nationalism

In the New York Times, Sophia Kishkovsky files a report on Patriarch Kirill’s recent youth rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg where he struck both nationalist and highly personal tones.

Patriarch Kirill also did not mention America, but said immoral economies are doomed to collapse. “An economic system built only on the striving for profit, on indifference to the fate of people, on disregard for moral norms, is deprived of stability and can collapse at any moment, burying the fate of people under its rubble,” he said.

Here in St. Petersburg, Patriarch Kirill struck a much more personal tone. He made a generous reference to Martin Luther King Jr. — whom Kirill said he met in 1968 — and his “I Have a Dream” speech, and stressed the importance of true love and of striving for ideals.

“He wasn’t a dreamer, he was a brilliant politician, orator, and Christian pastor,” Patriarch Kirill said of Dr. King, addressing some 8,000 students. “But he had a dream, and this dream led to very concrete achievements.”

Some analysts compliment the patriarch for his charisma:

To some Russian observers, Patriarch Kirill has taken a page from Pope John Paul II, who was often regarded with suspicion by Russian church men.

“He is copying John Paul II, who had charisma,” said Anatoly Krasikov, director of the Center for Religious and Social Studies of the Institute of Europe in Moscow and formerly a journalist on Vatican affairs for the state-run Itar-Tass news agency. “Kirill is the only Orthodox figure here who has that gift.”

In Moscow and St. Petersburg, aspects of Patriarch Kirill’s rallies suggested at least an element of coercion. The stiffer Moscow gathering evoked meetings of the Kremlin youth movement, Nashi (Ours), while in St. Petersburg students said they had been encouraged, though not forced, to attend by their colleges, which had informed them of the meeting anywhere from two weeks to hours before the event. Two young women were seen outside meeting their dean, who was distributing tickets. While they had been asked to attend, they considered it an honor.

Read “New Orthodox Patriarch Pulls No Punches” here.

The anarchists that sank Greece into a near state of chaos late last year are now taking aim at the Church:

Greece is seeing an unprecedented spate of terrorist attacks against churches. Among the churches that were hit, in one case during religious service, were the Athens Metropolitan Church, the Piraeus Metropolitan Church, and the Church of St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki. Greek media have described these attacks, the likes of which Greece has not seen even when the country was under occupation, as a “declaration of war against the Church of Greece.”

All of the bombs were defused in time and only one, at Agia Triada in Pireaus, caused minor damage. The organization “Conspiracy of the Nuclei of Fire – Commandos” along with “The Nihilist Faction” assumed responsibility for the attack and in a manifesto claimed “Religion is a mechanism of power that plays a particularly devious role in subjugating people.” Authorities in Greece are taking the attacks very seriously, especially in view of the Easter period during which thousands of the faithful will congregate at the country’s churches.

Something very dark is going on here. The Orthodox Church, which has served as the ark of nationalist — indeed racial — Hellenism since liberation from the Ottomans in the 19th century, is now under attack in Greece. This violent turn, which authorities are rightly taking “very seriously,” comes at a time when the Church, embroiled in one scandal after another in recent years, is fast losing the respect and trust of Greeks.

An opinion poll conducted in December for the newspaper Kathimerini asked people to rank their most trusted institutions. The Orthodox Church ranked only 22nd, dropping from 15th place in the previous poll. The pollsters surmised that the scandals involving shady land deals linked to the Vatopedi Monastery was a contributing factor. Apparently, not all Athonite monks spend their days toiling in the fields. (To see a depressing catalog of corruption by Greek hierarchs, skip to the bottom of this post.)

Let’s raise a question concerning matters closer to home: If Hellenism is falling out of favor in Greece, where does that leave the “Hellenism and Orthodoxy” project that is being promoted by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America? The GOA has raised $28 million so far to see this program through. No doubt many good things — scholarships, computer labs, Oratorical Festival awards — are funded with these dollars. But none of these projects have anything to do with Hellenism, if by that term we are referring to its theological expression, the marriage of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Continue reading →

In June, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America delivered a talk on “Episcopacy, Primacy, and the Mother Churches: A Monastic Perspective” at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary. The audio of the talk is available on Ancient Faith Radio along with the other presentations from the conference. The PDF version of Metropolitan Jonah’s presentation is available on the OCA site, where the Church is also archiving his articles and speeches.

On the subject of the Mother Churches and the “Diaspora,” Metropolitan Jonah has this to say:

… almost all national Churches have extended their jurisdictions beyond their geographic and political boundaries to the so-called diaspora. But Orthodox Christians who are faithful to the Gospel and the Fathers cannot admit of any such thing as a diaspora of Christians. Only ethnic groups can be dispersed among other ethnic groups. Yet the essential principle of geographic canonical boundaries of episcopal and synodal jurisdiction has been abrogated, and every patriarchate, every mother Church, now effectively claims universal jurisdiction to serve “its” people in “diaspora.” Given this fact, on what basis do we object to the Roman Papacy?

This situation arose in reaction to the mass emigration of Orthodox from their home countries, and is continued as a means of serving the needs of these immigrant communities. It is perpetuated as a means of maintaining ethnic, cultural and political identity for those away from their home country; but also as a means of financial support for the mother churches from their children abroad.

The confusion of ethnic identity and Orthodox Christian identity, expressed by competing ecclesiastical jurisdictions, is the incarnation of phyletism. Due to this confusion of the Gospel with ethnic or political identities, multiple parallel communities, each with its own allegiance to a foreign mother church, divide the Orthodox Church in North America and elsewhere into ethnic and political denominations. This distorts the Apostolic vision, and has severely compromised the catholicity of the Orthodox Churches, in which all Christians in a given territory are called to submit to a local synod of bishops.

The problem is not so much the multiple overlapping jurisdictions, each ministering to diverse elements of the population. This could be adapted as a means of dealing with the legitimate diversity of ministries within a local or national Church. The problem is that there is no common expression of unity that supersedes ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions: there is no synod of bishops responsible for all the churches in America, and no primacy or point of accountability in the Orthodox world with the authority to correct such a situation.