July 27, 2010
Interfax
A growing number of schismatic communities in Ukraine see the need to come back to the canonical Church, one of the reasons being that the schism is becoming "outmoded", the Moscow Patriarchate believes.
"Schism is no longer stylish. It was fashionable in the 1990s to promote separatism and disintegration; there was resentment in the air. Now people are tired of that, they come to realize that they have to live in this country together with their children and grandchildren," the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk said Monday in an interview to Inter, a Ukrainian TV channel.
According to him, a growing number of people in Ukraine start thinking, "whether they should continue to live in the atmosphere of hostility and accusations, or whether they would feel much better in peace and benevolence."
Metropolitan Hilarion noted that many schismatics living in various regions of Ukraine were increasingly inclined to come back to the canonical Church, and this was a "continuous process, though it not a widespread one so far."
"People don't feel good when they are unable to communicate with ecumenical Orthodoxy. Schismatics have an acute sense of inferiority," Metropolitan Hilarion said.
Besides, the Metropolitan believes that "the schism loses its weight immediately when the authorities cease to support it." According to him, today the opportunity for blowing up the schism in Ukraine is long gone.