I'VE BEEN INTENDING to write about this article from the Global Sisters Report all week and now I don't have much time but didn't want it to get lost, so I'll quote liberally with minimal comment.
One of the Orthodox scholars who signed a statement condemning as "heresy" the political vision of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is a U.S.-born Russian Orthodox nun and scholar of Byzantine liturgy.
Sr. Vassa Larin, a nun of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, also is host of the popular podcast and video series, "Coffee with Sister Vassa."
I'm pretty full up on things I check on regularly but I'm certainly going to add her to the list.
Living and working in Vienna, Larin also serves on the liturgical and canon law commissions of the Russian Orthodox Church, and now she is helping support a Ukrainian Catholic mother and her two children who fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.
In an interview with Catholic News Service on March 18, she denounced the war as "evil" and Patriarch Kirill's approach to it as a "horrible, horrible thing."
For decades, the patriarch has been promoting a teaching called "Russkii Mir" (Russian World), which claims a special status for the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian nation working closely together to govern politically and spiritually not only Russia, but all Russian speakers and the people they believe are closely related to them: Ukrainians and Belarussians.
"It is not a Christian thing," Larin said, even if Patriarch Kirill and Putin try to cloak it in Christian language and present themselves as defenders of traditional Christian values.
"What unites us is not being Russian; that's not the primary thing in the mystery of the church," she said. "The church is a mystery of unity, a sacrament of unity, based on the oneness of the Body of Christ. It's not based on ethnicity."
"That was the big thing about Christianity, you know, that it expanded to all peoples, not just to one, chosen people of one blood-lineage," she said. "Christ was a light for the revelation to the Gentiles and indeed the glory of his people Israel, as in the song of Simeon."
It is one of the things about much of Orthodoxy that I don't care for is the too frequent linkage between Church and State, even nationalism in too many cases when that happens it's the state that impinges on the Church and corrupts it. The political hegemony of the Moscow Patriachate in recent Orthodox affairs regarding the Orthodox Church in Ukraine is an extreme example with its like happening in Catholic and Western Christianity, too. The tie of churches to states is bound to lead to those kinds of things, even wars, even leading to the Church being used as an excuse by secular leaders for wars they want to extend their quite secular, quite immoral power. I doubt Putin's religious professions, such as those are, are more than political propaganda. He's got about as much real religion to him as a murdering, extorting, pimping member of organized crime does no matter how much money he gives to the Church. In fact, he's one of them.
Unfortunately, she said, the Russian Orthodox Church "has slipped into this trap — that we never really escaped throughout our history as a church — of falling in line with a certain state authority; falling in line with its message and becoming subservient to it."
In modern times, the Catholic Church has taken a self-critical look at its past cooperation and collaboration with temporal rulers and at the times it did not denounce the abuse of political power as it should have, she said. The Russian Orthodox Church has not made a similar examination of its past or present.
That is something that pretty much you can say about the Catholic Church only in modern times, starting with when the semi-organized Italian national government united the country and annexed the Papal States to civil control instead of Vatican control, something that has its own interesting history, including Pius IX going off his rocker and the First Vatican Council inventing the doctrine of papal "infallibility" as a concession prize to him. The Second Vatican Council was the decisive step in reasserting the universalism of the Catholic Church and its separation from civil authorities and the state. Something which is not only imperfect in many places but is actively being undermined by the trad-Catholic, neo-integralist Catholics and the billionaires and millionaires who fund them. Some of whom are supporters of Putin as much as Kiril is.
"We don't seem to find that instinct to witness and truth-tell when the going gets really rough," she said.
By accepting the government's "party line" and not questioning it in the light of the Gospel, Larin said, "we're really just dying on the battlefield of spiritual warfare."
As has been noted here before, Jesus couldn't have been more explicit when he said his Kingdom was not of this world. Why anyone who professes to believe in his Gospel and his ultimate authority would do as so many of them have in regard to worldly power is never asked enough. Just as I would reject that anyone could support much if not most of what the United States government has done and have a right to be considered supporters of democracy, those who do as so many "Christians" do in this regard have no real right to be considered to be followers of Jesus. They are impostures, many of them in elaborate dress and other costuming. And I'm thinking mostly of Catholic hierarchs when I say that but the same could describe others.
While she describes herself as "a big Pope Francis fan," Larin said that as an Orthodox Christian, she does have some questions about his plan to consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" on March 25.
In the book I'm re-reading, On Being A Christian, Hans Kung notes that the Vatican and the Papacy has always been the main source of excessive Marian devotion, I'm also a huge fan of Pope Francis but I'm not sure this was the best way to do things. So I'm in agreement with her on this even as I think Francis is mostly doing better while trying to not burn bridges that might be useful to him playing a role in the future. I doubt it will work out that way but I'm not the Pope with a responsibility to not cut things off as drastically as I might feel like doing.
I'm sure there are things I would disagree with Sr. Vassa about but she's definitely worth reading and listening to. I hope Russian Orthodoxy moves more in her direction in the future.
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