Letter #56, 2022, Mon, Mar 28: Dialogue over?

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Letter #56, 2022, Mon, Mar 28: Dialogue over?

[2022-03-28]

[Engleză]

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Pope Francis met at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana February 12, 2016 — six years ago now. The Pope was traveling to Mexico for a six-day pastoral visit. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“It’s difficult to see how Moscow will be part of any future ecumenical dialogue – even how Russian Orthodoxy will hold together… The Eastern window is, for now, closed.” —American Catholic writer Dr. Robert Royal, writing today in his web blog, The Catholic Thing (link). He believes the Russian Orthodox Church’s position on the Ukraine war will bar the Russian Orthodox from participating in dialogue with other Christians to try to overcome centuries of division. This judgment was sparked in part by the sermon delivered by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on March 6, which has come to be nicknamed “the terrible sermon”

“The Lord, condemning sin, does not condemn the sinner. He only calls him to repentance, but not to ensure that through a sinful person and his behavior, sin becomes a life standard, a variation of human behavior regarded as respected and acceptable. If humanity starts believing that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity agrees that sin is one of the options for human behavior, then human civilization will end there... Therefore, what is happening today in the sphere of international relations has not only political significance. We are talking about something different and much more important than politics. We are talking about human salvation, about where humanity will end up, on which side of God the Savior, who comes into the world as its Judge and Creator, on the right or on the left, we will be.” —Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, in a March 6, 2022 sermon in the Christ the Savior Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, three weeks ago now, which has come to be nicknamed the “terrible sermon.” The specific sin Kirill warned against as something being embraced as “respected and acceptable” in the West was homosexuality. Kirill’s sermon aroused outrage throughout the West (see next quote), where it was interpreted as Kirill’s unacceptable defense of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the consequent deaths of many civilians, as part of an attempt to defend God’s moral law concerning homosexuality

“Surely, there can be different opinions about the Gay Pride parades, and criticizing these events from a religious point of view is also part of religious liberty. However, using them as a pretext to justify the military aggression of another country and the bombing and killing of thousands of women, men, and children, and doing it as a leader of a large religious body giving a sermon in his cathedral, is—to call it with its proper name—a shame and a scandal. The Russian soccer team has been expelled from the World Cup. Shouldn’t the World Council of Churches and the churches in ecumenical dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church take some action after this sermon?” —An editorial note about Kirill’s March 6 sermon from the website Bitter Winter, which defends religious liberty worldwide, especially in China. In essence, the note is suggesting that the Russian Orthodox Church should now, after Kirill’s sermon, be expelled from the World Council of Churches
Letter #56, 2022, Monday, March 28: Dialogue over?

Among all the many issues raised by the war in Ukraine, one is the question of the relations between the Catholic Church (which counts more than 1 billion adherents worldwide) and the Russian Orthodox Church (which counts an estimated 100 million adherents, mostly in Russia).

***

Brief background summary

The Russian Orthodox Church was almost eliminated by the Soviet regime, which ruled Russia from 1917 to 1991, for about 74 years.

Thousands of Russian Orthodox churches were dynamited or demolished, and hundreds of bishops and priests arrested and sent to gulags, where they died.

The Russian people were taught by their new leaders that belief in God was a mental deficiency, that the new “Soviet man” had to set religious faith aside and build a “workers’ paradise” in this world, not in the next.

The Soviet regime allowed a limited space for religious believers, and within this narrow space, believers often “collaborated” to a lesser or greater extent with the regime, for (evident) pragmatic reasons.

When the Soviet regime collapsed in 1991 — now more than 30 years ago — the Russian Orthodox Church (as well as other smaller religious groups in Russia) was permitted a greater freedom in Russian society.

Still, because of the seven decades of collaboration, a certain pattern in which the Church was subordinated to the government had become almost customary.

In a partial reflection of this relationship, when the war in Ukraine began on February 24, now more than a month ago, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, did not condemn the Russian “special operation,” but expressed understanding and support for the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin had set forth as an explanation for his decision.

This was followed two weeks later by a now-famous homily that Kirill delivered on March 6 in Moscow, a homily which has become known as the “terrible sermon.” (A full copy of the sermon is below.)

In this “terrible sermon,” Kirill said that the invasion of Ukraine was part of a “metaphysical” conflict with the West.

***

In Catholic circles, much attention recent days was focused on the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary by Pope Francis on Friday, March 25, Feast of the Annunciation, in Rome.

However, the world’s major media, as far as I can judge, have given little or no attention to this consecration.

***

In this context, it seems fitting to mention once again the figure of a great Russian Orthodox saint, St. Elizabeth Federovna, who was not Russian at all, but — like her sister Alexandra, who married the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II — a German, and a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria of England. (The sisters spoke English fluently.)

Elizabeth’s husband, Grand Duke Serge, was assassinated by a bomb thrown into his carriage in front of his Moscow home in 1905.

Elizabeth, childless and widowed, then entered religious life, becoming a nun in the Russian Orthodox Church, slowly drawing other women to her new order, taking care of poor and abandoned children.

Elizabeth was arrested after the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917.

She was brought to the Ural Mountains, and on July 18, 1918, was thrown down an abandoned mineshaft in a little village not far from Ekaterinburg — the place where her sister and the entire family of Nicholas II were executed on July 17, 1918 — and, after three days, died.

The veneration by the Russian people for Elizabeth, this great non-ethnic Russian saint, seems a clear sign of a spiritual universality that may be found within Russian Orthodoxy, so… a sign of hope for us, even as these present tragedies, which cause so much horrific suffering, drive us to our knees with prayers to ask for the miracle — in circumstances that would seem to exclude it — of an end to this war and the return of peace.

For this reason, we hope that the “eastern window” mentioned by Robert Royal at the end of his essay (see below) may yet be kept open, so that the dialogue necessary to prepare any peace agreement may be possible.—RM
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Theology and Human Conflicts (link)

Robert Royal

Monday, March 28, 2022

Cardinal Manning – a contemporary and follower of Cardinal Newman – once remarked that “All human conflict is ultimately theological.” (You could even say all things human inevitably involve theology, but that’s a complex subject for another day.)

In Russia’s current war against Ukraine, the theology is not an ultimate consideration. It’s near the surface.

Even if the war ends in some tolerable outcome, the theological divisions are going to be with us for a long time.

Because it’s not only Vladimir Putin who has declared Ukraine a “holy war,” but also religious leaders such as Moscow Patriarch Kirill.

Putin is cynically using the Orthodox as moral cover for his ambitions.

But he’s also intuited that to “make Russia great again,” Russian Orthodoxy – the bearer of many deep elements in the myth of Holy Mother Russia and its secular projection, “Russian world” – is crucial to the political plan.

The Russian Orthodox leaders have no such political excuse.

In fact, we now see not only political corruption among compromised Russian religious leaders, but a deep spiritual divide that was somewhat covered over by professions of Christian brotherhood.

There are even Christians in the West who, traumatized by our decadence and woke-ism, have convinced themselves that Putin’s Russia – with its generalized repression, assassination of dissidents (even abroad), and the highest rate of abortion in the world – is somehow a religious savior.

Several recent popes have made serious efforts to heal the schism between Rome and Orthodoxy – and have generally been rebuffed.

Before the war started, Pope Francis was seeking a second meeting with Patriarch Kirill. The first took place in 2016 at the Havana airport.

Agreeing to that pariah venue was bad, but at least both leaders expressed a “deep desire” for unity.

And the pope said of the meeting “We spoke as brothers.”

That fraternal spirit has not lasted.

During their Zoom meeting earlier this month, Francis seems to have boldly chided Kirill, for claiming the Ukrainian “special military action” is “holy war.”

Francis made an even bolder move on Friday with the consecration of Russia, Ukraine, and the whole world to Our Lady of Fatima. Kirill and Putin know that Our Lady asked for that consecration to stop Russia’s errors from spreading and to bring about the nation’s conversion. Kudos to Francis for doing both things, whatever objections may have come his way.

Unfortunately, Francis also contradicted the whole Christian tradition in the meeting with Kirill with the claim that all wars are unjust.

Just this past week, he added while speaking to a coalition of women’s groups, “I was embarrassed when I read that a group of states have committed to spending two percent. . . of GDP in acquiring weapons as a response to what is happening now. Madness.”

And he deplored “the old logic of power that still dominates so-called geopolitics.”

Indeed, it does – and will, so long as fallen human beings continue to exist on earth. Which is why some powers – imperfect, historically and morally – must at times stop the most ruthless among us from dominating the world.

(continued below)

Here, a photo showing Patriarch Kirill walking behind Vladimir Putin

It’s not “madness” when nations decide on defense budgets in light of the threats they face. Given an aggressive Russia, political leaders are merely being responsible in beefing up national defenses, late though it’s coming.

Francis seems to think that “dialogue,” not deterrence, is the only permissible Christian response to threats.

You may appreciate his horror at war without accepting that premise.

Dialogue has not even brought religious agreement with Kirill.

Putin, I’m sure, would love to see dialogue, endless dialogue – in the churches, NATO, American politics – while he moves on one nation after another.

The Ukrainians take a different view. Which is why they’re still standing, and Russia has had to turn to lesser ambitions in Ukraine.

The fall of the Soviet Union opened up some possibilities – for both the churches and Russia.

The Russian Orthodox Church – the largest of Orthodox bodies – was both persecuted and compromised under Communism.

In his collaboration – perhaps even active work – with the KGB, Kirillplayed a shameful role in that unholy compromise.

He’s compromised himself again – alienating most Orthodox in Ukraine in the process by blessing Putin’s slaughters.

Under the circumstances, it’s difficult to see how Moscow will be part of any future ecumenical dialogue – even how Russian Orthodoxy will hold together.

The Great Schism (1054) between the Western Church and the Orthodox is almost a millennium old, and is painful because – filioque questions notwithstanding – it’s more a matter of jurisdictions and governance than doctrine.

Orthodox bishops, priests, sacraments are not only valid in Catholic understanding; the rich spiritual and liturgical traditions of the East contain much that should be integrated into a global and universal Church.

Jesus Himself prayed for an ecclesial unity like His own unity with the Father. Christians haven’t been very good at that high – and admittedly demanding – calling. (Jn. 17:21)

In his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint (“That They All May Be One”), St. John Paul II spoke of the kind of true ecumenism – not the flabby, sentimental version common in Western “ecumenical” discussions – as rooted in the historical reality and spiritual substance of East and West: “The Church must breathe with her two lungs! In the first millennium of the history of Christianity, this expression refers primarily to the relationship between Byzantium and Rome. From the time of the Baptism of Rus’ it comes to have an even wider application: evangelization spread to a much vaster area, so that it now includes the entire Church. If we then consider that the salvific event which took place on the banks of the Dnieper goes back to a time when the Church in the East and the Church in the West were not divided, we understand clearly that the vision of the full communion to be sought is that of unity in legitimate diversity.”

Pope Francis, too, has spoken of unity without uniformity.

His task, going forward, will be to practice what he preaches within the Western Church.

The Eastern window is, for now, closed.

[End, Robert Royal essay]
A Terrible Sermon: Patriarch of Moscow Blesses “Metaphysical” War Against the “World of Gay Prides” (link)

03/07/2022

By BITTER WINTER

On March 6, ironically Forgiveness Sunday for the Orthodox, Patriarch Kirill abandoned all caution and blessed the war of aggression against Ukraine and the “false freedom” of democratic countries.

by Bitter Winter

The Patriarch at the Forgiveness Sunday service on March 6, 2022. From Telegram.

Note by the Bitter Winter website: We publish the translation of the integral version of the sermon delivered by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on March 6, 2022, in the Cathedral of the Holy Savior in Moscow. Our readers may judge for themselves. Surely, there can be different opinions about the Gay Pride parades, and criticizing these events from a religious point of view is also part of religious liberty. However, using them as a pretext to justify the military aggression of another country and the bombing and killing of thousands of women, men, and children, and doing it as a leader of a large religious body giving a sermon in his cathedral, is—to call it with its proper name—a shame and a scandal. The Russian soccer team has been expelled from the World Cup. Shouldn’t the World Council of Churches and the churches in ecumenical dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church take some action after this sermon? Should not the international pro-family movement itself denounce the manipulation of its values to justify aggression and war?
Forgiveness Sunday Sermon

March 6, 2022

By Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

I heartily congratulate all of you, my dear authorities, fathers, brothers and sisters, on this Sunday, on Forgiveness Sunday, on the last Sunday before the start of the Holy Forty Days, the Great Lent!

The Great Lent is called by many ascetics the spiritual spring. It coincides with the physical spring and at the same time is perceived by the consciousness of the Church as a spiritual spring. What is spring? Spring is the rebirth of life, it is renewal, it is new strength. We know that it is in the spring that a powerful juice breaks through to a height of ten, twenty, one hundred meters, reviving the trees.

This is truly an amazing miracle of God, a miracle of life. Spring is the rebirth of life; it is a great symbol of life.

And therefore, it is not at all accidental that the main spring holiday is the Easter of the Lord, which is also a sign, a symbol of eternal life.

And we believe that this is so, which means that the entire Christian faith that we share with you is a faith that affirms life, which is against death, against destruction, which affirms the need to follow Divine laws, in order to live, in order not to perish either in this world or in the world to come.

But we know that this spring has been overshadowed by grave events related to the deterioration of the political situation in the Donbass, almost the beginning of hostilities. I would like to say something on this subject.

For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in the Donbass.

And in the Donbass there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power.

Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order, a kind of pass to that “happy” world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false “freedom.”

Do you know what this test is?

The test is very simple and at the same time terrible—it is the Gay Pride parade.

The demands on many to hold a gay parade are a test of their loyalty to the new world order; and we know that if people or countries reject these demands, then they do not enter into that world order, they become strangers to it.

But we know what this sin is, which is promoted through the so-called Prides.

This is a sin that is condemned by the Word of God, both the Old and the New Testament.

Moreover, the Lord, condemning sin, does not condemn the sinner.

He only calls him to repentance, but not to ensure that through a sinful person and his behavior, sin becomes a life standard, a variation of human behavior regarded as respected and acceptable.

If humanity starts believing that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity agrees that sin is one of the options for human behavior, then human civilization will end there.

And Gay Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one of the legitimate variations of human behavior.

That is why in order to enter the club of those “free” countries, it is necessary to hold a Gay Pride parade.

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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