Churches of the East: Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, May 3, 1923. The attempt to depose Archbishop Tikhon.

Churches of the East: Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, May 3, 1923. The attem...:

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, May 3, 1923. The attempt to depose Archbishop Tikhon.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, May 3, 1923. The attempt to depose Arc...:   

Thursday, May 3, 1923. The attempt to depose Archbishop Tikhon.

 

Archbishop Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was expelled by the church and declared a traitor by the Communist dominated All Russian Church Council and declared "henceforth a simple citizen—Vasily Bellavin."

The body further declared:

Inasmuch as the Soviet Government is the only one in the whole world fighting capitalism, which is one of the seven deadly sins, therefore its struggle is a sacred struggle. The Council condemns the counterrevolutionary acts of Tikhon and his adherents, lifts the ban of excommunication he laid on the Soviet Government, and brands him as a traitor to the Church and to Russia. It hereby formally abolishes the office of Patriarch forever and establishes an annual Church Council as the supreme directive body in Church affairs.

The Russian Orthodox Church naturally did not recognize the move, and he continued to offer Devine Liturgy for the rest of his life, which at this point was not to be much longer. The Russian Orthodox Church has declared him to be a saint.  The move by the All Russian Church Council lead to the establishment of a competing church, which died out in the 1940s.  Of note, the establishment of competing government aligned churches is a common practice by authoritarian regimes.  Communist China at one time established a rival church to the Catholic Church, aligned with the government, and Nazi Germany attempted to create an aligned Lutheran Church, although the German efforts failed.

The move would lead to a period of irregular leadership in the Russian Orthodox Church, which was unable to procedural choose a successor in the regular method for a period of time, after Tikhon's death.

Then Bishop Tikhon at the consecration of Anglican Bishop Reginald Heber Weller at St. Paul's Cathedral in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac.  Also present are Anthony Kozlowski of the Polish National Catholic Church in what sort of amounts to an interesting collection of clerics either claiming Apostolic succession, in the case of the Anglican's, or actually having it in the case of the Russian Orthodox and Polish National Catholic Church, and yet not being in communion with Rome.

Tikhon had been a clergyman for a very long time, but had only been head of the Russian Orthodox Church since 1917.  Earlier in his career he had been the Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, which became the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America, and was a naturalized American citizen.  He was a participant, which is to say receptive, to the conversion of Byzantine Catholics into the Orthodox Church due to the ill feelings caused by Catholic Bishop John Ireland's view toward Eastern Rite Catholics comporting with the Latin Rite and Pope Pius X's restriction on Eastern Rite priests marrying, the latter which was later changed and the former which is recognized as a signficant mistake by Bishop Ireland.

Lex Anteinternet: May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murder and secret victories.

Lex Anteinternet: May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murde...: 

May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murder and secret victories.

Fr. Józef Cebula

In Poland, by this point in the war, the Germans were engaged in full scale repression of the Catholic Church, having banned adherence to it, including the administration of the Sacraments.  Fr. Józef Cebula outright ignored the ban, as many other Polish priests did, and was arrested and incarcerated in a concentration camp as a result.  There he continued to minister to the sick.  On this day he was tortured and shot.  He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1999.

While certainly understood by historians, the level of repression meted out to the Poles during the war, by the occupying Germans, was at an almost unimaginable scale.  Unlike the occupied lands to the south and west of Germany, the Germans didn't recognize Polish sovereignty after the defeat of the Polish army and ran the territory in a fashion that was effectively genocidal.  Post war many Germans would make the claim that they were unaware of the Holocaust, a claim that is dubious at best given the scale upon which it was conducted, but when combined with German official killings within the Reich and the murderous occupation of Germany's neighbor Poland, what Nazi Germany stood for couldn't be ignored except by somebody wishing to ignore it.

Somebody not ignoring it was German Sophie Scholl, who at this point in her short life was in a nursing training program, having not yet entered the University of Munich.  On this day, Scholl turned 20 years old.

Scholl, of course, had only two years to live as she'd shortly enter the University there which would take her on to be one of the founding members of the White Rose movement.  The movement has been celebrated as one of the few (although there are others) German resistance movements that formed during the war. Scholl was a devout Lutheran but there's a connection to the item above in that the movement's origins were sparked by Hans Scholl, her brother, having changed the focus of his studies from medicine to philosophy and theology due to the influence of Catholic men of letters, Otl Aicher and Carl Muth, whom he encountered at the university.  This openly drew Hans Scholl towards Catholicism and it also caused him to be drawn towards Aicher and Muth's anti Nazi views, which were based on their religious convictions. Hans Scholl would be instrumental in forming the group. While the group was not all Catholic by any means, and included one member who was Russian Orthodox, the Catholic religious themes were prominent.  The group took its name from a sermon by Bishop Von Galen, which addressed the evils of euthanasia.

Aicher survived the war and in 1952 married Inge Scholl, a sister of Sophie and Hans.  He is remembered for designing the lead graphic designer for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Also on this day the British took an Enigma from the U110.

The captured U110.

Today in World War II History—May 9, 1941

Enigma machine captured

This meant that in the space of just two days the British had taken an Enigma machine and the codes for July.  They knew exactly what they had and indeed had been targeting German naval assets for this purpose.

On the same day, as can be read about above, the Franco Thai War ended in the Thai's favor, in a peace brokered by Imperial Japan, or perhaps effectively forced by it.

This too oddly has a 1921 connection as on this day in 1921 Crown Prince Hirohito, who of course would go on to become the Emperor, set foot in the United Kingdom, the first member of the Imperial Japanese family to do so.  He was touring Europe.

Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Denver Colorado

This church in North Denver is just off of Washington Street and just north of I70. I didn't realize it at the time I took the photograph, but St. Joseph Polish Catholic Church and Holy Transfiguration Russian Orthodox Church are within a three block distance of this one. Had I known that, I would have added them to the photographs as well.

This church was originally in a southern Slavic neighborhood of Denver and was built for the South Slav population there (explaining, I suspect, why there would be a Polish Catholic church just a block away). I am sure that this is no longer the population base of the church, but it is interesting to note that. The church was built in 1918, just after World war One.

A nice history of this parish can be found here.