Word: orthodox
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviet Union contains the biggest of these disputed churches, made up of millions of Catholic believers, mostly in the western Ukraine, who were forced into the Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin in 1946. Since then, many of these Ukrainians, who still consider the Pope their leader, have led an illegal underground existence. Despite Vatican overtures on their behalf, the Russian Orthodox Church resists having the Kremlin give legal recognition to the Catholics, arguing that they belong within Orthodoxy...
...council resolved the Russian Church's most bitter internal problem: control of local parishes. According to Orthodox canonical tradition, the priest is the head of his parish. In 1961, however, during the height of Nikita Khrushchev's antichurch campaign, the Orthodox hierarchy was forced to accept a ruling that gave Communist Party-approved lay delegates full control over each parish, making the priest a mere salaried functionary who presides at worship. In a major concession from the Gorbachev regime, the much hated regulation was revoked at last week's council. The new church charter also provides for regularly scheduled national...
More significantly, on April 29 Gorbachev held a meeting with Patriarch Pimen and other members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy. The encounter, which "deeply impressed" the Patriarch, was the first public reception of Orthodox leaders by a party Secretary since 1943, when Stalin revived the church to win popular support during the worst days of World War II. In another act of conciliation, the regime this month returned to the church a section of its holiest shrine: the 11th century Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, which had been seized in 1961. Now monks will again live there...
Despite this giveback and the return of another 325 Orthodox sites over the past three years, church activities remain sharply restricted in the Soviet Union. Only 7,000 churches are functioning in the country today, compared with 70,000 in pre-Revolution days. Formal religious instruction is banned. And the 17 church-control laws instituted by Stalin in 1929 even forbid charitable work, although bit by bit some Christians are being allowed to help at clinics, mental hospitals and homes for the aged. There is no word as yet on the fate of the long-promised revision of Stalin...
Other analysts point out that Gorbachev vitally needs the support of his country's 50 million Orthodox Christians in order to succeed in his far- reaching reforms. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest organized body in the Soviet Union, far exceeding the Communist Party in membership. Says one Western expert on the Soviet Union who attended the millennium: "This is a society facing social disintegration. They have a youth that is disaffected, an intolerable abortion rate and a serious alcohol and drug problem." Religious believers, points out this observer, "tend to be constructive members of society...