Russian Orthodox

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.

On the Get Relgion blog, Terry Mattingly describes a trip he made to Kiev to speak to Ukrainian journalists “about the challenges of covering religion news in mainstream press.” He looks at the divisions among Orthodox Churches in the Ukraine, which is set against the long running antagonisms that exist between that country and Russia. “You see, right now almost anything can create tensions between Ukraine and Russia,” Mattingly writes. “A ceremony with clergy linked to Moscow would create tensions in some circles. A ceremony without clergy linked to Moscow would create tensions in others. The symbolism has political content either way.” He also writes about his trip to Kiev for his Scripps News column. Here’s how he begins:

Merely saying the forest’s name — Bykivnya — can cause strong emotions for millions of Ukrainians.

This is where the secret police of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin buried 100,000 of their victims between 1937 and 1941 in a mass grave northeast of Kiev. President Victor Yushchenko did not mince words during his recent speech there, on Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression.

“Here, at Bykivnya, Stalin and his monstrous hangmen killed the bloom of Ukraine. There is no forgiveness and there will be none,” he told several thousand mourners and, of course, Ukrainian journalists.

The mourners wept, while processing through the site behind Orthodox clergy who carried liturgical banners containing iconic images of Jesus and Mary.

“Because of the national symbolism of this ceremony, the priests there may not be important,” said Victor Yelensky, a sociologist of religion associated with the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

“But the priests have to be there because this is Ukraine and this is a ceremony that is about a great tragedy in the history of Ukraine.

“So the priests are there. It is part … of a civil religion.”

This is where the story gets complicated. In the Ukrainian media, photographs and video images showed the clergy, with their dramatic banners and colorful vestments. However, in their reporting, journalists never mentioned what the clergy said or did.

Mainstream media reports also failed to mention which Orthodoxy body or bodies were represented. This is an important gap, because of the tense and complicated nature of the religious marketplace in this historically Eastern Orthodox culture.

It would have been big news, for example, if clergy from the giant Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) — with direct ties to Moscow — had taken part in a ceremony that featured Yushchenko, who, as usual, aimed angry words to the north.

But what if the clergy were exclusively from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarchate), born after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and linked to declarations of Ukrainian independence? What if there were also clergy from a third body, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, born early in the 20th century?

A rite featuring clergy from one or both of these newer churches also would have been symbolic. After all, these days almost anything can create tensions between Ukraine and Russia, from natural gas prices to efforts to emphasize the Ukrainian language, from exhibits of uniquely Ukrainian art to decisions about which statues are torn down (almost anything Soviet) or which statues are erected (such as one of Ivan Mazepa, labeled a traitor by Russia after his 18th century efforts to boost Ukrainian independence).

Read “Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine rent by divisions” on the Scripps News site.

RIA Novosti is running a series on Russia’s religious sects. The news service takes a look at the history of some of these groups and their leaders, and also asks “why Russia has proved such fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs.” Part one:

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti’s Marc Bennetts) – Russia has seen a colossal number of sects and fringe religions throughout its long history, from the 18th-century self-castrating Skoptsy to the modern-day doomsday cult whose members threatened to burn themselves alive in the Volga Region last year.

Up until the mid 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed complete spiritual authority. However, in 1666, Patriarch Nikon decided to bring the Russian Church in line with Greek Orthodoxy, and ordered the rewriting of ecclesiastical tomes.

His move, in a country where dogma and tradition had always played a large role in religious life, caused an uproar.

Nikon’s assertion that Orthodox believers should use three fingers instead of two to cross themselves led to him being labeled the Antichrist by opponents of his changes. Pious Russians had long feared the year 1666, with its satanic associations, and Nikon’s actions seemed to them to be a sign that the Apocalypse was fast approaching.

The Old Believers subsequently fled to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia to escape persecution and await the end of the world. Some of the groups cut themselves off so effectively that isolated communities that knew little of developments in the modern world were still being found in the 1960s and 1970s by Soviet geological expeditions.

This 17th century rejection of the Church’s authority laid the roots for a subsequent explosion of sects and cults, many of them fixating on a single piece of scripture, or an interpretation of scripture, and basing their entire belief system around it. Continue reading →

Good coverage in the New York Times about the dedication on Sunday of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine on the grounds of the Russian Embassy in Rome.

From Russian Orthodox Consecrate Parish in Rome:

“Today is a special event,” said Andrey Shumkin, a priest with the delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate, “and the presence of two cardinals here is a visual sign of collaboration.”

Cardinal Kasper said that “a lot of progress” between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox church had been made in the last 10 years. Both sides have demonstrated a willingness to discuss, as have the pope and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, he said. A meeting between the two will come “when the time is mature,” he said.

And, from the advance story, Relations Warm Between Russian Orthodox Church and Vatican:

Reflecting Russia’s geopolitical dance with Europe, the Moscow Patriarchate has found common ground with Benedict, and since Patriarch Kirill was enthroned, he has appointed church officials who portray the pope as a like-minded man of the church, not politics.

“This pope, in contrast to the previous one, doesn’t strive to always be politically correct,” said Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, an Oxford-educated theologian who was until recently the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Vienna and Austria and the Russian Church’s representative to European institutions. “He believes he must speak of the teachings of the Catholic church. The task of such a church figure, especially of such rank, is to clearly state the teaching of the church, even if it doesn’t correspond to contemporary standards of political correctness.” Continue reading →

Russia’s new patriarch is “proving to be a capable administrator” and has surrounded himself with a team of “well-trained and capable younger clerics,” say Leonid Sevastyanov and Robert Moynihan in the Moscow Times. In “100 Days of Patriarch Kirill,” the writers also say that the new leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has a “fully European” vision for his ministry.

Kirill now heads a church with about 140 million adherents, far larger than the Anglican Church and second only to the Roman Catholic Church. With a significant percent of Orthodox believers living outside Russia, this gives the church a truly global reach.

But statistics are less important than suffering and faith. The Russian Orthodox Church suffered greatly under Soviet rule. Now it has re-emerged from the catacombs following the collapse of the Soviet Union 17 years ago to take on a greater role in post-Soviet Russia.

Despite the enormous challenges that the Orthodox Church faces, now is the time of promise and hope for a country that has become highly secularized. Kirill evidently hopes that it will be a “Orthodox moment” for the church as well as the country.

One of Pope John Paul II’s most important goals was to put an end to the scourge of atheist communism, and Pope Benedict XVI still passionately hopes to see the restoration of a unified church. While Kirill has not spoken in terms of unification, he has helped improved ties with Rome. This explains why Benedict has made numerous gestures toward Kirill of welcome and appreciation since the moment that he was elected patriarch on Jan. 27.