Stefano Caprio
(ZENIT News – Asia News / Rome, 12.09.2024).- The Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill (Gundyaev), chaired the 26th World Russian People’s Council, centre on the theme the «Russian World: External and Internal Challenges», assisted by the Chancellor of the Patriarchate, Metropolitan Grigory (Petrov), and other Church and cultural figures, like Prof Alexander Shchipkov, rector of the Russian Orthodox University of Saint John the Theologian.
Few senior political leaders were present. One of Putin’s closest aides, Sergey Kirienko, read a hasty greeting from the president, betraying a certain jealousy towards the patriarch, who has tried lately to distance himself from the head of state, stressing his superiority in the relationship between Russia’s political and clerical power.
By contrast, senior Orthodox clerics could be seen in great numbers, including bishops, priests and monks, with some Members of the Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament), as well as academics and representatives of other religions.
The meeting began with the national anthem of the Russian Federation, broadcast live on Soyuz and Spas, two Orthodox-patriotic TV stations, as well as on the Moscow Patriarchate’s official website.
The patriarch thanked President Putin for his «participation in the formation of state policy, which is supported by the Church and the World Russian People’s Council», giving a nod to the fact that the latter was created in the 1990s before Putin took power, at the initiative of then Metropolitan Kirill.
The patriarch is trying to highlight his role as the country’s ideological supremo, elaborating a «policy aimed at the affirmation of freedom, independence, the authentic independence of our homeland in freedom, and at the same time holding those traditional values that are the basis of our civilisation.”
The patriarch has laid claim to the fundamental contents of Putin’s policy, which the Church has proposed since the chaotic years of Yeltsin’s openings to the West, noting that «tradition is the transmission of everything that is important, indispensable and useful for people, what constitutes the pledge of their well-being and their future.”
To avoid misunderstandings, given the increasingly fanciful interpretations of «traditional values» by Russian politicians and propagandists, the patriarch said that «Orthodoxy is the traditional faith, and we affirm that the Church herself transmits these very important values and meanings from generation to generation over time, through the teaching of doctrine, prayer, the education of people’s spiritual and theoretical convictions, and for this reason the Church is the main factor in delivering values to the contemporary world.”
Kirill praises the «particular model of collaboration between Church and State in our country», which «has never been seen in the past», thus placing “Tsar” Putin above all princes, emperors, and party secretaries of previous centuries, with himself above all patriarchs, and not only of Moscow, so that today «the potential of the Church in holding values is realised at the highest possible level.”
According to this interpretation, there has never been a more Christian state than today’s Russia. Indeed, “previous generations could only dream of such a perfect system», Kirill said, in which «the Church lives in absolute freedom, no one interferes in her activities, and the state addresses her mission with great respect», collaborating above all in educating children and young people and creating “a healthy cultural climate in the country”. For the head of the Russian Orthodoxy, without all these things, “our people would lose their identity.”
He emphasised the aspects of the special relationship between Church and State in Russia citing three notions, interaction (vzaimodeystviye, взаимодействие), dialogue, and collaboration (sorabotnichestvo, соработничество, in archaic Russian), three parts of the same concept to enhance both practical decision-making, ideological harmony, and the «equality of effectiveness» of the two entities.
In reality, the Russian Orthodox Church has recently not been particularly in tune with state institutions at various levels on at least two topics.
The first concerns demographic growth, a topic Putin has stressed since the start of his presidency, a quarter of a century ago, without any results. In 2000, Russia’s population was close to 150 million, while at present it risks falling below 140, if the forcibly «annexed» populations of Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbass regions are not counted.
To stimulate the birthrate, Russia’s parliament has gone as far as to suggest subsidies and support of all kinds for girls aged 13 and over, regardless of their marital status, with an obsessive propaganda centred on «just get pregnant», then the state will take care of it, quite an unorthodox form of propaganda.
The Church would rather see a more incisive campaign to ban abortions even in private clinics, which all regional administrations reject.
This push for births “at any cost” has taken an unpleasant turn for the Church’s traditions when it comes to blasting «child-free propaganda,» i.e. lifestyles that are not oriented towards couples having babies, like the great Orthodox monastic tradition, which only after much insistence was exempted from the new measures.
In the Russian Church, diocesan and parish priests must marry and have many children, constituting a de facto «priestly caste», but the Church leadership is drawn exclusively from the monks, who are the great preachers of patriotic faith and holy war, to be honoured and exalted without casting unnecessary shadows on their life, like having children.
The other stance that has greatly annoyed the Orthodox clergy was the absolute prohibition, reinforced by laws, of praying in private homes, which was intended to target Evangelical and Pentecostal communities, not to mention Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, but ended up hindering the activities of Orthodox (and Catholic) priests who bless homes and meet the faithful, especially in winter and at Christmas.
In this case too, a considerable gap has developed between the way of thinking of politicians, many of whom very easily revert to Soviet habits, and Orthodox clerics, who do not limit themselves to simple propaganda in their relationship with the faithful, which is expected after more than 30 years of religious freedom, at least on a formal level.
These controversial aspects of the ideological-religious conception of the «Russian world» lurked in the background of the World Russian People’s Council meeting, which included fresh celebrations of Russia’s war and patriotic history, with more shows in St. Petersburg centred on the victorious Prince Alexander Nevsky, with calls for his solemn funeral urn be returned from the city of Vladimir to the northern capital, Kirill and Putin’s hometown, where every effort is being made to conceal the “overture to the West» that lay behind its foundation by Peter the Great.
As was the case with the Trinity icon by Rublev, the patriarch stressed the efforts needed to «overcome the opposition of the staff of the museum” where the silver urn is kept, directly involving the president to get the remains returned in the symbolic seat of the one who defeated the Swedes and Teutonic Knights, ancestors of today’s “Ukrainian and Western Nazis”.
In ending his address, the patriarch noted how in the first years of the World Russian People’s Council, he had called for a campaign against alcoholism, but no one listened to him, and instead cited the psalms on the «joy of wine» and Prince Vladimir of Kyiv’s responses to Muslim emissaries, rejecting Islam because “It is the joy of Russia to drink – we simply cannot exist without it!”
Today, alcoholism in Russia has once again become a scourge that runs from the battlefields to people’s homes, as those who drink indulge in the «white death» of frost, without even realising it.
Kirill’s latest jab was indirectly aimed at Putin himself, slamming the «vulgar language» that weakens the moral health of a person. The president is known in fact for his crass remarks. Even though he is a teetotaller, after listening to the patriarch he likely poured himself a glass.
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