Analysis

EXCLUSIVE: Foreign affairs expert criticizes Vatican, Orthodox ‘silence’ on life, family issues

'I don't see them formally conceding on (life, family and marriage issues), but silence speaks volumes. Why are they not speaking out more strongly on those issues?' Jim Jatras asked.
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Pope Leo greets Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Vatican, May 19, 2025 Vatican Media

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Vincent Maresca
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(LifeSiteNews) — A retired diplomat and Orthodox Christian told LifeSiteNews that Pope Leo XIV’s meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on November 28 highlights the ambiguity that the heads of both the Catholic and Orthodox churches have shown on life, marriage, and the preservation of a Christian civilization.

International affairs expert Jim Jatras spoke about the stark silence from Catholic and Orthodox hierarchs on the crucial social issues threatening western Christian civilization.

“I don’t see them formally conceding on those things, but silence speaks volumes,” Jatras said. “Why are they not speaking out more strongly on those issues?”

Jatras also critiqued the meeting as part of a significant push toward a distorted notion of ecumenism leading to a “false unity” between the Christian between the Christian churches as well as syncretism with Hindus, Muslims, and Jews.

Jatras acknowledged that while there may be areas of agreement between different people of faith, this all points to a greater agenda.

“I think this is the agenda of the world. There are people, for their own reasons, who want to use religion as a tool under the guise of dialogue and love,” Jatras said. “It is a betrayal of the faith, the traditional faith that each one of us has in our own confession.”

Jatras also spoke about the ongoing persecution of Christians in Ukraine by the Kiev government. He recently joined a group of Orthodox Christians in lobbying Congress on the “violent” persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), Ukraine’s canonical Orthodox Church.

“I was pleased, at least from the meetings I had or from the ones that I heard about, that we did have very good reactions from many people on the Hill,” Jatras said.

He also commented on the accusations by some congressional leaders against the group of colluding with the Russian government, comparing it with tactics used “during the Biden administration, where the FBI was keeping tabs on conservative Catholics, as if they were a potential terrorist threat.”

LifeSiteNews previously reported that the Kiev government under President Volodymyr Zelensky began targeting the UOC since 2023 by evicting monks and seizing churches.

The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has also confirmed in a March 2023 report that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) conducted “searches (some of which it referred to as ‘security measures’) in several monasteries, offices, education facilities and other property of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in Kyiv, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Volyn, Kherson, Ternopil, Poltava and Zakarpattia regions.”

Jatras is a devout Orthodox Christian of Greek origin and retired government official. After finishing law school, he joined the Foreign Service and served for 6 1/2 years, including in the now-defunct Office of Soviet Affairs. He then went on to work for over 17 years in the Republican Leadership of the U.S. Senate, and then as a lobbyist in Washington for several years before retiring.

Though Jatras was raised in the Greek Archdiocese in the United States, he now attends a parish in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Please see below a full transcript of the interview with Jim Jatras:

LifeSiteNews: On November 28, Pope Leo XIV visited Turkey and met Patriarch Bartholomew. They held an ecumenical service among the ruins of the ancient basilica of St. Neophytus, commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicea. Both leaders expressed a desire for unity. Now, we are not theologians, but as many faithful Catholic and Orthodox, We hold to the values of a Christian lifestyle, especially regarding crucial issues concerning the family, marriage, the anthropological, dignity and integrity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God, and of course the respect for human life from the moment of conception. Now in the steps toward the unity undertaken by Pope Leo and Patriarch Bartholomew. Do you see how the respective churches and their leadership will address the issues of life, family, and marriage?

Jim Jatras: The short answer is, I don’t think so. I wish they would, because frankly, from the point of view of an Orthodox Christian who admires a lot about Roman Catholic social teaching and the devotion of Roman Catholics to the principles that you named, I didn’t see a whole lot of focus on that. It seemed that most of the focus was on “he said the creed without the Filioque in it” or things that are more aimed at ecclesiological unity between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church which for reasons which I’m sure we’ll get to is highly problematic and away from the things that you just described. Obviously, without being in communion with one another or being united in an ecclesiological sense, we still can have a great deal of respect for one another and work together on those issues that are so important to human life and, to be honest, the preservation of our civilization; a Christian civilization which is in very severe danger nowadays.

I hope I am not raining on anyone’s parade here, but both Pope Leo and his predecessor, Pope Francis, and Patriarch Bartholomew have been somewhat ambiguous on these issues, in the sense that they said very warm words about mass migration into the Western countries. They focus on all these ridiculous, in my opinion, environmental concerns and things of that sort, that have nothing to do with preserving the kind of human values that you described. I wish they would turn their focus to that.

Would there be any compromises with the Western secular ideology that sanctions abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, surrogacy, and even endless wars?

I don’t see them formally conceding on those things, but silence speaks volumes. Why are they not speaking out more strongly on those issues? And why are they focusing on either of those issues that I just described, or conversely doubling down on the ecclesiological issues, like whether or not you accept the Filioque and things like that, which frankly, I don’t think are going to be resolved. They are hitting their head against the wall in that respect, I just don’t see they are making much progress there. Yet, that’s what they’re putting their focus.

How far has the Catholic and Orthodox churches been influenced by the tenets of modern secular state?

The Church is not of the world, but it is in the world. It is made of human beings that are in the world. And there’s never been a time in history when the secular powers in one way or another, for better or for worse, usually for worse, get their hooks into the Church in some way and try to turn it to their own advantage and their own purposes. Given the different structures that exist in the Roman Catholic Church versus the Orthodox Church, those (influence of secular powers) manifest themselves in somewhat different ways given the different structures that we have. But nonetheless, they’re both strongly influenced.

I would say, this goes back to at least the 1950s during the Cold War. We know that the U.S. government, and the CIA in particular, had very strong influence within the Vatican and within the Ecumenical Patriarchate as well. So, one reason maybe that they get along so well is that they’re reflecting some of the same outside interests that have nothing to do with Christianity.

Why NOW this meeting and is there any geopolitical significance to this meeting?

I think there is. This is something that really has been building for the better part of a century. You can go back to the interwar period, the strong push to create the World Council of Churches, that this whole idea of ecumenism as something that points toward a false unity.

A unity where there is not a true unity of faith. We have much in common, but we also have areas where we disagree, and let’s be honest not just among Christian bodies (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or even Protestant), but syncretism; talking about Hindus, Muslims, Jews and so forth, as if we all have the same God, the same basic values, which in fact we don’t.

I think this is the agenda of the world. There are people for their own reasons who want to use religion under the guise of dialogue and love. I think it is a betrayal of the faith, the traditional faith that each one of us has in our own confession. Again, there are things that we agree with and things that we disagree on. But I don’t think it’s an honest approach to the simple believers in the Church, who simply want to be loyal to the faith of their fathers.

Were other Orthodox Church leaders invited to this historic meeting and was the Moscow Patriarchate invited to this meeting?

The situation between Moscow and Constantinople is quite complex these days. Moscow has suspended communion with Constantinople, but not vice versa. The Patriarch or “Pope” of Alexandria was there. I believe there were representatives of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch although the Patriarchs did not come themselves. As far as I know, none of the other autocephalous churches were there not just Russia, but Serbia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, and so on. I don’t know whether they were not invited or they decided not to show. But in any case it really was pretty much a two man show between Pope Leo and Patriarch Bartholomew.

LifeSite’s CEO John-Henry Westen recently visited Russia and was impressed by the pro-life and pro-family movement there, particularly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. What is your impression of Russian society today when it comes to the issues of life, marriage and family?

It’s complex. Obviously, they had three generations in effect of forced atheism in that society which is far longer than the other countries that fell under Communism at the end of World War II. So the damage done to that society was very great. And you still have a lot of social beliefs, patterns and behaviors that are going to take many more generations to cure.

I think the Church should be more vocal than it is on these issues, but I think they also feel that society needs to be brought along gently and quietly to a more Christian consciousness, before just trying to impose things through political edict which is not the way to approach it. I believe this is a pastoral question on the part of the Patriarchate.

But at the same time, I think that’s a sound impression that there is a growing sense of faith in that society and the Church has re-assumed the kind of very prominent role it had prior to the Revolution, that I think we will see the greater growth of Christian consciousness that will manifest itself in public policy. The abortion rate as fallen quite significantly from what it was during the Soviet times, but it is still way high, much higher than it should be; of course, it should be zero. But at this point it still needs to come down and achieve what is achievable in that direction.

You mentioned that you spent time on the Hill working for the Republican Party. Could you discuss the persecution by the Kiev leadership of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church? And what do you think of the lobbying efforts of different church leaders in Congress that were met with hostility and accusations by some congressional leaders?

I was in fact part of that group that was on Capitol Hill going to congressional offices. I was in the company of two monks from a monastery in West Virginia. One of whom had lived in Ukraine for 12 years and was very close to the monks there. He also had firsthand knowledge of the kind of pressure that was being put on them by the government in Kiev on behalf of the schismatic church created by the Kiev government, with the assistance of the U.S. State Department and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This is a very messy situation within our church, but it really boils down to violence.

They are are violently seizing churches, abusing clergymen, throwing them either in jail or in some cases forcing them into the army and putting them on the front line to be killed; and denying that they are doing that. They seize the churches and then they padlock the churches. The churches stand in, because there’s no clergy or people to go to those churches and nobody wants to go to the fake church, they only want to go to the canonical church. So, it’s a very complex messy situation. I was pleased, at least from the meetings I had or from the ones that I heard about, that we did have very good reactions from many people on the Hill. As far as what you said about those who are making these accusations against us: remember when we saw that during the Biden administration, where the FBI was keeping tabs on, for example, conservative Catholics, as if they were a potential terrorist threat or something of that sort? We’re not yet at the point of a kind of open persecution that you see in Ukraine, but I think there are forces in our country that lead in that direction, who would like to politicize religion and make these kind of political accusations against people whose religious witness they don’t agree with.

The UN and various Orthodox Church leaders have recognized the religious persecution by Kiev. Why has the U.S. Congress, as well as the mainstream media, failed to acknowledge the facts on the ground concerning the violations taking place regarding the human right of religious freedom enshrined in our First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

When you’re losing a military war, because you’re fighting a propaganda war, you want to present everything black and white. If you are presenting everything black and white – the other side is absolutely bad, they’re the devil and our side is the good guys – you can’t admit our side is doing anything wrong. Of course, one of the nice things we had when we were on the Hill is that we had people who were both skeptical or even opposed to American support for Ukraine, and also those who were very strongly supportive of Ukraine in its war against Russia, who felt that this was actually damaging their cause by having this kind of persecution of the majority Church in Ukraine.

You got men at the front fighting against the Russians, whose churches back in their home town or village are being closed down and their parents, grandmother or their parish priest being roughed up by the authorities. What does that do to a country that’s supposed to be defending itself in a war? Nothing useful.

So, I think it’s important to divorce the question of what is now out and open persecution that has no justification, no matter what you think about U.S. support for Ukraine in this war, versus what you think about whether that’s a good idea in a foreign policy point of view.

Early in December, LifeSite held its annual Rome Life Forum in Rome, Italy. At a previous meeting, the now-deceased Cardinal Caffara spoke about a letter written to Sister Lucia of Fatima. She responded in a letter to his question concerning the third secret of Fatima stating that the real crisis facing our current societies is the spiritual battle for the preservation of the family. Two simultaneous questions to conclude our discussion. Do you share the idea that the family is NOW the target of a spiritual warfare in contemporary society? And in light of the Russian Orthodox Churches policies, regarding the preservation of the traditional family, could we say that it is no longer Russia, that it’s spreading “errors”, but the tables have turned and it is now the West that is spreading such “errors”?

I would definitely say that. I look at two aspects of that. On the one hand, you are right, certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and our allies – or satellites, whatever you want to call them – rather than going back to a pre-ideological world of the sort that existed before 1914, they saw the opportunity to create a unipolar world, where we would impose our values on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the values are not Christian values, they’re basically the “sacred rainbow flag,” feminism and multiculturalism and all these things that are destructive of human life.

I think it’s a very bitter fruit both for Americans and for the world that we have this ideological mindset in the ruling establishment in the United States and the other Western countries: London, Paris, Berlin and so forth. That really is a kind of new form of Communism, except it’s rainbow instead of red. In fact, in 1998, I wrote an article about this in Chronicles magazine called “Rainbow Fascism at Home and Abroad.” That’s what it really is and that’s why you do have reactions from countries like Russia, China, and even countries and regimes that I don’t like very much but are not going to succumb to this one-size-fits-all ideology that is so much in parallel to Communism.

The other thing, as far as the family, is even worse than that. Two years ago, I gave a talk to the Ron Paul Institute Conference Student Seminar called “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Extinction Itself.” After all, there are no human beings without families, we don’t come out of test tubes. We come from parents and we’re raised in families. Without the family, there are no human beings. Destroying the family is the means by destroying human life itself, destroying humanity. That notion of culling the human herd, vastly decreasing the numbers of human beings on the planet is either a conscious or in some cases a semi-conscious goal of the ruling circles.

In certainly most of the Western countries and many of the non-Western countries as well, it’s actually a Satanic campaign against human life itself, because human beings bear the image and likeness of God. So it’s also a hatred of God that is being manifested in this hostility and vendetta against God’s greatest creation.

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