www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West More Russian Orthodox Craziness!

Gaudior, I would go a step further and say that Patriarch Lubomyr, because of his stature, ver ygood relationship with Yushchenko, and his perceived neutral status amongst the interjurisdictional Orthodox disputes, may actually be an appropriate arbiter.

I think Alexei could actually make an end run around the whole situation and appear to be the good guy if he would grant the UOC-MP full autocephaly.

Then, a large, fully autocephalous church "canonically erected" would be present, and raise the ante on Orthodox reconciliation.

Good points, Gaudior!

In Christ,
Alice

Hey Koyla... how 'bout you and I get together next Saturday for some more "Russian Craziness"! Now... if I can just get a cheap ticket to Africa

Except for Mt. Athos the Russian church is the most reactionary Orthodox church in the world.You can add paranoid to that.It does not beleieve the Russian people should be allowed freedom of religion and by Russian they include all those that made up the Old Soviet Empire.They are feverishly working to become the state church of Russia as they were under Stalin.They incite the Russian govt. against Catholcs,Protestants , who ever they see as a threat.Its time the Catholic church stoped tryingto get along with these people and treated them the way they deserve.

Actually, I'm inclined to think they may be trying to go further back, to czarist days, instead. It's too bad that Moscow cannot countenance the existence of viable Greek Catholic dioceses, etc. No one is asking there permission, however, and I doubt that anyone ever will.

Fantastic Thread.

Dear Jim,

In fact, there were Russian Tsars who were very close to the West and were friendly towards both Greek-Catholics and Jesuits!

Tsar Paul I was a case in point - and he was even connected to the Knights of Malta, loved the Maltese Cross which he placed on his imperial crown etc.

Even Tsar Peter I was very pro-Western and was fascinated by Latin and the Jesuits, hiring Germans to work for him.

When at a funeral, the Russian participants did something not according to protocol, Tsar Peter asked his German confidant who gave the order for that.

When told it was his own Russian people, Tsar Peter angrily muttered, "Pigs, is what they are . . ."

Alex

Alex, you are right. I also recall there are some Orthodox who are trying to return to pre-Peter the Great Russian orthopraxis. Makes it harder to communicate, I think.

Hi Orthodox Catholic,

In all honesty though, I think you�re well aware that these westward leaning monarchs were not the best friends of the church or of native culture. The patriarch was abolished under Peter I and replaced by the Holy Synod for instance. That was really a disaster for the church.

Catherine did not disguise her disdain for the church. She also instituted French as the court language IIRC, and Russian became the language of servants, children and animals. I believe it was also her desire for an empire to rival those of the west that led her to annex Ukraine and to take part in the partition of Poland.

So it�s a mixed picture. I also recall from being in Russia that the word �Jesuit� was not one you would use to describe a friend (to put it mildly ).

Dear JOHNYJ, I think if you look at the Russian church you will find a wide range of opinion in terms of things like how the church should relate to the state, to the west and so on. One should always take care to paint with too broad of a brush.

I have trouble picturing the church working to return to its status as it was under Stalin. I think you are well aware that it was a time of possibly unparalleled persecution in the history of Christianity when you take in to account the numbers of clerics and believers killed, churches destroyed, monasteries closed, priceless treasures smashed, etc.

It is sad that some compromised with the state at this time. Let us all pray to our Lord and Saviour that we are never tested in such a manner for we know not how we would react.

Dear Rilian,

You are right - those Tsars were not the best friends of the Orthodox Church, they were leaning toward the West and so favoured the RC or Protestant churches as in Catherine's case.

Peter was certainly Orthodox but saw in Russian Orthodoxy a certain "cultural primitivism" that was also maintained by, for example, the Kyivan Church at the time that regard Muscovy and the Muscovite church as "barbaric" (we Ukies still maintain that ).

Russian monastics were highly uneducated and were afraid of even the Latin language (used as the lingua franca of the Mohyla Academy in Kyiv) as an "heretical" language.

That Peter I liked to use Latin (and he loved that the Ukrainian Hetman, Ivan Mazeppa, later his enemy, knew Latin) and signed his name in letters in Latin immediately caused the Russian church to suspect him for "heresy."

Peter I did not like Eastern Catholics and even martyred a group of Basilian Fathers at a church when he was drunk one evening as they served a Moleben to St Josaphat . . .

Peter I's agenda was to bring Russia into the European cultural mainstream, even though he himself was far from it in terms of personal traits and the like.

He could have taught the West how to drink without suffering form the ill effects of hangovers, however . . .

Alex

Again I have to say I don't think this was a good thing. Not because I have some grudge against Latin, but I think by using a language foreign to the populace it put theology solely in the realm of academia. I think it created the same stratification as took place when the Russian aristocracy started speaking French.

Those monks were certainly living out theology, and as always theology should just be an expression of the praxis of being a Christian. When there is a disconnect between the two, I think bad things happen though. In many ways I think theology has now become viewed not as a recipe for living but as an academic exercise.

Dear Rilian,

You are right, but there were other forces at play during the Kyivan Baroque period.

First of all, Kyivan scholars were being educated in western universities as a way to prevent the immigration of Orthodox to Roman Catholicism, Orthodox who wanted to be part of the "with it" European scene and so preferred Catholicism with its Jesuit-run schools, state of the art, at that time.

And also to learn the ways of RCism so as to defend Orthodoxy - but that brought Latinization and scholasticism with it.

When St Dmitri of Rostov went to an area in Russia, he found that even the local priest had no idea what he was asking for when St Dmitri asked where he was keeping Holy Communion, as it wasn't in the Church.

A local translator turned to the priest and asked him, "Where is the 'Zapas?'" (The "Extras"). At this the priest smiled and pointed out a box in a corner of his home where he kept it . . .

There was a real problem there and this contributed to the view, even within Orthodoxy, that the Russian Church was primitive and even "barbaric" (as St Peter Mohyla called it).

This was an added cultural reason for the Union of Brest.

Alex

Agreed, and it was not only to counter the influence of the Latin church but to meet the threat of Protestant apologetics as well. Pochaev for instance published in Slavonic, Latin and Polish I believe.

It will be interesting to see if the wheel turns in terms of how this period is regarded in Orthodoxy. Generally the 17th century in terms of dogmatics seems not to be highly regarded. I can�t say personally that I see it as one of the high points of the church.

On the topic of the general state of the priesthood, there can be no doubt that in many places it was quite bad. St. Tikhon of Zadonsk commented that he saw priests who could not read and were unfamiliar with sacred scripture. There are many stories of drunkeness, laxity and so on. Even up until the Revolution it was an issue and the pseudonymous Father Arseny attributed at least in part what happened in 1917 and the years that followed to the poor state of the priesthood in the country.

The catchwords of �ignorance� and �backwardness� were however often applied to clerics who were not in fact derelict or ignorant but simply did not go along with the westernizing machinations of many of the rulers. Metropolitan Arseny (also of Rostov) was an able leader for instance who was defrocked and personally destroyed for standing up to the policies of the Empress Catherine.

Dear Rilian,

You are quite right!

The Tsars' cavorting with the West led to the importation of Protestantism with the need for those like Met. Stefan Yavorsky to write their defences of Orthodoxy and the like.

The Kyivan Baroque period certainly has its downsides, but I think it should be remembered for the devotional literature it promoted, even if a lot of it was Western and Western-inspired.

St Dmitri of Rostov translated works (as did the Greeks) from the West and into a language that was closer to the popular language of the masses than Slavonic was.

St Tikhon of Zadonsk promoted the reading of Scripture, frequent Communion and meditation on the Passion of Christ - he had, as you know, life-size images of a form of the Way of the Cross in his cell.

It was a time when the standard measurement of what was "good" was the Western academic/cultural model.

The Orthodox Church at that time gave a good accounting of itself and showed it could run with the best of them!

And Saint Arsenius Matsievich, Metropolitan of Rostov and Hieromartyr (glorified in 2000 with the New Martyrs and Confessors) was quite the intellectual and educated in Kyiv. He was also tonsured in the Kyivan Caves Lavra and promoted the veneration of his predecessor, St Dmitri of Rostov. He was a former Uniate too . . .

He was a victim of the Protestantizing policies of the Russian court, including the efforts of the then Tsaritsa to take full control over the Church - the Kyivan tradition, rather than the Muscovite tradition, opposed such secular control over the church strenuously (St Dmitri of Rostov and St Paissy Velichkovsky, for example, preached many sermons to the rich and great to give of their resources to help the poor etc.)

Alex