the East and criss-crossing there of opposing western traditions, Latin and

Protestant. For example, Protestant missionaries, especially Calvinists, were

active in Eastern Europe and Russia. At the same time, so were the Jesuits.

This includes the Ottoman ruled lands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the

Turks allowed western missionaries free access to the native Christian but

not the Muslim populations of S.E. Europe and the Near East because the Turks

saw the presence of Protestants and Latins less as a threat and much more as

a political advantage andl as a possible instrument for reducing the

presence of the Rum Orthodox (Rum=Greek Orthodox, i.e. church of the east

Roman Empire's capitl city, Const/ople) and Armenians.

     A patriarch of Const/ople in the 17th cent., Cyril Lukaris, published his own

confession of faith as a refutation of the teachings of the Latins and their

Jesuit missionaries. The problem was that his confession relied very heavily

on Calvinist sources and later was synodally condemned. As a replacement a

synod in Const/ople advocated the confession of Moghila, with certain

reservations.

     Moghila intended to counter the spread of Protestant and Jesuit teachings in

Russia and "Little Russia" when he compiled and composed his work in 1632,

which he titled, "Russian Orthodox Catechism." It is structured as a Q&A

discussion (over 250 Questions).

     During that period, the Duke of Moldavia petitioned the Church of

Constantinople (which then had ecclesiastical jurisdiction there) to allow

him to call a Local Church Council in Jassy, Moldavia's capital, for the

purpose of issuing a confession of Orthodox faith to counter the confusion

being spread among the Orthodox by the competing western missionaries. The

Council of Jassy met in 1642 and adopted the confession of Moghila. The

Church of Const/ople sent one of its (lay) theologians, Meletios Syrigos, to

Jassy to translate into Greek and correct the confession, which Moghila,

ironically, wrote in Latin and drew heavily from Jesuit works of the period.

SInce Meletios was already participating in the local Council in Const/ople

while the Council of Jassy had already begun it preliminaries, he arrived in

Rumania with only a short period of time in which to translate the large work

and correct the errors of Moghila. So Meletios made the most important

changes but did not have time to change everything. Moghila accepted various

Latin categories of thought and their consequent teachings, and some of them

remain in the confession. Regarding baptism, for example, he wrote that

baptism is intended to lift the "wrath of God," to "erase" original sin and

its responsibility that we inherit from Adam, because we were **in Adam**

when he sinned. Without baptism, he wrote, we "remain under the wrath of

God," borrowing Augustine's concepts. Moghila accepted the Roman Catholic

definition of transubstantiation in the Eucharist, the idea of **Seven**

sacraments (a number the Fathers never gave), the RC concept of sin and the

various legal categories and definitions of sin and their consequences. There

are many more, but I will limit my examples to these. On the other hand,

there are some discussions that are Orthodox in content.

     It was the translated and partially corrected text by Meletios that was

accepted by the Moldavian council in Jassy and the other Orthodox Churches

under the urgent pressure of the ongoing Protestant and Jesuit missionary

proselytism. Since then, the partially corrected confession has fallen out of

use.

    In his lifetime, Moghila did not accept the Orthodox alterations made in his

confession, and shortly before his death, he published his original

confession, without the alterations of Jassy, in Ruthenian and Polish

translation in 1645. In the same year, he published his Trebnik (Efhologion

service book) containing a number of innovations and rubrics borrowed from

Roman Catholic sources, e.g., he altered the prayer of the rite of Confession

adding the Slavonic version of the Latin "ego te absolvo," which remains

firmly planted in Russian Church Rite of Confession to this day.

I would add this question: Which of the many translations of Moghila's

confession does the text offered on the above Uniate website derive from? The

confession exists in Greek, Latin, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Ruthenian,

     Ukranian, Rumanian, and more languages, some

derived from the uncorrected original text and others derived from the

partially corrected text of Jassy. Does the above website indicate which

confession? The less Roman Catholic one or the more Roman Catholic one? The

translation of the partially corrected and more Orthodox version adapted by

the Council of Jassy, or a translation that derives from Moghila's Ruthenian

and Polish version of his uncorrected, original, jesuit-inspired text?