The Russian Orthodox Church supported Russia's aggression against Ukraine – everyone knows this today. For some time, hierarchs and church diplomats still tried to say that this was not so – they say, there were no direct statements and there will not be. But let's leave these clumsy attempts at justification on their conscience. During the ten months of the war, enough has been said and done not only to understand the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, but also for future investigations into the complicity of clergy in war crimes. And it is primarily about using pseudo-theological arguments to justify Russian aggression and the genocide of Ukrainians.
In my opinion, what is happening in recent months is most similar to the attempted suicide of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is impossible to imagine that the ROC in the foreseeable future will remain in the form in which it has existed for the last 30, and most likely all 80 years, from the day when Stalin decided to end the era of persecution of the Church and allowed her to exist legally in the Soviet Union.
State versus evangelical
The position of Patriarch Kirill, who claims to express the official position of the entire Church, surprised many – laity and parish priests, the episcopate of other local Orthodox churches, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope of Rome.
After recovering from the shock, many try to analyze what is happening. And the main question is why? Why did the Church so sincerely and so clearly support the war? This question has to be asked again and again, because there is no simple answer to it. However, various options for comments will certainly be offered. The general idea of what the future holds for the Russian Orthodox Church depends on them. We will not talk in detail about those who believe that everything is in order and there is nothing shameful that the Russian Orthodox Church fully agrees with the Kremlin.
But there are at least three other groups.
There are those who are extremely emotional and literally like a betrayal are experiencing the final turn of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the Kremlin. Such people are most often sharply disappointed and leave the Church. The secular world is rapidly expanding and embraces the disillusioned. According to my observations, this is happening not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine.
There are those who hid and are silent. They are depressed both spiritually and emotionally and cannot make a choice. It is physically painful for many of them to hear the name of Patriarch Kirill, who is commemorated in every church as the “great lord and father” of all Orthodox Christians in Russia and the post-Soviet space. These words sound too false to be simply ignored, ignored.
But what to do? There is no serious alternative, it is impossible to go to another Church. You can either slam the door and go into the space of the secular, or continue to endure, each time bitterly admitting to yourself in the depths of your heart that the name of Patriarch Kirill is completely hateful.
You can slam the door and leave the Church, or endure, bitterly admitting that the name of the patriarch has become completely hated
There is a third group that sees a more complex picture and tries to distinguish between the Church that obligingly bowed before state power and the one that strives to bear the gospel witness.
The first is the "official Church". She feels comfortable only when she is inextricably linked with the state, and, preaching an almost religious faith in the empire, receives both financial and political dividends for this. Before the war, from the point of view of prospects, this looked incredibly attractive both for the episcopate and for the entire church bureaucracy. The bishop in the regional center felt like a "second governor", and the permanent members of the Supreme Church Council considered themselves almost class "A" officials. At the same time, the patriarch enjoys the environment of the employees of the Department of Personal Protection of the FSO and confidently enters the top ten of the first persons of the state in full accordance with the state protocol.
The bishop in the region felt like a “second governor”, and the members of the church council felt like class “A” officials
But what is the “second Church”? She is neither seen nor heard. Is she silent? Did you go into internal emigration? Too small to be seen with the naked eye? There is no exact answer to these questions. Familiar priests say that in general, no more than 20% of parishioners oppose the war, and those with whom priests can speak frankly are literally few.
Only a few Orthodox priests, monks and laity spoke out publicly against the war. It is noteworthy that bishops are not noticed at all in the anti-war movement. There are at least dozens of those who clearly support aggression, but not a single one among those who openly opposed the war.
Is it possible to say that the silence of the episcopate is a sentence for the entire Russian Church? In a sense, yes, but a caveat is needed here: at first glance, this suggests that 100% of the Russian episcopate demonstrates complete loyalty to state power.
However, it is possible that one should speak of silence as one of the variants of resistance. It turns out that there are two types of silence. And how can they be distinguished then? How is silence as consent different from silence as protest? What other signaling systems might indicate that a bishop's stance is anti-war? I assume that such signs still exist. For example, the readiness not to forbid the ministry of priests who opposed the war. Of course, these are isolated cases and it is not worth calling these bishops by name now. Nevertheless, it is known that this is not one, not two or three people.
New martyrs as a pious but empty sound
For decades, priests and bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church preached about the feat of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, whom the Soviet authorities shot, sent to the Gulag, oppressed and destroyed by all available means. Is the canonization of more than a thousand saints, churches in their memory and sermons about their unshakable standing in the faith – just a "theory", a pious sigh? It seems so. The ROC only outwardly, formally honors the memory of those who, inspired by the Gospel, resisted totalitarian power.
Back in 2011, church functionaries guessed to lay a straw for themselves. In the document , which received a rather cumbersome bureaucratic title “On Measures to Preserve the Memory of the New Martyrs, Confessors and All the Innocents of the God-Fighters in the Years of the Victims of Persecution,” there is an important formula for understanding the ideology of the official Church: “The feat of the New Martyrs and Confessors testifies to their opposition to theomachy, the state as such." As far as I remember, the authorship belongs to Vladimir Legoyda, a graduate of MGIMO and chairman of the Synodal Department for the interaction of the Church with society and the media. This formulation was subsequently ardently supported by many, including Patriarch Kirill.
Their credo is formulated very clearly: no matter what happens, the state cannot be blamed. This is an insidious distortion of the Gospel. But it is precisely on such distortions that the views of the official Church are built. Can this belief system be called heresy? Is it possible to make a theological analysis and, for example, condemn these views as heresy? The question is not as simple as it seems, although we see that there are a number of theologians who, at the very beginning of the war, wrote a “Declaration on the doctrine of the “Russian world”.” They offered a conceptual description of the “Russian world”, albeit not a complete one, and wanted to qualify it as a heresy, but at the last moment before publication they softened the wording. They used the term "a kind of Orthodox ethnophyletic fundamentalism". In the same logic, at the beginning of December, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew criticized the Russian Orthodox Church, but nevertheless refrained from direct accusations of heresy.
What will happen next? It is possible that the dispute about the new heresy that comes from Russia (whether it will be called the heresy of the “Russian world” or something else) will become a central topic for theological disputes at least in the coming 2023. And this is natural. The Russian Orthodox Church has replaced the Gospel with an explosive mixture of conspiracy theories, paganism and imperialism, multiplied by deeply Soviet complexes of searching for external and internal enemies.
The Russian Orthodox Church has replaced the Gospel with an explosive mixture of conspiracy theories, paganism and imperialism, multiplied by Soviet complexes
Both Patriarch Kirill and preachers popular in Russia are trying to dress up this entire complex of contradictory views in church clothes, to give them a theological justification and justification. And Russian politicians, in turn, are trying to play along with them and use increasingly radical rhetoric, the apex of which is calls for the “desatanization” of Ukraine.
What will happen to Russian Orthodoxy, which, without any resistance, allows itself to be used as a means of state propaganda?
The consequence of the complete and unconditional justification of the war will be the inevitable collapse of the official Church. But the problem is that the official Church claims to be total. She herself believes that there is no other Church, and firmly holds in her hands a monopoly on Orthodoxy in Russia.
The consequence of the complete and unconditional justification of the war will be the inevitable collapse of the official Church
The "Second Church" will most likely go underground and will not publicly oppose the official Church. And this means that today the only hope is connected with the voice of Orthodoxy that will sound from other countries. Is there any chance that the local Orthodox Churches will openly declare their position and condemn Patriarch Kirill and his "theology of war"? I think there is a chance today. And this will be an important and necessary step towards the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church.
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