Pochaev Privatization Proposal Provokes Protests

A bill in the Ukrainian Parliament proposing the privatization of the Pochaev Lavra, which is inhabited by monks belonging to the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, has, unsurprisingly, been met with protests from Ukrainian nationalists and members of the hierarchy of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Lavra, which has been a bastion of loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate in western Ukraine, is seen by the Kiev Patriarchate and others as a Ukrainian national shrine that should remain under the oversight of the Ukrainian government. More here.

Orthodox Church in Montenegro Rejects Proposal of a Change in Its Status

The Orthodox Church in Montenegro has released a statement criticizing the recent proposals of a major Montenegrin political party regarding changing the status of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which is currently part of the Pech Patriarchate based in Belgrade. Among other things the statement notes the irony of an avowedly secular political party making proposals vis-a-vis changing the affiliation of a purely religious organization. More (in Serbian) here.

Update: A good English-language article surveying the issue can be found here.

Tent Church in Kiev Torn Down

Ukrainian authorities have removed a tent church outside the Ukrainian Parliament set up in protest of the illegal seizure of a church in western Ukraine of ultra-nationalists working with the Kiev Patriarchate. More here.

Ukrainian President Calls for Investigation of Lviv Incident

President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine has called for an investigation into an attack on yesterday's Victory Day celebrations by ultranationalists in the city of Lviv. More here and here.

"An Englishman in Orthodoxy"

Some excellent thoughts on Orthodoxy and ethnicity by Bishop Porfirije of Jegar of the Serbian Orthodox Church can be found here.

OCA Consistory to Transfer to D.C. in 2011 or 2012

Metropolitan Jonah of Washington of the American Orthodox Church (OCA) has stated that the administration of the OCA will be transferred from New York to Washington, DC, following this coming November's All-American Council in Bellevue, Washington (the real Washington, not the District of Columbia ;-) ).

The statement comes as a disappointment to American Orthodox, the author among them, who had hoped that the OCA would eventually return its primatial see to the more international New York and seek to be a continental, pan-ethnic Local Orthodox Church for both of the Americas instead of continuing to narrowly focus on the interests of the United States' Orthodox Christians. The dream of an international, truly American (in the broadest sense of that word) Orthodoxy that could overcome the narrow ethnic obsessions and phyletism characteristic of Old World Orthodoxy is apparently dead.

More here.