To worship anyone, even the best person, instead of God is a sin and a mistake.
Well-known religious scholar Yuri Chornomorets wrote on Facebook.
"Today Onufriy again commemorated "the Great Lord Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia." One question arises for the faithful of the UOC-MP. You really appreciate Onufriy as a monk, as a bishop, as a spiritual leader.
But now the situation is as follows: either you worship Christ, who suffered for you and bought you off, or you worship Onufriy and even worse - you worship Kirill and his boss Putin. To worship anyone, even the best person, instead of God is already a sin and a mistake," he said.
According to the religious scholar, bishops and priests should serve God and the people, not themselves.
"P.S. Now Danilevich writes tearful posts that the OCU is raiding the UOC-MP. In their paradigm, parishioners and priests are slaves of the episcopate and have no right to transfer to the OCU, they must formally and informally obey the gods Onufriy and Cyril, all sorts of local gods.
I believe that the main sin of the episcopate and "Danilevichs" is that they forgot about the very meaning of the priesthood. To be a bishop or priest is to serve God, to serve the community, the Orthodox people of the local church - but it is not to serve ourselves as gods and not to serve other people, no matter what regalia is imposed on them. If the clergyman makes a decision - I serve only Christ and the community, then very often from the Moscow slavery of the idolatrous ideology of unconditional submission to Kirill and Onufriy and all sorts of other bad or good, but people, he comes to a Free Church, which really lives in a relationship with God and does not drive anyone into any kind of spiritual or social slavery," said Yuri Chornomorets.