Father, Have Mercy on Me!
He knows that he could be killed. He could even be poisoned with the infamous “Chekist novichok” poison or perhaps with special “holy water” from the Kremlin. While fearsome government cannibals in suits continue to advance in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church looks more like a wayward somnambulist muttering about abstract peace and abstract love. All the unlearned history lessons, the cheap cynicism of cowards, the indifference of the masses, the greed of the elites — it’s just background noise. The Real Truth has been crossed out by a huge Z.
The Patriarch’s Golden Cage.
“The Patriarch of Russia cannot openly oppose the war,” observed Father Stefano Caprio, professor of Russian history and culture at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, “because he knows he will be killed”.
Back in 2000, the Italian priest had a remarkable conversation with then-Metropolitan Kirill. Kirill petitioned the Catholic Church for support against certain radical church leaders who were fanatically aligned with the Soviet idea of conquering the whole world.
Now, when the fanfare of hatred is at its loudest, His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia himself “must proclaim the Truth of God” and give his flock blessed guidance. Instead, after murky declarations of peace just after the beginning of the bloodbath in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church quietly blessed those who bombed peaceful cities in search of the mythological Nazi-enemy, invoking the defense of the sacred motherland. For instance, His Holiness Metropolitan Kirill awarded a blessed icon to the leader of the Russian military force Rosgvardiya, praying for a quick Victory over the Nazis.
In his gilded, gleaming attire, His Holiness seems to have deliberately shut himself away in a dark, vomit-soaked, defiled sanctum of political paranoia. Seems like his imagination shares the vision of Ukraine infested with drug addicts and Nazis, which the valiant Russian soldier came to cleanse; the West is a devil’s den full of gays, feminists, and a Pope that leads the general moral degradation.
However, photos of murdered children, raped women, ruined once-peaceful cities, and murdered Russian soldiers are condescendingly dismissed. Those are small sacrifices apparently, specks in the hurricane of the global challenges facing the Mighty Church. Ignorant of their hypocritical “log in the eye,” the church proclaims a belief in its truthful spirituality.
The first significant sermon demonstrating the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC’s) position on the Russian-Ukrainian war was delivered on March 6, Forgiveness Sunday. The orthodox Overlord did not call for forgiveness of enemies or repentance for malice and hatred toward our neighbors; instead, like an ideological twin brother to the autocratic Tsar Putin, Metropolitan Kirill hinted that “forgiveness without justice is surrender and weakness.” Of course, it is necessary to stand on the side of the Light and God’s Truth, and then, in this contextually muddy hodgepodge of spiritual phrases, he blends in the admonition that we should not forget the greatest covenants given by Christ.
Perhaps, His Holiness would be surprised by the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount, where in all its ingenuous simplicity it says, Thou Shall NOT KILL!
There is NOT A SINGLE justification in the New Testament for killing another human being; not for nationality, nor religious views, sexual orientation… there just isn’t any. There are so many places, though, that one can find words of forgiveness and of love for enemies. But clerics, trained for years in Soviet ideology and favored with privilege and comfort, have found it quite easy to rationalize justifications.
For example, as the eloquent Russian priest and well-known blogger Alexander Tkachev does so well. He believes that the evangelical law of forgiveness works only on a “person to person” level and its practical implementation is impossible on a larger scale, as in between countries or governments. Tkachev maintains that “boorish dismissive attitudes toward religion in the spirit of French magazine Charlie Hebdo or disrespectful singers (Pussy Riot) dancing in the Cathedral are too dangerous to be forgiven.” And should be punished accordingly.
A few young female Pussy Riot singers were jailed for their performance in the main Cathedral in Moscow. For many in Russia, even among the faithful, it seemed an overreaction by the church. However, according to Tkachev’s logic: if a crime against society’s rules is committed, then punishment is mandatory, and there can be no question of turning the other cheek.
No other cheek, no mercy, no forgiveness — the church apparently yearns for harsh justice and conveniently relies on the state machine to enforce it.
Something that should be considered to be the prerogative of the state becomes the prerogative of the Church, and vice-versa?
The Church is cowardly, duplicitous; the one entity that could quote the most important commandment from the New Testament — “Thou shalt not kill!” — remains mute, prioritizing its own position and interests rather than the people it is sworn to shepherd.
It is clear why the New Testament and the commandments were written in such simple, unambiguous language: so as not to leave any room for a situational, convenient “truth” of one’s own devising.
However, this does not stop priests from continuing to fervently justify the regime’s actions. Priest Tkachev says bluntly: “Only God knows what kind of filth is brewed there. [He means Ukraine, whose “truth” he has probably learned from government TV channels.] They are now being destroyed by our special forces for the sake of peace in the world.”
He is not at all concerned by the word “destroyed” (read kill). It is now the new normal. Killing is necessary for the sake of peace on earth, which apparently cannot be achieved in any other way.
The priest works himself up into a holy fervor at those who, according to him, have betrayed their homeland. He is not perturbed by the fact that in the same Ukraine, whose people are being saved by Russia, tens of thousands of people are dying from some kind of “liberation operation” that has become an open, bloody massacre. “You want to be peacemakers? No way. A coward doesn’t play hockey,” the priest shouts angrily.
Just for a second…let’s compare the quote from Matthew 5:9 : “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
According to ancient tradition, clerics of the Russian Church like to say that the head of their Church is Christ himself. It feels like an enormous reach nowadays, when “Russian spirituality” has become a tragic manifestation of the idolatry of power, the bastard child of politics and religion.
The Church, with its inarticulate prayers and silence, essentially endorses fratricide, thus disavowing both Christ himself and his teachings by definition.
A devout Russian parishioner called out this new phenomenon: “Today, when the position of the church (the ROC) is difficult to understand, much less accept, for people who hoped to find faith in God’s temple, not ideology, many of us face the question of how to remain in this “church of the wicked”, how to share the cup with them, how has the community of people united by the gospel turned into just another Komsomol? And the advice of “spiritual fathers” to deal with themselves, not the sins of others, does not save us, because without solving this fundamental question for yourself you can’t move forward. What is there to do? I personally do not have the strength to exist in this “…..ianity “.
The call for a universal Christian concept of eternal life was supported by the imperial authorities long ago as a very positive influence on national well-being. We must remember, however, that the very nature of this call is uniquely personal. Christianity is a doctrine deeply revolutionary and extraordinary in its absolutization of the individuality and incomprehensibility of the human person.
In this doctrine, a person has only one vector of spiritual movement — towards God. Christianity as understood by its greatest monks, ascetics, and teachers of the faith is something infinitely greater than a vague nationalistic dogma touting the optimal approach to one’s mundane earthly life.
In its social development, this doctrine is the unconditional embodiment of love for one’s neighbor. All of Christianity is based by and large on these two basic tenets — Love for God and love for people.
The early church was in deep opposition to the state. Christians were mercilessly murdered, given up by the thousands to be eaten by tigers, publicly murdered to the cheers of the Roman mob. This was called martyrdom for Christ: “whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
The relationship with the state was succinctly formulated by Christ as “To Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s,” and “ Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
The philosophy of the Heavenly Kingdom of the crucified Christ is too metaphysically transcendent to serve the interests of the state. Christianity made an unprecedented breakthrough when man walked away, liberated from his tribal, national ties. He could now trace his lineage back to a divine root, to the root of absolute moral clarity, where man could acquire a new image and likeness.
Let it be said that as a phenomenon, the Orthodox Church is much broader and more layered than the state bureaucratic offshoot into which the Russian Orthodox Church has morphed under Putin’s regime. There is still a place for the heroism of brilliant monasticism, as well as steadfast and morally pure priests in small, lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere towns.
One such minority, with a clear stance regarding the war, is exemplified by the priest John Burdin, from a church in Kostroma village where the roads are still a mixture of soft dirt and gravel. His church numbers just over a dozen parishioners. But unlike the “holy” blogger-millionaires, he is not afraid of being imprisoned by the state police for his beliefs, fined and shamed by a cowardly majority of his so-called faithful brethren. In his philosophy, God and man have a very close dialogue and every human action is weighed. Even one’s silence. For him to remain silent would be to acquiesce to murder. In the gospels, Father Burdin sees no evidence of Christ visiting King’s palaces, rather that he consciously distances himself from rulers. “Notice, — father John said, when interpreting “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”: “What Christ offers to give to Caesar — is gold. Not respect, not honor, not obedience. Gold. Knowing Christ’s attitude toward money and riches, we understand the contempt for worldly power in this counsel.”
In a microcosm of what is happening in the Church itself, Father John was reported to the authorities by one of his parishioners — only to have many of the others contribute to paying off the fine that he was assessed for something like “Discrediting Russian Troops.”
The saddest moment in the history of the Russian Church.
They were faithfully waiting for the dawn of the apocalypse, the end of the world, the rebellion of the Antichrist, the Second Coming — as Pharisees they were shortsighted. Satan was breathing heavily just behind their back.
