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Eric Lozano
Archbishop Anastasios of Albania has published an appeal for "Christmas 2019" The appeal of the archbishop is noble, yet it is a failure before even beginning because it fails to deal with the real problems, the root cause of the present situation: First, he imagines that appeasement of bullies is or will bring about "unity." But appeasement has not and will never create true unity. For centuries but especially the last one Moscow has been leading the way in thwarting the Pan Orthodox activities which are canonically led by the EP, and which are meant to bring unity to the Orthodox Churches (while seeking to unilaterally establish her own primacy and Councils such as her attempt to beat the EP towards convening a universal Council in 1947 and now in inventing a primacy for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem). The plethora of Muscovite resistance to EP initiatives have resulted in the inability of the Orthodox to hold Pan Orthodox councils where all attend and all is solved, thwarting of the future implementation of one city one bishop as the canons call for, etc.
The archbishop appeals to dialogue, but fails to mention the decades worth of dialogue that has led to nothing because the MP accepts only maximalist positions that will only to suit her at the expense of others. We have all seen, even within the last couple of decades (to not mention further back), how she has staged walkouts, boycotted Councils, broken communion, divided the Churches from within when they published an opinion contrary to theirs, etc
The effects of all that have affected millions of Ukrainians with legitimate reasons to be autocephalous and Moscow has made it clear her only version of dialogue is to get everyone to accept her maximalist position on Ukraine, which does not solve the problems for the Ukrainian people. The reason the move of the EP in Ukraine has "not resulted in the desired unity" is precisely because the MP there is refusing any reasonable solution to the schism, dialogue, and the relevant topics (many bishops have testified of this when they saw it displayed before their eyes in the conferences that were leading up to the Council in Crete, which was trying to come to an agreement on the topic of granting of autocephaly among other solutions to common problems in the Church and such).
As for the ordinations of the OCU, the archbishop again ignores obvious key aspects that discredit the position of the MP such as the fact that the MP previously did not have a problem with the ordination of the AOCU as was obvious when the MP offered them autonomy within the MP just a few years ago. Those of the former KP stem from +Philaret, the former primate of the MP OCU (how can Moscow's ambitions erase the grace of ordination, especially when it was not erased for groups such as the Roman Catholic and Oriental Orthodox who actually confess a different faith from us?), the centuries' canonical appeal to the EP, etc.
So, by ignoring the fact that people cannot be forced into unity (if that were possible we would not only prevent all schisms from within but heal all schisms with those who were previously in communion with us such as the Catholics and Oriental Orthodox) and misinterpreting unity with appeasement, the archbishop is proving himself a failure at promoting unity and an enabler to disunity, contrary to the promoter of authentic unity he once was at the Council of Crete, which Moscow boycotted without direct repercussions.
