Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

[londontsi]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Armenian Apostolic Church of Switzerland Petition

Summary

We, the undersigned, petition His Holiness Karekin II to reverse current policies that pertain to the centralization of control and unilateral decision making of local church matters. We ask that the traditional democratic principles of our Armenian Apostolic Church be restored and preserved. This request includes: renewing respect towards and adherence to the principle of separating spiritual matters (responsibility of clergy) from structural, financial, administrative, and legal matters (managed by laity); establishing a constructive practice of dialogue with our communities and all believers therein; and listening to our faithful in their wish to choose their own church status and priest.

For the Petition details follow the link

http://www.keghart.com/Petition_AACS_En

[Armanen]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Instead of writing a petition to ask the AAC to do more to combat abortion in Armenia and also encourage Armenians to have more children, they are petitioning about this. No wonder we are not doing well in many respects.

[londontsi]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

You have a peculiar sense of allocating responsibilities.

I agree with you that

... do more to combat abortion in Armenia and also encourage Armenians to have more children,.....

should be a high priority for Armenia.

What I take issue with you is you expect a relatively small community in some foreign country to remind
his Holiness that maybe there is a (serious) social problem and do something ( ?? say a few words now and then ??)
to try and change harmful attitudes in society.

Shouldn’t this be a bread and butter duty of the church.
Show their presence in society forcefully spreading the moral message.

Instead they spend time and resources meddling in community issues fuelling conflict and division.

Isn't that lack of leadership, isn't that lack of purpose.

[Armanen]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

You have a peculiar sense of allocating responsibilities.

I agree with you that
should be a high priority for Armenia.

What I take issue with you is you expect a relatively small community in some foreign country to remind
his Holiness that maybe there is a (serious) social problem and do something ( ?? say a few words now and then ??)
to try and change harmful attitudes in society.

Shouldn’t this be a bread and butter duty of the church.
Show their presence in society forcefully spreading the moral message.

Instead they spend time and resources meddling in community issues fuelling conflict and division.

Isn't that lack of leadership, isn't that lack of purpose.

No, I think you and your ilk are misguided. You wish to see the church weak and de-centralized. I want the church to be centralized and player a larger role in Armenian life, in and out of Armenia.

[Christina]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

You have amazing whit and brilliant fast thinking! Great sense of humor!

History: Many rulers were also spiritual leaders or in connection with the Church in representing God on Earth--
as Tzar Nicholas II saw himself. The Great Louis of France "The Sun King" saw himself as only answerable to
God.
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself! This caused such a outcry from the Pope and Vatican.
the Pope was the spiritual leader allowed to "crown and anoint" Kings.
Emperors were seen in the Church to sit with the Pope or Patriarch in the grand services where everyone
was dressed to the hilt. Chandlers and candles all light and gold and icons all over the place.
Talk about amassed wealth.

The Bolsheviks came to power and the committee went over all the Romanov's and Nobility's grand collections
and sold them off. Many great ladies of powerful men, like the Astors, Vanderbilt's bought up these gems
at ridiculous prices that we can only gasp at today.

There was a old man from a Russian village interviewed and he said: "He did not see God-But he saw the Tzar!"

The grand procession of all the great ones. The Patriarch of Russia in the grand procession of Tzar Nicholas's
coronation was wearing all the gold and glitz and grandeur of Russia.

Another interesting from a great house that also had similar behavior:

Article in Los Angeles Times, Monday, Aug. 2, 1999
Mystery: 300 -yer-old Fortune Missing: Henri d'Orleans, the late count of Paris and pretender to the French throne.
$ 650 million in castles and land. Children rebuffed by top tribunal. Vast estate vanished. He was 90 years old. There was a amazing sapphire and diamond tiara full paure of necklace, brooch, earrings, bracelet, that was either auctioned off, unless I am mistaken, or something happened to it. Article states "Once, Henri was detained at the Swiss border carrying a ruby-and-diamond necklace that had belonged to Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI's guillotined queen. He later sold it to the Louvre for $ 1 million."

Article states he did not get along with his children. (Who knows what the real story is), and that he cut them out of his will. There was the mention that all the Bourbon branches wanted to make peace.

There is alot of this. But I agree: It is more horrible when a Church leader does this. More is expected of them. They are held
too a higher standard and this goes to explain why alot of religious people stop attending church or become cynical.

What the Lord and Apostles stated in the Bible we all know. I guess reality and Bible verse are different realities.

It squanders the history and pride of a nation when when such things are done. The people are cheated of their rightful
historic connection to the past.

[londontsi]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Kecharis Monastery: Is the Church Now in the Restaurant Business?

http://hetq.am/eng/articles/3546/

18:39, August 11, 2011

Ani Hovhannisyan
Levon Hayrapetyan

A fancy restaurant is now being built practically on the doorstep of the Kecharis Monastery in Tzaghkadzor and it would appear that the Armenian Church is not opposed to the eatery.

It's being built by Davit Ghazinyan, son of Yerevan State University Legal Faculty Rector Gagik Ghazinyan.

Ghazinyan only needed one day to get the architectural plans officially approved. During the past two weeks the construction work has proceeded at such a fast pace that it's already half completed even though the project hasn't been approved by the Tzaghkadzor Municipality.

We were told, however, by the Ministry of Urban Development that such a permit is necessary.

Tzaghkadzor Mayor Garoun Mirzoyan confirmed as much to us during a convestaion we had with him.

In fact, Mayor Mirzoyan said that his office had fined the contractor 400,000 AMD for going ahead with the illegal construction and demanded that all work immediately stop and that the site be put back to its original profile.

Despite the protestations of the municipality, nothing has been done.

"I understand that the land has been leased but we haven't been presented with any such documents. That's why we went ahead a slapped them with a 400,000 AMD fine. Had they shown us such a document the fine would have only been 200,000 AMD," said Mayor Mirzoyan.

When we asked the mayor why construction is continuing even after the fine, Mirzoyan said that work had indeed stopped as of July 18 and that the sides were now in negotiations for the restaurant to be dismantled.

On August 6, we visited the construction site and videotaped what we saw. Indeed, work hadn't stopped but was continuing at a fast clip.

Given that Tzaghkadzor is a small town and that the mayor and other town officials must have surely noticed construction of the restaurant from day one, the question arises as to whether the 400,000 fine isn't merely for show.

It can even been argued that the municipality and the restaurant owner have entered into some prior arrangement to let the construction continue until the proper paperwork is obtained.

Even the Kotayk Regional Authority made some noise at first, issuing a directive that the construction be halted. They haven't said anything since, however.

We even got in touch with the Holy See of Etchmiadzin to see what the Armenian Church had to say on the matter.

We spoke with Father Vahram Melikyan, the Press Officer at Etchmiadzin, who promised to get back to us that same day.

It turns out that Father Melikyan was officially on vacation the following day and couldn't be reached.

It took us several days to track down Father Shahe, who was temporaily taking over his duties.

Father Shahe told us that the Tzaghkadzor Municipality was misinformed and that a lease document in fact did exist but that work had been halted until an approval permit was issued by the Monuments' Preservation Committee.

Thus, according to Etchmiadzin, the construction of the restaurant is indeed legal.

When we pointed out to Father Shahe that Hetq reporters had recently visited the site and that construction work was continuing, the clergyman responded – "I don't understand. Are you saying that a priest of the church, the press officer's stand in, is telling lies?"

We then tried to get in touch with Serzh Arakelyan, who runs the Monuments' Preservation Agency at the Ministry of Culture, to see if they had issued a go-ahead for the construction or not.

We also wanted to ask if he was aware that workers at the site had unearthed some buried artifacts.

Arakelyan's response was, "Investigations are underway. I'll have definite answers to these questions once they are completed."

[jgk3]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Face the heretics and you will be called a heretic by them. Rally against them and they will put a bounty on your head.

When your leaders are heretics, why not instead be a heretic then too? Afterall you're not going against the grain of their behavior, so that when they do decide to admonish you, they will have to start worrying about their image once more.

And if you prefer to be righteous, do it in your own house, in your own life. Don't show off your righteousnous, that is vanity.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Kecharis Monastery: Is the Church Now in the Restaurant Business?

Did you note it looks as if it has been filmed by a 10-year old girl. Have HETQ started paying their journalists in sweeties?

[londontsi]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Did you note it looks as if it has been filmed by a 10-year old girl. Have HETQ started paying their journalists in sweeties?

The clergy did not seem to have a higher mental age !!

They didn’t have much of a clue what was going around them unless they were instructed not to speak to strangers (strange little girls?).


.

[londontsi]

Re: Have our spiritual leaders lost their moral compass?

Defrocked Former Primate of Russia Plans to Sue Armenia TV for Slander

http://hetq.am/eng/articles/6131/defrocked-former-primate-of-russia-plans-to-sue-armenia-tv-for-slander.html

11:47, November 4, 2011



Archbishop Tiran Kyureghyan, the former Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church Diocese of New Nakhichevan and Russia, is planning to sue Armenia TV for defamation of character.

In an October 23 broadcast covering the consecration of crosses to be placed atop the dome of the newly constructed Armenian Cathedral in Moscow, Armenia TV reported that the former Primate and defrocked clergyman was the reason for the delay in the construction of the edifice..

The TV station alleged that Archbishop Kyureghyan had embezzled some $3 million in donations raised specifically for construction purposes.

Archbishop Kyureghyan had been dismissed as Primate by Catholicos Garegin II in October, 2000 and replaced by his brother Ezras Nersisyan, who at the time had been serving as the priest in the Saint Petersburg parish.

Archbishop Kyureghyan was offered the post of Primate of the Ukraine Diocese of the Armenian Church.

At the time, reports in the Russian and Armenian press stated that Archbishop Kyureghyan refused to hand over the reins of the diocese to Nersisyan and had declared that he would be starting a separate religious body.

Supporters of Kyureghyan staged a number of protest actions but they failed to change the mind of Catholicos Garegin II.

Citing “disobedience and unruly behaviour”, Catholicos Garegin II defrocked Kyureghyan in May of 2001.

By then, construction of the Holy Cross Church had begun and plans were to complete the structure by 2002.

Holy Cross Church was only finished this year.

In October, 2004, the newspaper Kommersant wrote an article about the construction of a religious center for Armenians in the Russian capital and linked the delays to the former Primate, Archbishop Tiran Kyureghyan.

The paper reported that the clergyman had been charged with embezzling $3 million and that he had been defrocked in 2001. It added that the new Primate, Bishop Yezras, had been forced to raise new funds for the church.

Ghazaros Kyureghyan (the lay name of the former Primate) took the Russian newspaper to court. The Moscow Civil Court found in favour of the former clergyman and ordered the paper to publish a retraction. Kommersant did just that on September 16, 2005, saying that the embezzlement allegations were not substantiated.

Forward to today. Armenia TV, at the end of its October 24 news broadcast, issued the same retraction that Kommersant had done in 2005.






The TV station also removed the article in question from its website. However, the news anchor’s introduction with a photo of Kyureghyan and a question regarding the missing $3 million still appear.

Ghazaros Kyureghyan says that it’s a tragedy that after 1.5 years of working on the church, laying the foundation and importing stones from Armenia, that attacks on his person appeared.

Mr. Kyureghyan claims he had nothing at all to do with the donations raised since a special foundation had been set up to manage the money. He says that after Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was fired in 2010, the foundation was dissolved.

“Those reports say that I was defrocked due to $3 million that went missing. Where did Armenia TV get this information? This is a completely new charge against me. After ten years such distortions are again being directed at me. It means that someone supplied that info to the news anchor,” says Kyureghyan.

The former clergyman says he never acted in a disobedient manner to Catholicos Garegin II.

Kyureghyan says the Catholicos decided to defrock him when the Armenian Church leader was on a pontifical trip to the United States and Canada and had told his brother of the decision by phone.

“Such things just aren’t done to a high ranking member of the church. There’s a definite procedure involved. Defrocking someone is a matter of last resort when there are serious ecclesiastical charges involved,” says Kyureghyan.

The former clergyman describes his defrocking as illegal and says that any charges against him should have been reviewed according to the bylaws of the church and the Supreme Religious Council.

Kyureghyan also claims that Catholicos Garegin II, after returning to Etchmiadzin, rounded up a few members of the Religious Council and wrote up a defrocking order on the spot with the correct date.

Kyureghyan says that Jerusalem Patriarch Torkom Manoogian and Istanbul Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan refused to sign the document.

On November 3, 2000, Kyureghyan claims that Archbishop Mutafyan sent a letter to Catholicos Garegin II, noting that any charges levelled against a Diocesan Primate of the Church must be “fully corroborated and a tribunal created so that the individual can defend himself”.

After the court case with Kommersant, Moscow tax authorities filed criminal charges against Kyureghyan for land tax evasion on the Moscow church site. The charges were later dropped.

P.S. – In the near future, Hetq will be conducting an interview with former Archbishop Tiran Kyureghyan regarding the construction of Holy Cross Church, the current slander suit against Armenia TV, and his past dealings with Catholicos Garegin II.