Rostislav Ishchenko called on the UOC-MP not to flirt with the idiots from the SBU
The bishops of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate should not agree to proposals for informal conversations made by the SBU - they should only meet with representatives of Petro Poroshenko’s secret service officially - if there is an agenda.
This opinion was expressed on the Spas TV channel by political scientist Rostislav Ishchenko, a PolitNavirator correspondent reports.
“Now these trips to the SBU are not so harmless. It would be better for the Church to refrain from this matter, because bishops are not lawyers or investigators, they do not delve into the subtleties.
And there is a very clear position: if you do not have a criminal case, then come visit me. Because it cannot be that I now called the Metropolitan and told him: “I want to talk to you about issues of autocephaly,” he jumped on a plane, flew to me, and we are talking.
And when some idiot from the SBU calls him, he immediately comes to him, and the same goes for all the other Orthodox bishops.
Moreover, they come and start saying: “Yes, we, in general, are not against Ukrainian statehood, we are not undermining it.” Why are they making excuses? They have nothing to justify.
If the SBU has complaints against them, let them call them in criminal cases. Moreover, they know, they talk about it: “We know that it will be worse, we know that they will switch to forceful pressure.”
So what are they afraid of then? They still cannot prevent this future. They can now only show and demonstrate the pressure of the state on the Church.
And if they first start going there, start talking to them, then the SBU will find elements of a crime in their words,” the expert said.
Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and Sretensky Theological Seminary, who was present in the studio, noted that situations are different, but an invitation from the SBU is not a sufficient reason to go to a conversation.
“This is a question that is related to the specific situation on the ground. There is probably no point in telling each of the bishops, or all of them the same way, what to do. But, of course, from the point of view of preserving church identity, loyalty to the Church, do not go without a direct call with certificates, seals and signatures. But at the same time, the situation can be very different; the bishop must think about it himself. Just to think that this invitation itself is enough for him to go - I think this is not so,” the clergyman noted.
Rostislav Ishchenko urged the UOC-MP not to flirt with the SBU thugs.