Saturday, December 15, 2018

Jad Ganem: Who will Protect Constantinople from the Phanariots?

Arabic original here.


Who will Protect Constantinople from the Phanariots?


Tomorrow, a "unifying council" will be held in the Church of Holy Wisdom in Kiev, called by His Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The holding of this council comes as the crowning event of a political plan in which Constantinople has become embroiled, with the cooperation of temporal powers in the country, to establish a national church in Ukraine. This plan would have never seen the light of day were it not for the Ecumenical Patriarchate's disappointment with the fact that the Church of Moscow did not go Crete, where the "Great Orthodox Council" was supposed to be held and her desire to take revenge on her especially after this council turned into a meeting of disputed legitimacy that exposed Constantinople's inability to play the role of first among the Orthodox churches, the impotence of Patriarch Bartholomew, and his failure to lead this world and coordinate activities between its various constituent parts. 

All the above, moved Constantinople  complex of inferiority towards Moscow, her pathological fear of the specter of "Third Rome", and the hatred that rules over some of the Phanariots because of the numerical superiority of the Church of Moscow. This is connected to the lack of any critical analysis in Constantinople of the mistakes committed by her delegates during the preparatory meetings for the Great Council, their arrogant behavior and indifference to the concerns of the autocephalous churches, in addition to the hazy image that Constantinople has created of the situation of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

These accumulating factors drove the Phanar to hastily enter the “Ukrainian minefield”, ignoring all the appeals and warnings from the leaders of the Orthodox world, who warned of the dangers of rewarding schismatics, dividing the Orthodox Church and weakening her unity.

Perhaps Constantinople seized the favorable political opportunity to use Ukraine not only to punish Moscow, but to establish her papism over the Orthodox world and to subjugate the churches and their leaders to the Phanar's synod. But it escapes her that this papism, which is alien to Orthodoxy, will sooner or later be expelled by the ecclesiastical body, just as the body expels strange things. But to describe the punishment and persecution of the faithful in Ukraine on account of being disappointed by Moscow as a "unifying council" that will only unite the schismatics in the face of the Church struggling there is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Hope remains that God will inspire the Phanar's leaders to realize that "hatred only kills the hater" and that repenting of unilateralism and imperiousness would protect the great Constantinople from the inevitable fate that the arrogance and historical hatreds of some Phanariots will bring upon her.

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