Dear Friends,
I just wanted to comment on the background to this canonization movement to see how we can understand where these people are coming from.
Quite apart from the sect-like mentality that is driving this movement, there are also those supporters of the canonization of the Romanovs and the New Martyrs of Bolshevism who follow the official Orthodox Church position, but who also place their own (quite Anti-Semitic) slant to it all ie. "Masons" etc.
There is also the very popular cult of St Gabriel of Slutsk, the child-victim, it is said, of anti-Christian "Jewish" blood rituals.
The akathist to St Gabriel is quite anti-Semitic but the Russian Orthodox Church has not seen fit to simply move forward to either tone down the whole cult, reinterpret it or else quash it altogether.
So the movement to canonize Grigory and Ivan is supported by an attitude that SEEMS to be permissible within local quarters of the Russian Orthodox Church with respect to the way in which veneration is expressed for the Romanov Family and St Gabriel of Slutsk.
Again, I'm not suggesting that Gabriel wasn't a martyr - I'm only saying there is no proof to the fantastical claim he was the victim of the blood slander. Western Catholic Churches also have their saints said to have been victims of "Jewish" blood rituals - e.g. "Little St Hugh of Lincoln" and "St Simon of Trent."
For Orthodox priests and bishops to publicly venerate St Gabriel of Slutsk using anti-Semitic liturgical services - that is just asking for trouble, such as what is happening now.
Rasputin has been honoured by Russian villagers for a very long time as an Elder and a miracle-worker.
The movement to canonize him is rooted not only in the "unlettered" views of the peasant masses - let us remember that the doomed Romanov family itself believed in Rasputin as a miracle-worker since he was the only one who could actually stop the blood-flow of poor St Alexis the Tsarevich.
As Robert Massie discussed in his book "Nicholas and Alexandra," whenever Alexis "did" something to himself that would cause his blood to flow (and it wouldn't clot) there was the danger that he would die from blood loss.
Doctors swarmed around him trying to make the bleeding stop, but it just got worse.
Rasputin would then be called. He would calmly walk in, order the doctors out in no uncertain terms, make the Sign of the Cross over Alexis, put his hand on his brow and calmly told him, "There, there, you will be all right." And then he walked out.
Within a short period of time, Alexis would ALWAYS stop bleeding following a visit from the Elder Grigory.
Even the Tsar himself, who never liked Rasputin, was amazed by how he achieved what no doctor could.
In fact, Rasputin was well versed, as many such village Elders are (there is some doubt as to whether he ever was a monk), in natural medicine of the countryside.
Rasputin knew that the blood in conditions like that of Alexis WOULD actually clot if the person calmed down - the doctors and the anxiety only made the blood flow more.
Rasputin also wrote special prayers that addressed anxieties of each of the Tsarinas and of the Tsaritsa. They all carried these prayers with them in lockets. These were found after they were shot in the "House of special purpose" in Ekaterinburg.
As a result, Rasputin had a great deal of influence at the Imperial Russian Court. He even influenced the choice of appointments to important government posts.
It is not, as Russian journalists sometimes suggest, he had an agenda to destroy Russia. He only wanted to be left alone as he had many enemies in high places. When asked for his advice, he recommended certain individuals who were friendly toward him (it was politic in those days to be friendly toward Rasputin if you wanted advancement at court) - but who were totally incompetent as administrators.
That is what led to Imperial Russia's downfall, in addition to the mistakes of a Tsar who was nowhere near as strong as his savage father, Tsar Alexander III.
In addition, it is natural for many simple people to regard Rasputin as something supernatural given the fact of the circumstances surrounding his death.
Poison, shooting, stabbing - nothing could kill him.
Even after they found his body in the river, the doctors determined that what actually killed him was. . . drowning.
Given his connection to the Royal Family of Russia, it is truly easy to see how Rasputin can figure within a simplistic, but strongly eschatological Theocratic perspective that is informed by Great Russian chauvinism.
The flip side of that coin is the devotion to absolute monarchy.
Let's remember that the Tsar was ALWAYS very "God-like" in Russia. He took Communion from the Chalice himself at his Coronation. He could bless people with the Sign of the Cross just as the Patriarch and the Bishops did.
People had pictures of him in their homes and the "unlettered" even bowed to them and some were reported to pray before them.
When Russian Orthodoxy came into vogue in the nineties, so did the veneration of the Tsar - you could get a portrait of Tsar Nicholas at every subway kiosk. You still can.
To be a true Russian Orthodox Believer today - suffice it to say that you will doubtless sport a lapel pin with the Romanov two-headed eagle.
And there's nothing wrong with that per se - it is where one draws the line that is the problem.
While we in the West celebrate the defeat of soviet communism in Russia, many Russians see their democratic politicians in a similar light to their former communist tormentors.
The countryside of Russia is very Orthodox - it always was.
And it has always looked to a semi-Divine figure of a strong Tsar, God's holy anointed, to be their leader and saviour once again.
The journal article that says people want Tsar St Nicholas to be declared a "Co-Redeemer" would NOT put him on a par with Christ.
Anymore than the Pope declaring the Mother of God a "Co-Redemptrix" (remember that discussion here?) would as well.
They see in Nicholas and the blood the Royal Family spilled a connection with the sacrifice of Christ - and that led eventually to the resurrection of "Holy Orthodox and Tsarist Russia."
I think it is stretching things, but I think this position is defensible to an extent. This also happened Britain when the monarchy was restored in 1660 and the cult of King Charles I came into being.
As for Tsar Ivan the Terrible, in fact what he did was what many a Byzantine Emperor and other Orthodox (and Catholic) sovereign who are now in the Church Calendars did.
Killing relatives? St Constantine the Great did that as did Blessed Charlemagne, the Emperor who promoted the use of the "Filioque" in the Western Church.
Making wars? Well, popes of Rome did that as well. Who promoted the five Hussite wars, if not the popes of Rome?
All I'm saying is that it is important to put things in some historical perspective here.
Tsar Ivan was definitely not a "nice man"
.
But he embodied the simple ideals of a strong and even ruthless Russian Orthodox Tsar. The Russians have always liked such qualities in their despotic leader - the more despotic, the better.
In fact, some make the argument that Tsar Nicholas Romanov fell into such disfavour in the cities (he was always highly honoured in rural Russia)because he WOULDN'T be ruthless with the forces who were coming against him and the ancien regime.
Let's not take the lib-left simplistic analysis of the journalists in coming to a more balanced picture of what is happening in Russia with this phenomenon.
Remember that the Russian Orthodox Church is formally and officially SERIOUS about canonized Fr. Gabriel Kostelnyk, the tragic pawn in the game to destroy "Uniatism" in 1946.
If the people wanting to glorify Grigory and Tsar Ivan are "blind," so too are Russian Orthodox leaders who have turned a blind eye to a number of things that have been occurring in the Church officially and that have either led to or supported the radical movement that is now occurring.
Personally, I think the Russian Church will probably suffer yet another schism, analogous to the one it suffered in the 17th century with the Old Believers.
Alex
