the seized temple, had left the village with his family the day before this event. The priest abandoned the house in which he had lived for more than 20 years so that the community would have a place to hold worship services. But even this place is now taken away from the believers.
The UOC religious community had ownership of this church house — but the church raiders ignored the documents submitted. The police that arrived at the scene was, of course, inactive.
Archpriest Mikhail Petrov, the Dean of the Goshcha Deanery, called the incident "madness and a travesty of the shrines".
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Once skilled manipulators shook the people in Ukraine, outraged by the "beating of children." Now, no one is interested in or outraged by the facts of beating up elderly women believers, the seizure of churches, the expulsion from their homes of priests with their families, the complete inaction of the police in these situations. There is no end-edge lawlessness — outright, blatant, demonic lawlessness — but few people care.
The case of the removal of the Throne with the Holy Gifts from the temple to the street is the first in the history of the OCU. This blasphemy shows that the activists of the “Ukrainian Church” are not Christians at all. An Orthodox Christian cannot fail to know that the laity, without the blessing of the priest, have no right to enter the altar, much less to touch the Throne. The fact that some laymen dragged the shrine like a household item out onto the street for everyone to see makes one doubt not only the presence of the Orthodox faith among the adherents of the OCU but also their mental health and moral adequacy.
Even atheists often have some kind of intuitive respect for the shrine. But here, as you can see, there is nothing of this kind – there is only hatred for the Church, total ignorance, puppet consciousness and moral untidiness.
The throne in the temple marks the Throne of the Most Holy Trinity and is the place of the special presence of the Glory of God. Even the priest touches the Throne with the fear of God and the holy trembling and prays before him only wearing holy clothes. And this Throne, on which there were the Holy Gifts – the Body and Blood of Christ, was thrown onto the road like some everyday thing. The Holy Gifts, before which Christians bow to the earth during a service... Christ Himself was thrown at their feet, as something unnecessary.
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It is amazing that the Bolsheviks did the same thing – they blasphemed, chose temples, cut off crosses, beat believers, opened criminal cases against the clergy ... The Church survived - but where are the Bolsheviks now? Alas, today's persecutors of the Church do not learn from the mistakes of the past. It is happening again.
They do not understand that the Church is undefeated because it was created by God, and it will exist until the end of the earth's history. The names of the persecutors of the Church became a shameful piece of the past, while the Church is still alive, and it will outlast all lenins, stalins, khrushchevs and poroshenkos – because Christ said: “I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt. 16, 18).
The fact that this incident was just news, among other ordinary news and did not shake our public, speaks volumes. In general, the Ukrainian people, alas, are out of church. A powerful worldly roller rolled through us. In general, baptized people do not understand what the Throne and the Holy Gifts are. They do not understand what a shrine is. For them, this is simply “church property.” If the Church has become “alien”, then its property is now “alien” for them. Carried onto the road and thrown like trash.
Even atheists often have some kind of intuitive respect for the shrine. But OCU supporters, as you can see, have nothing of this kind.
There is no Christianity and no faith in God at all. God does not want believers to scoff at each other. God cannot be pleased if Christians of one denomination oppress other Christians. God cannot like one beating old people, breaking down locks from temples, not allowing people to pray calmly. Isn't it obvious? Alas, the OCU activists really do not understand such simple things. And if such a simple thing is unclear – what kind of Christianity can we talk about?
Such a “Christianity” became possible under the influence of intensified anti-Russian propaganda of recent years. Now anything, even the Church can be labelled "pro-Russian" – and the image of the "enemy" will work, as it were, automatically. As soon as the Church is called not Ukrainian, but “Moscow”, a “detonator” works in the brain of a poor manipulated person as if the "Moscow" church loses its sacredness for him/her. For such a person, sacredness is possible only in “Ukrainianness”.
Feel what it smells like? Here it smells of sacralization of the nation. This is ordinary Nazism, comrades.
Ukrainian is good, Russian is bad. The Ukrainian language is good, the Russian language is bad. Shevchenko is good, Dostoevsky is bad. The OCU is good, the ROC is bad.
Such a system of coordinates in the state of Ukraine is suggested today for a person to live in.
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Other fresh news: in Makhnovka, Viktor Bodnar, a “priest” of the OCU, attempted to attack Archbishop Varsonofy of Vinnitsa and Bar while he was performing a moleben. What is the phenomenon: the priest trying to strike the archbishop during the prayer? And what is Christian here?
Another recent incident: on April 14, in the village of Rozvazh of the Rovno region, OCU supporters took a temple by storm right during the Sunday service. “People were grabbed by the arms, hair, with their clothes torn, the children fell, they walked over the children ... in spite of everything,” one of the parishioners said. “Their “father” Lukashik broke open the lock with a bar on the house in the church grounds, put another lock without permission, and then began waving the bar. People said that either the police took it later, or he gave it away himself, I did not see, because I ran away.” To check the veracity of this story, just watch the video of the seizure.
You watch all this and think: how have we lived to see this? It reminds me of the main character of the N. S. Mikhalkov film “Sunstroke”, who asked himself, watching the revolutionary events: “How could that happen?” And now the same question arises about the Ukrainian events: What happened to us? How did we come to this?
Here we can talk about the extreme version of ethnophyletism, about pseudo-church Nazism, and simply about the stupefaction of human consciousness. The horror is that such a state of mind is called Christianity and only the right Christianity ...
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What happened to our people, and do we have hope? There is no clear answer yet ... But one thing is obvious: it is necessary to stop calling Christianity what it cannot be. Some people need to come to their senses, step back and ask themselves the question: am I a Christian?
Can I call myself so if I participate in the seizure of temples, beating believers, expelling the clergy, insulting Christians of another Church, trampling shrines? You can call yourself anyone, but for everything, including for who you call yourself, you will have to give an answer.
If the wolf calls itself a lamb, it will not cease to be a predatory beast. A pagan and an atheist by their inner state may call themselves Christians, but they will not enter the Kingdom of God. Each of us should decide what is important for a person – to call himself/herself a Christian or to be one.
And it seems, it is time to seriously raise the question: Does the OCU have the right to call itself a Christian organization?
