Source: The Washington Post
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow
The main spokesman for Kirill’s church went even further: “The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it,” said the head of the church’s public affairs department, Vsevolod Chaplin, in a quote reported by Interfax news agency.
Seven years later, Kirill and his loyal clergy now deliver sermons about their country’s role in another righteous, holy battle. It doesn’t matter that many Ukrainians weathering the brunt of the Russian war machine are Kirill’s co-congregants — there are some 12,000 parishes in Ukraine subject to the church in Moscow. As Russia embarks on a new large-scale offensive in the east of the country, Kirill has articulated little concern about the millions of Ukrainian lives hanging in the balance.
Instead, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has sounded the same sort of ominous and profoundly ideological rhetoric as Putin. He cast the fight as a religious and national drama, an existential battle of good and evil, a clash between Russo-Slavic tradition, values and unity and the corrupting foreign influences festering at Russia’s border.
“We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance,” the patriarch said in a sermon on March 6.
Kirill went on, claiming God was on Russia’s side and expanding his critique of Western liberalism: “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,’ ” he said. “Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible — it is the gay pride parade.”
You may be wondering what LGBT rights have to do with the bloody war in Ukraine. But Kirill has long framed Russian geopolitical challenges in these terms, as the conflict between a conservative, culturally virtuous Russia and a debauched, immoral West. His messaging has undergirded the more secular positions of the Kremlin, helped shape Putin’s own post-Soviet nationalist project and now adds a gloss of legitimacy to a stumbling Russian war effort.
“Any war has to have guns and ideas,” Cyril Hovorun, professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at University College Stockholm, told my colleagues. “In this war, the Kremlin has provided the guns, and I believe the church is providing the ideas.”
As my colleague Jeanne Whalen outlined, Kirill is in particular credited with propagating the doctrine known as “Russkiy mir,” or “Russian world.” It invokes a vision of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine as one nation united by a shared founding history of settlement by Volga Vikings and the 10th century conversion to Orthodox Christianity. Much of that hallowed history, it so happens, took place in locations that are in Ukraine.
“To some ears, this dogma might sound peaceful and inclusive, but critics say Russia is using it to reassert dominance over territory it controlled during the Russian Empire and Soviet Union,” Whalen explained. “Putin has embraced the doctrine in recent speeches, claiming that Ukraine has never really existed as a separate state and has historically belonged to lands led by Russia. Historians say that is flat-out wrong.”
Kirill has explicitly urged Russians to back their government. As Putin’s rule entered an all-the-more repressive phase in recent weeks, the patriarch called for public support for the Kremlin so it can “repel its enemies, both external and internal.” There are already reports of Russian priests losing their jobs after delivering sermons calling for an end to the war and Ukrainian suffering.
So-called “anti-imperialist” leftists in the West often value Putin’s Russia as a counterweight to Washington’s designs as a global hegemon. But the illiberal religiosity underlying the autocrat’s strongman rule has also made Putin a somewhat popular figure among American evangelicals and the religious right.
Hundreds of Orthodox priests in Ukraine and elsewhere, though, are less impressed. More than 320 signed a letter last week accusing Kirill of “heresy” for his warmongering and demanding he be brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal to be deposed.
“Kirill committed moral crimes by blessing the war against Ukraine and fully supporting the aggressive actions of Russian troops on the Ukrainian territory,” they wrote. “It is impossible for us to remain in any form of canonical submission to the Patriarch of Moscow.” (The political tensions between Russia and Ukraine had already led to a split within the latter’s Orthodox community, with some congregations no longer associating themselves with the Moscow patriarchate.)
And counterparts elsewhere have made Kirill aware of their disquiet, too. In a video call last month with Kirill, Pope Francis warned against the use of the Christian cross to justify an invasion and war — Kirill recently presented an icon to a Russian commander in charge of a number of divisions fighting in Ukraine.
“Once upon a time there was also talk in our churches of holy war or just war,” the pope is reported to have told Kirill last month. “Today we cannot speak like this.”
7 Comments
In Islam’s wars there have been cease fire truces during Ramadan but Putin & Kyrill don’t stop killing innocent Orthodox brothers and sisters during Holy Week!
How is it that every Orthodox Hierarch doesn’t condemn this?
George: It appears that the so-called “true” church has met its demise. And, its Hierarchs are “birds of a feather” and flock and support each other.
This unimaginable catastrophe in Ukraine has put a damper on Orthodox Pascha this year. Yet, GOA, OCA and Antiochian parishes are moving ahead as if this situation has not to do with them.
Mr. Karcazes, There is a very important point that has been missed. Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a Greek Melkite priest has written a book “Christian Just War – The Logic of Deceit.” Based on the Pope’s statement, the Catholic Church has become a “peace church.” I pray that every church will become a “peace church.” Due to his advocacy of death, the possession of nuclear weapons, and war, the Patriarch has indeed become a heretic. I believe our Lord would say to Putin and Patriarch Kirill, “Put up your sword into its sheath.” Did He not also say, “He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.”? This is one of the reasons the Jews don’t believe the Messiah hasn’t come yet. There is no world peace.
Mr. Karcazes,
This may be somewhat off target, but perhaps you can give me some insight. I never heard of the late Kay Valone until I read about her on this site. Apparently, she was a strong supporter of one autocephalous Orthodox Church in America. I’ve looked her name up on the web; there is very little about her. If you knew her, in your opinion, was she a saint? I got the impression that she was an angel on earth. Thank you Peter.
Members of ROCOR and the Patriarchal Orthodox jurisdiction in the US…..take notice! You are still under the authority of this man. Think again. Jeff Zdrale
It is long past time for ROCOR and parishes of the Patriarchal Orthodox jurisdiction in the US to sever ties with Moscow and join the OCA.
The OCA was deemed mature enough to be granted autocephaly by Moscow more than fifty years ago.
What kind of autocephaly is that when Moscow still claims to have jurisdiction over parishes in the territory of the OCA?
Putin and Kirill have done the world and Orthodoxy a favor by revealing the naked truth about their bloodthirsty quest for power.
Kirill’s seeking to undermine the primacy of honor of Constantinople by boycotting the Holy and Great Council of 2016 is one thing. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Kirill’s blessing of the slaughter of innocents in a fratricidal war takes their evil partnership to a whole new level.
Putin is a pariah among world leaders. Kirill is a pariah in world Orthodoxy. They both deserve to be rejected by the Russian people.
Putin is a mass murderer. If Hitler were eliminated in 1935, no WWII nor millions murdered or displaced. Putin MUST be eliminated.
+Kirill is a puppet of Putin. The ROC is nothing more than an arm of the Putin govt. If +Kirill gets out of line, he’ll find himself the Bishop of Greater Siberia. As far as any churches around the world that have attached themselves to the ROC & +Kirill, they also are complicit with Putin’s mass murders!