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Let us remember that Christian love embraces all men; it manifests mercy to everyone and warmly prays that all be saved. But when this love witnesses a willful campaign against Truth, then it burns with a consuming zeal which will not permit such assaults. The example of our holy father St. Nicholas is a shining example of such love, the love which must burn in every Christian heart for our Lord God. ” —Metropolitan Philaret of New York
“The pastor cannot stray from participating in social life, but must participate in his capacity of the bearer of the laws of Christ and a representative of the Church. A clergyman cannot turn into a simple political or social activist, forgetting the main essence of his service, and his task. The kingdom ‘is not of this world’ (John 18:36), and Christ did not establish an earthly kingdom.
Refraining from becoming a political leader and avoiding partisan conflicts, the pastor can cast spiritual light upon the phenomena of this world, so that his flock could know the way to which to adhere, and would be Christians in both their personal and their social lives.” —St. John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco
“In our evil time, when the servants of the coming Antichrist are putting forth all their efforts so as to undermine and replace authentic Orthodoxy with a false ‘Orthodoxy’ - an Orthodoxy only in name, there have appeared not a few ‘pastors’ also who bear only the name of Orthodox but deny the authentic power and spirit of true Orthodoxy. Precisely such false pastors filled up the ranks of the (Soviet) ‘Living Church’ and the ‘Renovationist Church’ clergy in our Russia.