The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1905-09-30
GREEK CHURCH AND ITS
RELATIONS TO ROME
Continued from Page

sacred tribunal of Penance The secrets of the CON
fessional, for which Catholic priest must suffer
death rather than reveal, are VIGOROUSLY made
known by the "Orthodox" clergy to the car and his
officials. In work published in Paris in 1854 by
Snageano, a Greek archimandrite the writer de
picts the schismatcal state of the Russian church
in its relations to the Greek church. We quote one
passage from this book THE Russian Church"
he writes, lis simply schism, because it has sepa
rated from the great Eastern Church; because it
does not recognize the Patriarch of Constantnople
as its head; because it does not receive the Holy
Unction from Byzantum; because it is ruled by
Synod, which the car is despot :
and because Confession, instituted for the better
ment and the salvation of penitents has become
through the servility of the Muscovite clergy,
mere instrument of espionage III the interest of
Czarism This is exaggeration ON the part
of the Greek monastc digntary. In The Rasko
written by member of the "0rthodGx" church. the
author says that there is an ordinance which com
pels each priest to reveal to the government every
plot against it which may to his knowledge in
the confessional" Peter the Great, i'll ukase is
sued February II, 1922, confirmed this ordinance
by requiring all his clergy to subscribe to the fol-
lowing oath before ordination: Il will denounce
and reveal Gall conspiraces) with entire truthful
and without any disguise palliation, having
in my mind the fear of losing my honor and my
life" With this proclamation of the sacraments, it
is not to be wondered at that the great
body of church COMMITMENTS in the
Russian church are listless and that
its clergy are derelict in their duty. On
this point Lescoeur, voluminous writer, remarks
1T would be easy, and it has been done thous-
and times, multiply proofs of the absolute degra
daton of the Russian sacredotal order III Its rela
tions with the government. Were to examine
the grades of the hierarchy, from the pretended
Holy Synod which is servile when it is silent and
more servile when it speaks, down to the humbest
village pope from the Universities and the priyi-
legged converts where are trained the few distin-
guished governmental candidates for bishoprics,
for diplomatic posts or for the general of the
public Offices down to the miserable converts Of
men or of women in which there languish wretched
beings without pety charity, and which are in
evitably homes of ignorance and vice; everywhere
we would find the same conditions produced by the
same cause.-The subordination, or rather the abso-
lutte placement of the religious element, absorbed
by the civil power
For Russia to resume its former greatness it Is
necessary TO divorce the spiritual and temporal
power, become reunited to the chair of Peter, give
its people a reasonable liberty; not by tearing down
its old institutions and threatening its people who
may oppose its policy with Siberia, but by develop
ing some of its old decaving institutions, and
spreading the light of modern civilization among
all its subjects. +. ID.