From RT:
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called the fight against terrorism a “holy war” and urged international unity and an abandoning of double standards to defeat this global evil.
“Today, when our warriors take part in combat operations in the Middle East, we know that this is not an aggression, occupation or an attempt to impose some ideology on other people, this has nothing to do with supporting certain governments,” Patriarch Kirill said as he held the Friday mass at the major Moscow memorial to those who fought in World War II. “This is the fight against the fearsome foe that is currently not only spreading evil through the Middle East but also threatening the whole of mankind.”
He added: “Today, we call this evil terrorism.”. . . .
He also told Orthodox believers to pray for the Russian military to remain faithful to the spiritual course that only allows the use of armed forces against evil, for justice and to save human lives.
In February this year, the chief foreign spokesman of the Russian Orthodox Church said in a press interview that global leaders should overcome political dissent and unite in fighting international terrorism as the challenge to mankind at large.
Over at a Facebook page called Fellowship of Orthodox,Catholic & Anglican Christians, a perplexed Orthodox member asks, "Surely an Orthodox patriarch is not calling for a crusade??!!", to which I have replied, "Why not?".
You may remember my exchanges with an Orthodox reader named Stefano, who objected to Orthodox resistance to terrorism being linked with the Crusades. Most of his ire against the Crudades is wrapped up with his ideological Orthodox opposition to all things Western, and he clrearly wasn't impressed by the fact that it was a Byzantine -- and hence Orthodox -- emperor who requested military aid from the West, thus touching off the Crusades.
As Roman Catholic historian Thomas Madden has amply demonstrated in his Crusades scholarship, while they indeed went awry in several ways, at heart they were part of a defensive and therefore just war. Now we have one of the most important patriarchs in the Orthodox Church calling for precisely that.
If there is to be a new Crusade against Muslim imperialism -- and Muslim imperialism is PRECISELY what we're fighting in our struggle not only against terrorism but against demographic replacement in Western Europe and the Anglosphere -- then of necessity the call for it will have to come from the Orthodox East. The secular West not only hasn't a clue about what's happening, it is far too bankrupt and dissolute to be of any good in this matter.
One fellow commeting at the RT article had this to say:
Roman Catholic here. I acknowledge the patriarchs as a leading force in the church. Personally of course not as much as the pope, but I reckon the church has spoken.
Indeed it has, and we will hear no such call from "Frank the Hippie Pope", who is too busy singing Scott McKenzie songs about "tearing down walls" and suchlike. We Anglicans must look to the Orthodox Church and to Eastern Europe for guidance these days, for our heads of state, and sadly most of our bishops, have their heads in the sand. Kudos, and Many Years, Patriarch Kirill!