"The MP has the watches. But the TOC's have the time"

[Catherine5]

This article was too funny, I had to post it!
It's fr zik.com.ua, a Ukrainian news site:
"During Moscow Patriarch Kiril prayer at the Volodymyr Hill in Kyiv a VIP.glavred photographer took a photo of the watch Kiril was wearing. It is a Breguet, costing between 28,000 and 36,000 euros, depending on the seller.
The Breguet company clients included Queen Maria-Antuanetta, Napoleon, Prince of Wales, Tsar Alexandre I, Winston Churchill.

Patriarch Kiril sported a classical model: a white-gold case, crocodile leather strap, automatic with an alarm clock. In Ukraine, Breguet watches [are owned by?]Natalya Korolevska, a BYUT lawmaker, Vitaly Khomutynnyk, a Regions lawmaker, Irena Kilchytska, a Kyiv mayor deputy and some others, INTV reports.

Speaking live on the Inter TV channel, Patriarch Kiril called the spread of unchecked buying frenzy typical of the West a threat to all humanity. “If the society gets on the way of uncontrollable consumption, the Earth will not withstand this,” Kiril warned.

The patriarch stressed that unchecked consumption urge is involving more and more people, ridding them of the joy of buying. Spurred by advertising and fashion, people begin to hunt for the latest models of cell phones or cars, Kiril complained.

Photographs of Patriarch Kiril’s watch can be seen at http://www.zik.com.ua/ua/news/2009/07/30/190582

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The title of this post is a takeoff on the clever saying of Afghans who oppose to the U.S. occupation of their country, "The Americans have the watches, but we have the time [i.e. to wait for the West to get tired and leave]"

[Pravoslavnik]

Catherine,

Code: Select all

    The watches don't bother me.  I am content with the $80 Pulsar wrist watch that I bought twenty years ago.  Unfortunately, the MP also has many of the buildings, icons, hierarchs, clergy, and vestments that once belonged to the ROCOR.  I would feel like a Donatist--as, indeed, some have called me-- but for the fact that I have never yet seen any evidence of true repentance or Orthodox conduct by those who have orchestrated the MP take over of the ROCOR.  At least in the time of the Donatists, those within the Church who had behaved badly and denied Christ admitted it and repented, rather than denying their sins, insulting their brethren, threatening and bullying them, and confiscating their property.
    
    That's the rub, eh?

[Catherine5]

Prav, So glad you have managed to get along in life thus far despite your lack of that Rolex model with wristband of hand-skinned alligator with optional GPS feature!

You're right, of course, that on the scale of "alarms", there's a much bigger picture with which to be concerned.

But still, I am having a good chuckle that this multi-billionaire prelate preached that 'the people' shouldn't indulge in conspicuous consumption exactly at the time his watch was nabbed on film.
The corollary to the rule is apparently that the right of former apparatchiks to sport the most ultra, ultra fancy gadgets is unshakable!
The need to wear such a watch says everything about this genre. They care for worldly things all too deeply.
This could stem only from a wish to impress some personages - but whom precisely? It couldn't be "THE people". Perhaps the Patriarch has more in common with his fellow customer, Marie Antoinette, of "let them eat cake" fame.

Very smart photographer if you ask me. Why did no one catch this before?

I am perplexed at what he meant, that the Earth will not be able to withstand all the consumption?
Can he be speaking of the Earth with a capital E which feels like the Gaia or Goddess Earth-worship in some "green cult" offshoot?!
I'm just joking here, but is he concerned that garbage dumps will now overflow due to the packaging of all those expensive little trinkets purchased by those who will now rush to keep up with the Joneskys & inevitably, the Gundyaevs?

I betcha with this unspiritual mentality, it's no surprise at all that the MP royalty treat ROCOR terrain & staff as their personal fiefdoms to plunder when the fancy strikes....

[Catherine5]

Wonderful article which sums up the patriarchal enforced visit to Ukraine, from the same online news service that brought us The Breguet Watch expose - which, stunningly, seems to have made nary a ripple outside of the Ukraine!
Here's the real truth about what Ukrainians feel about the Russian Patriarch.
Strikes much more of a chord than the UK Guardian article which paints him as a lamb instead of a wolf in ....

http://zik.com.ua/en/news/2009/08/03/190971