Territorially, the Orthodox countries of Europe clearly outweigh the smaller nominally Christian (and Roman Catholic) countries of Western Europe, and certainly, the numbers of practising Orthodox also do.
The Eastern Churches (Catholic and Orthodox)-
A thorn in Pope's Francis's side
August 3 , 2012
Eastern Europe is a thorn in the side of Francis’s pontificate, and there are many varied elements that prove it.
In the 'family synods' of 2014 and 2015, the bishops of Eastern Europe were among the most resolute defenders of tradition, starting with the relator general of the first session, Hungarian cardinal Péter Erdõ, author among other things of a sensational public condemnation of the violations committed by the reformist faction, which clearly had the support of the pope.
After the synod, eastern Europe was once again the source of the most restrictive interpretations of the papal document “Amoris Laetitia.”
The bishops of Poland were particularly unanimous in calling for an application of the document in perfect continuity with the age-old teaching of the Church from its origin until John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
The bishops of Ukraine - where 10 percent of the population is Catholic – are also among the most dedicated in opposing ruptures with respect to tradition in the areas of marriage, penance, the Eucharist.
But in addition they have not failed to criticize strongly the pro-Russian positions of Pope Francis and of the Holy See concerning the war underway in their country, a war that they experience as aggression on the part of none other than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The embrace between the pope and Moscow Patriarch Kirill at the Havana airport on February 12, 2016, with the associated document signed by both, then became a powerful element of friction between this pope and
the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which sees itself as being unjustly sacrificed on the altar of this reconciliation between Rome and Moscow.
The death last May 31 of Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the previous major archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine, called back attention briefly to one of the major figures of the Eastern Church, one who was capable of spiritually rebuilding a Church that emerged from decades of persecution without any sort of concession to the diplomatic calculations (regarding the Patriarchate of Moscow)- that however have come back to the forefront during the pontificate of Francis
Husar’s successor, the young Sviatoslav Shevchuck, is well known to Bergoglio from his previous pastoral activity in Argentina. But he too is one of the most straightforward critics of the tendencies of the current pontificate, both on political terrain and on doctrinal and pastoral.
And “it was certainly not a coincidence,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote three weeks ago at the death of his friend Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the indomitable archbishop of Berlin during the Communist era, “that the last visit of his lifetime should have been made to a confessor of the faith,” a bishop of Lithuania whose beatification was being celebrated, one of the countless martyrs of communism in eastern Europe who today are in danger of falling into oblivion.
Against this backdrop the question naturally arises: in this region of Europe what is the state of health of Catholicism, which is known to be in serious decline in other areas of the world and particularly in neighboring western Europe?
This question has received an exhaustive reply - albeit in purely sociological terms - in a comprehensive survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington, which is perhaps the world’s most reliable barometer of the presence of religion on the public stage:
> Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe
www.pewforum.org/2017/05/10/religious-belief-and-national-belonging-in-central-and-eastern...
In the survey of the Eastern European countries which had been under atheistic Communist regimes for decades, the first striking fact is the rebirth, almost everywhere, of a strong and widespread sense of religious belonging, which for the Orthodox - a distinct majority over the whole area - does not translate into regular attendance at Sunday liturgies, while for Catholics it is accompanied by fairly substantial weekly participation at Mass. In Poland, for example, 45 percent of the baptized go to Sunday Mass, and 43 percent in Ukraine, while in Russia attendance at the Orthodox Sunday liturgy is only 6 percent.
The Czech Republic bore the brunt of state atheism, which added to an older anti-Catholic hostility going back to Hussite Protestantism and to the subsequent re-Catholicizing imposed by the Habsburgs, and now fully 72 percent of the population declare to have no religious affiliation. But among the Catholics, who still make up a fifth of the population, Sunday Mass attendance is 22 percent, more or less like in Italy and considerably more than in Germany, France, or Spain, not to mention Belgium and Holland.
The same holds true for Bosnia
[where Medjugorje is located], where there are very few Catholics, just 8 percent in a population that is either Orthodox or Muslim, but Sunday attendance among them is a hefty 54 percent.
The whole survey from the Pew Research Center is worth reading, for the richness of the information it provides. Among other things, it also shows that the Catholics of eastern Europe are distinguished from the Orthodox not only by their much higher levels of religious practice but also by a contrasting geopolitical vision.
While the Orthodox consider Russia to be the natural bastion against the West and look on Russia with approval, eastern Catholics show coolness, especially in Ukraine and Poland, countries which lean much more toward an alliance with the United States and the West.
A further divergence can also be found in the Orthodox camp between the Russian Orthodox who recognize the Patriarch of Moscow as the highest hierarchical authority of Orthodoxy, and the rest of the Orthodox Churches who who consider the Patriarch of Constantinople as the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch. In the Ukraine, 46 percent of the Orthodox belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, while 17 percent belong to the Greek Orthodox Church.
On marriage, family, homosexuality, and related issues, at least half of Catholics side with the traditional positions of the Church. And a large majority of the whole population - with the sole exception of the Czech Republic - is opposed to the legal recognition of unions between persons of the same sex.
But in breaking down the data by age groups, it is clear that younger people are increasingly adopting the permissive mentality that is already rampant in western Europe even among Catholics.
A mentality that is certainly meeting no resistance from the pontificate of Francis.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/08/2017 01:14]