Cardinal Koch accuses Russian patriarch of heresy
"It is a heresy that the patriarch dares to legitimize the brutal and absurd war in Ukraine for pseudo-religious reasons," the cardinal said in an interview with a German newspaper Die Tagespost, according to Catholic Observer.
“Playing down Putin’s brutal war of aggression as a ‘special operation,’” which is how Russia has described the war, “is a misuse of language,” Koch said. I have to condemn this description as “an absolutely unacceptable position.”
“Patriarch Kirill’s pseudo-religious justification of the war must shake every ecumenical heart,” Cardinal Koch said, adding that from a Christian perspective, “one cannot justify aggressive war, but at most, under certain conditions, defense against an unjust attacker.”
Outstanding Orthodox theologians of the world gave an assessment of the Russian World ideology as an ethno-phyletic heresy that poses a danger to Orthodox teaching.
