What threatens us with the collapse of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine
I definitely won’t open anything new, saying that recently things have happened in the political media space that are extremely difficult to compatible with the concepts of decency and common sense. What is worth, for example, one story with the so-called "poisoning of the Skripals" in the small English town of Salisbury (in Russian folklore it has already been renamed Skripplesbury or simply Skripalevo).
The Western media, often stubbornly replicating simply, I’m not afraid of these words, marasmic statements, have finally made themselves doubt even from childhood brought up by the Western audience on primitive comics, which at first seemed to take all this nonsense seriously. Fortunately, this story, with all its nonsense and even various idiotic “sequels”, is one more beautiful, forced everyone to finally critically look at everything else, presented with the same confidence and pathos by the same Western press - incomprehensible and even at first glance, the illogical "chemical attacks on civilians" in Syria, the events in Ukraine, the mysterious fall of the Malaysian Boeing and so on ...
Against this background, the mainstream Russian media, which also naturally defend and enforce Russian state interests by all means available (which is quite normal), compares favorably with their Western counterparts in both the factual justification, logic, and the proposed reasonable arguments, and even acceptable pluralism of opinions on selected issues. But somehow all the time it seems that our journalists seem to be constantly forced to make excuses or something, reasonably and reasonably, but only in response to aggressive, empty and delusional attacks from the western side. This is repeated day after day, from topic to topic, from broadcast to broadcast, on radio, on television, on the Internet and in newspapers ...
But recently, in all this already familiar way of Russian media communication, one exception appeared - the topic of the split of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, sort of directly sanctioned by the "Ecumenical" Orthodox Patriarch from the long-defunct city of Constantinople.
In order to immediately "dot the" I ", as they say, and to pre-warn possible questions to me personally, as to the author, I will deviate a little from the topic and let you know: I’m baptized Orthodox, was baptized in Moscow during the heyday of the USSR at the insistence of my grandmother and being then a pioneer. A navy dad in a very serious position, a member of the party, and a mother doctor knew about it after the fact, there were problems, even fears of the consequences, so to speak, but the grandmother was stubborn and adamant, thank her very much for that. I never considered myself a particularly zealous believer, but I believed and believe in God, and even in Soviet times, I still went to church as a pioneer and Komsomol member, not only often and somehow orderly, but I put a candle , I just stood thinking - there at that time it was quiet, not crowded, calm, I thought well ...
After the collapse of the Union and beyond, the church seemed to sharply emerge from the shadows, revived, regained popularity among the population, and even, apparently, became fashionable. But to think in silence and calmly communicate with God, it somehow worked out the further the less. In church penates, especially on holidays, phenomena that previously occurred only in store lines or on the market square suddenly moved. In the front ranks of zealously praying, especially during the period called the “dashing nineties”, there were somehow people whose moral appearance, to put it mildly, left much to be desired, and their fulfillment of God's commandments in real life looked exactly the opposite of what was said in Holy Scripture. Often they, by a strange coincidence of circumstances, were the main sponsors of churches, parishes, or even the clergy themselves. Apparently, they sinned the sins of their violent worldly life. Therefore, and for a number of other reasons, my visits to the church were generally reduced and transferred mainly to distant and small churches, if possible. Nevertheless, all four of my children are baptized in Orthodox churches and my wife and I are married.
Visiting various places around the world, I try to enter the church whenever possible. Orthodox churches, to my surprise, there are very many where, though it’s somehow never occurred to me to be interested in their membership in any particular patriarchy. And why, in fact, does a person have to figure this out if he wants to communicate in the temple primarily with God, and, as you know, he is one with us. It is for this reason, if I wanted to communicate with the Almighty, but in the absence of a very diverse Orthodox church nearby, I went to Catholic or Protestant churches for this purpose, baptized, prayed, if possible , put candles and the like ... And in such cases and in contacts with local non-Orthodox priests, I never and never had any problems, rather, on the contrary, people were treated with understanding and respect. I don’t know, maybe according to some strictly canonical laws this is a violation, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. Moreover, I am absolutely sure that I did not commit any sins against either our one God or my faith. And all these church rules were written by people, and not by the Lord, although many ministers of the church try to say the opposite. Although, I emphasize, this opinion is personally my own, as everything here and hereafter stated, I do not pretend to the truth in the last resort and will answer for it myself, there, above, before the Almighty ...
But back to the topic of church schism in Ukraine. There were some creeps to something similar on the part of the Ukrainian authorities and, it seems, as a self-proclaimed local Patriarch Filaret, earlier, almost from the very beginning of the existence of Ukraine as an independent state. But in fact, all this boiled down to trivial attempts to redistribute some rather small church property on the ground, mainly in the western regions of the country. Events that began on the so-called Kiev Maidan in 2014, and then resulted in full-scale hostilities in eastern Ukraine, the transfer of the Crimean peninsula to Russian jurisdiction, etc. etc. the situation was greatly radicalized, and Kiev’s church leaders, who were pushing for secession, were given a very powerful trump card - Russia, as it were, officially became “the number one enemy”, the aggressor after that, anti-Russian sentiments, with all possible support from the local authorities, apparently reached the peak of their capabilities , and against this background, the Moscow Patriarchate, to which the majority of Ukrainian Orthodox parishes belonged, began to naturally associate with Moscow, that is, the capital of the aggressor state, with all the ensuing COROLLARY. And although the church is officially separated from the state both in Ukraine and Russia, the Moscow Patriarch Kirill clearly does not hide his close and good relations with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, often in public speeches, supporting the general power line of his country, so to speak, and the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, in turn, by all means and, of course, mainly contrary to the efforts of the Moscow Patriarchate, strongly supports the desire of the Kiev Patriarchate for autocephaly - That is, Filaret and his subjects as much as they can, reciprocate their power.
And against the background of the prevailing today political the situation between Moscow and Kiev, the possibility of a church schism has become more real and relevant than ever. Moreover, in this case, the current Ukrainian government, which is rapidly losing popularity both outside and inside the country, and until now the Kyiv Patriarchate, which has not been especially seriously taken by anyone, has become for each other all-round support and support in achieving their own goals. And these very final goals, apparently, are also very similar - it’s mainly nothing more than strengthening and expanding their own well-being ... But no matter how disgusting the person may be the Ukrainian President Poroshenko and this no less unpleasant patriarch himself Filaret, he is also a worldly name Mikhail Denisenko, who personally awarded in America with an independently invented order a not-so-good creature - the notorious Russophobe and senator-hawk McCain (already deceased), and immediately asked him to supply American weapons to his country to destroy his at least they practically do not hide their Orthodox fellow citizens, their real personal goals - we’ll capture, they say, churches, monasteries, monasteries belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate, and with this land, and so on ...
And that’s all, I’m sorry, it’s not worth three pennies at all ... This is the goal, and autocephaly and all these games around it are just a means to achieve all this. That is, everything is extremely clear and even, one can say, honestly, if such a word is generally applied to at least something of what is happening today in the long-suffering Ukrainian land. I even heard from the Ukrainians themselves the opinion that the seizure of the property of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine in favor of a new local autocephaly is kind of like partial compensation for the Crimea. From a legal point of view, and even based on commonplace logic, this is nonsense, of course, complete, but now such approaches in politics generally prevail en masse, unfortunately ...
And what do we have about this? .. What is the reaction? .. Well, government officials, of course, are silent for now - they seem to have nothing to do with this before the law. These are church problems, and indeed in the territory of another country, the Russian authorities can’t intervene in this at all. But on the other hand, the Russian media and the church itself comment passionately on the whole process, here no one justifies themselves, doesn’t defend themselves, rather, on the contrary, they make a blame on the light of both Filaret the schismatic and the so-called “Ecumenical” Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and those sent to him to Ukraine, American (for some reason?) representatives - exarchs - to carry out this very split, so to speak, in life. But what is interesting, the facts here are also from the Russian side, that is, it seems to be with the Moscow Patriarchate of the sympathizing side, somehow, too, they are not particularly used, and there are more and more slogans. The main slogan of this kind is the constantly repeated mantra that the essence of this whole scandal seems to be purely ideological, that there is some kind of clash of certain global religious worldviews, and not just a struggle for the redistribution of church property, albeit huge and for fabulous money, but also for the distribution of income ...
It is strange that right now the “universality” of the Patriarch of Bartholomew of Constantinople in general suddenly began to be called into question. More recently, when the head of the Russian Orthodox Church personally visited this very leader in Istanbul (this is now what is located on the site of Constantinople), the whole event was presented as something extremely important and magnificent, they sat, said, the great ones apparently solved problems, kissed ... very much so seriously, exalted, corresponding to the highest status of the meeting participants ... And then all of a sudden, as soon as this same Bartholomew took and blotted out something wrong, somehow all of a sudden everyone woke up and noticed that neither Byzantium nor its capital of Constantinople has long been in sight, all this does not exist for a good couple of centuries, but the Muslim country of Turkey is located in this very place, in which the Orthodox have been miscalculated once or twice ... And the truth is not clear why this Patriarch is actually without a church and parishioners is still considered "Ecumenical"? Just a stupid tradition? This is something like a marshal, in whose submission there are not millions of armies, but only one company or even a platoon of soldiers ... There seems to be a rank, but the position, as the army says, is not marshal's. Everything seems to be correct and logical, what kind of listen to him? ...
Especially the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has more real Orthodox parishioners than all the other patriarchs in the world together? But still, why did they remember and analyze it just now? And as soon as the speech in TV shows and other media comes up with some problems in Ukraine related to thoughts of autocephaly, all cases that are solved in fact are connected with the seizure or threat of seizure of one or another church property, calls are made to protect this property itself, situations are being considered that would if someone would try to take some kind of a laurel or monastery, in an extreme and rare case it comes to hierarchical contradictions within the church itself, that is, who should obey to whom and how, or vice versa, and who in this connection it broke. But just forgive me personally, with all my negative attitude to the fact of the conflict inside the Orthodox Church and the agreement that forcibly taking something away from someone is generally bad by definition, somehow I don’t observe some worldview clashes in all this .
In all these spiritual aspects, there are three interrelated, but by no means uniform, concepts - this is faith, religion, and the church. Faith is actually a state of a person’s conviction in the presence of a certain higher power - a god, providence, a prophet, just anything. All disassemblies with autocephaly cannot exactly affect this conviction, that is, faith can be immediately excluded from the whole process - it either exists or does not exist, autocephaly and exarchs have nothing to do with it. Religion is already a certain system of orderly and accessible explanation, or rather, even presenting to people what they actually believe. Religion is only a form in which people can openly express their faith in a higher power. And it can be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or, for example, paganism with many gods - the essence is the same: there is a certain higher power over us. Who is capable of imagining and accepting this is already a matter for each group of people, people, or even an individual. But in this case, the presence of our one god, Christian postulates, the content of the Bible and even its interpretation, as in the case of Catholics and Protestants or Egov’s witnesses, for example, none of the parties to the Ukrainian church conflict seems to cast doubt on either. That is, it turns out that there are no religious or global ideological contradictions in all this either. All that remains is the church itself. And this is an institution created exclusively by the people themselves, managed by them, having their own hierarchy, career ladders, income and expenses, property, again, etc. etc. with all the ensuing consequences. That is, the split in Ukraine is not religious, as it is presented to us, namely, within the church, along the lines of subordination, hierarchy, and directly related to it the division of income and property rights.
There is even a version that Barthoromei this same "Ecumenical" Ukrainian autocephaly seems to have supported for a bribe of fifteen million dollars. Either personally from Poroshenko, or from someone else, it does not matter. No one has proven this. Probably unlikely to prove. And maybe all this is not true. But I personally think that for a country like Ukraine, and for its oligarch president personally, fifteen million dollars is not such a big amount, especially considering that it is at stake in the form of possibly transferring property. But Bartholomew is again a man, not God, and a lot of money, so why not? ... Even representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate do not deny this possibility in principle. Although they, and their Ukrainian and “Byzantine” opponents, unanimously and unanimously assert that the church is not controlled by people, but directly by God. It’s strange somehow, how then, in general, such and even more terrible things happened and happened throughout the history of all churches. All these religious figures, and on both sides of this conflict, have serious inconsistencies in their arguments, and the press, including in other stories quite adequate to the Russian one, also picks up and carries this to the masses, so to speak. Moreover, I repeat, the slogans about directing the church directly with God's hand or about the existence of certain philosophical conflicts with Ukrainian “auto-masons” do not withstand any criticism. In comparison, even the British “arguments and facts” in the Skripals case look quite acceptable and scientifically already.
I do not presume to somehow evaluate this situation from the point of view of believers in general, although I consider myself to be one. Everyone has a different approach to faith, religion, and the church - the essence itself is important for someone, and the form is secondary, for the other it is the form of presentation, rituals, participation in them, and the like things are in the first place, and such there are people and there are quite a few of them. But somehow it all looks unscrupulous on the part of the church as a whole, without division into patriarchies, which are now biting among themselves, then publicly threatening with mutual curses and anathema, which actually reduces the meaning of all these high concepts to the level of a banal everyday scandal, if not comedy in the style of Ilf and Petrov. After all this, it is already tempting to ask: “... And how much is“ opium for the people, dear? ”... Although in reality there is little funny.
Recently, as a result of the gradual loss of Christian values in the West, including the western branches of Christian churches, such as the Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox, that is, the Eastern direction of Christianity, fortunately, remained the main custodian and propagandist of these very traditional moral principles. And me, as an Orthodox Christian, this cannot but rejoice. But at the same time, to my great regret, in the eyes of intelligent people watching the whole process of the so-called split in Ukraine, it seems to me that the Orthodox Church itself, as an institution, risks greatly undermining its authority as a whole. Moreover, this applies both to the Ukrainian Church, which is striving for autocephaly, and to the Russian Orthodox Church under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate, and even for not quite adequate reasons, which is considered the "Ecumenical" Byzantine. The church in all this conflict so clearly exposes its purely materialistic interests that it can be difficult for its representatives later to convince the flock of the supremacy of spiritual values. It is in this that I see the main danger of the current situation. I would like to urge the Russian media to make them more sensible and balanced in covering this topic, which is so important for our life and future. Maybe some things are better not to cover at all than to do it the way they do it now.
In the end, the problems of the principle of maintaining confidence in the Orthodox Church for our country and its closest neighbors are definitely a more important issue than some kind of poisoning somewhere in England may be more important than the disaster of the Malaysian Boeing, or the conflict in Syria. Well-respected journalists should think about this. And the question of the Russian media’s own authority, which has risen so lately lately, can also be at stake if here too the “official mainstream” begins to pass off as real frank nonsense, and everyone who tries to protest will just try to shut up their mouths, which, to Unfortunately, some public discussions on this issue have already taken place.
And let the church sort things out with itself somehow. Although, of course, I really would not want Orthodoxy to degrade and get to the deplorable state of the western branches of Christianity in the coming years, in fact, having lost all its original values in favor of the policy of liberalism and the so-called tolerance of everything that’s just according to God's original commandments a Christian, and indeed a believer, should not put up with a Christian.
The Western media, often stubbornly replicating simply, I’m not afraid of these words, marasmic statements, have finally made themselves doubt even from childhood brought up by the Western audience on primitive comics, which at first seemed to take all this nonsense seriously. Fortunately, this story, with all its nonsense and even various idiotic “sequels”, is one more beautiful, forced everyone to finally critically look at everything else, presented with the same confidence and pathos by the same Western press - incomprehensible and even at first glance, the illogical "chemical attacks on civilians" in Syria, the events in Ukraine, the mysterious fall of the Malaysian Boeing and so on ...
Against this background, the mainstream Russian media, which also naturally defend and enforce Russian state interests by all means available (which is quite normal), compares favorably with their Western counterparts in both the factual justification, logic, and the proposed reasonable arguments, and even acceptable pluralism of opinions on selected issues. But somehow all the time it seems that our journalists seem to be constantly forced to make excuses or something, reasonably and reasonably, but only in response to aggressive, empty and delusional attacks from the western side. This is repeated day after day, from topic to topic, from broadcast to broadcast, on radio, on television, on the Internet and in newspapers ...
But recently, in all this already familiar way of Russian media communication, one exception appeared - the topic of the split of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, sort of directly sanctioned by the "Ecumenical" Orthodox Patriarch from the long-defunct city of Constantinople.
In order to immediately "dot the" I ", as they say, and to pre-warn possible questions to me personally, as to the author, I will deviate a little from the topic and let you know: I’m baptized Orthodox, was baptized in Moscow during the heyday of the USSR at the insistence of my grandmother and being then a pioneer. A navy dad in a very serious position, a member of the party, and a mother doctor knew about it after the fact, there were problems, even fears of the consequences, so to speak, but the grandmother was stubborn and adamant, thank her very much for that. I never considered myself a particularly zealous believer, but I believed and believe in God, and even in Soviet times, I still went to church as a pioneer and Komsomol member, not only often and somehow orderly, but I put a candle , I just stood thinking - there at that time it was quiet, not crowded, calm, I thought well ...
After the collapse of the Union and beyond, the church seemed to sharply emerge from the shadows, revived, regained popularity among the population, and even, apparently, became fashionable. But to think in silence and calmly communicate with God, it somehow worked out the further the less. In church penates, especially on holidays, phenomena that previously occurred only in store lines or on the market square suddenly moved. In the front ranks of zealously praying, especially during the period called the “dashing nineties”, there were somehow people whose moral appearance, to put it mildly, left much to be desired, and their fulfillment of God's commandments in real life looked exactly the opposite of what was said in Holy Scripture. Often they, by a strange coincidence of circumstances, were the main sponsors of churches, parishes, or even the clergy themselves. Apparently, they sinned the sins of their violent worldly life. Therefore, and for a number of other reasons, my visits to the church were generally reduced and transferred mainly to distant and small churches, if possible. Nevertheless, all four of my children are baptized in Orthodox churches and my wife and I are married.
Visiting various places around the world, I try to enter the church whenever possible. Orthodox churches, to my surprise, there are very many where, though it’s somehow never occurred to me to be interested in their membership in any particular patriarchy. And why, in fact, does a person have to figure this out if he wants to communicate in the temple primarily with God, and, as you know, he is one with us. It is for this reason, if I wanted to communicate with the Almighty, but in the absence of a very diverse Orthodox church nearby, I went to Catholic or Protestant churches for this purpose, baptized, prayed, if possible , put candles and the like ... And in such cases and in contacts with local non-Orthodox priests, I never and never had any problems, rather, on the contrary, people were treated with understanding and respect. I don’t know, maybe according to some strictly canonical laws this is a violation, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. Moreover, I am absolutely sure that I did not commit any sins against either our one God or my faith. And all these church rules were written by people, and not by the Lord, although many ministers of the church try to say the opposite. Although, I emphasize, this opinion is personally my own, as everything here and hereafter stated, I do not pretend to the truth in the last resort and will answer for it myself, there, above, before the Almighty ...
But back to the topic of church schism in Ukraine. There were some creeps to something similar on the part of the Ukrainian authorities and, it seems, as a self-proclaimed local Patriarch Filaret, earlier, almost from the very beginning of the existence of Ukraine as an independent state. But in fact, all this boiled down to trivial attempts to redistribute some rather small church property on the ground, mainly in the western regions of the country. Events that began on the so-called Kiev Maidan in 2014, and then resulted in full-scale hostilities in eastern Ukraine, the transfer of the Crimean peninsula to Russian jurisdiction, etc. etc. the situation was greatly radicalized, and Kiev’s church leaders, who were pushing for secession, were given a very powerful trump card - Russia, as it were, officially became “the number one enemy”, the aggressor after that, anti-Russian sentiments, with all possible support from the local authorities, apparently reached the peak of their capabilities , and against this background, the Moscow Patriarchate, to which the majority of Ukrainian Orthodox parishes belonged, began to naturally associate with Moscow, that is, the capital of the aggressor state, with all the ensuing COROLLARY. And although the church is officially separated from the state both in Ukraine and Russia, the Moscow Patriarch Kirill clearly does not hide his close and good relations with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, often in public speeches, supporting the general power line of his country, so to speak, and the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, in turn, by all means and, of course, mainly contrary to the efforts of the Moscow Patriarchate, strongly supports the desire of the Kiev Patriarchate for autocephaly - That is, Filaret and his subjects as much as they can, reciprocate their power.
And against the background of the prevailing today political the situation between Moscow and Kiev, the possibility of a church schism has become more real and relevant than ever. Moreover, in this case, the current Ukrainian government, which is rapidly losing popularity both outside and inside the country, and until now the Kyiv Patriarchate, which has not been especially seriously taken by anyone, has become for each other all-round support and support in achieving their own goals. And these very final goals, apparently, are also very similar - it’s mainly nothing more than strengthening and expanding their own well-being ... But no matter how disgusting the person may be the Ukrainian President Poroshenko and this no less unpleasant patriarch himself Filaret, he is also a worldly name Mikhail Denisenko, who personally awarded in America with an independently invented order a not-so-good creature - the notorious Russophobe and senator-hawk McCain (already deceased), and immediately asked him to supply American weapons to his country to destroy his at least they practically do not hide their Orthodox fellow citizens, their real personal goals - we’ll capture, they say, churches, monasteries, monasteries belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate, and with this land, and so on ...
And that’s all, I’m sorry, it’s not worth three pennies at all ... This is the goal, and autocephaly and all these games around it are just a means to achieve all this. That is, everything is extremely clear and even, one can say, honestly, if such a word is generally applied to at least something of what is happening today in the long-suffering Ukrainian land. I even heard from the Ukrainians themselves the opinion that the seizure of the property of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine in favor of a new local autocephaly is kind of like partial compensation for the Crimea. From a legal point of view, and even based on commonplace logic, this is nonsense, of course, complete, but now such approaches in politics generally prevail en masse, unfortunately ...
And what do we have about this? .. What is the reaction? .. Well, government officials, of course, are silent for now - they seem to have nothing to do with this before the law. These are church problems, and indeed in the territory of another country, the Russian authorities can’t intervene in this at all. But on the other hand, the Russian media and the church itself comment passionately on the whole process, here no one justifies themselves, doesn’t defend themselves, rather, on the contrary, they make a blame on the light of both Filaret the schismatic and the so-called “Ecumenical” Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and those sent to him to Ukraine, American (for some reason?) representatives - exarchs - to carry out this very split, so to speak, in life. But what is interesting, the facts here are also from the Russian side, that is, it seems to be with the Moscow Patriarchate of the sympathizing side, somehow, too, they are not particularly used, and there are more and more slogans. The main slogan of this kind is the constantly repeated mantra that the essence of this whole scandal seems to be purely ideological, that there is some kind of clash of certain global religious worldviews, and not just a struggle for the redistribution of church property, albeit huge and for fabulous money, but also for the distribution of income ...
It is strange that right now the “universality” of the Patriarch of Bartholomew of Constantinople in general suddenly began to be called into question. More recently, when the head of the Russian Orthodox Church personally visited this very leader in Istanbul (this is now what is located on the site of Constantinople), the whole event was presented as something extremely important and magnificent, they sat, said, the great ones apparently solved problems, kissed ... very much so seriously, exalted, corresponding to the highest status of the meeting participants ... And then all of a sudden, as soon as this same Bartholomew took and blotted out something wrong, somehow all of a sudden everyone woke up and noticed that neither Byzantium nor its capital of Constantinople has long been in sight, all this does not exist for a good couple of centuries, but the Muslim country of Turkey is located in this very place, in which the Orthodox have been miscalculated once or twice ... And the truth is not clear why this Patriarch is actually without a church and parishioners is still considered "Ecumenical"? Just a stupid tradition? This is something like a marshal, in whose submission there are not millions of armies, but only one company or even a platoon of soldiers ... There seems to be a rank, but the position, as the army says, is not marshal's. Everything seems to be correct and logical, what kind of listen to him? ...
Especially the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has more real Orthodox parishioners than all the other patriarchs in the world together? But still, why did they remember and analyze it just now? And as soon as the speech in TV shows and other media comes up with some problems in Ukraine related to thoughts of autocephaly, all cases that are solved in fact are connected with the seizure or threat of seizure of one or another church property, calls are made to protect this property itself, situations are being considered that would if someone would try to take some kind of a laurel or monastery, in an extreme and rare case it comes to hierarchical contradictions within the church itself, that is, who should obey to whom and how, or vice versa, and who in this connection it broke. But just forgive me personally, with all my negative attitude to the fact of the conflict inside the Orthodox Church and the agreement that forcibly taking something away from someone is generally bad by definition, somehow I don’t observe some worldview clashes in all this .
In all these spiritual aspects, there are three interrelated, but by no means uniform, concepts - this is faith, religion, and the church. Faith is actually a state of a person’s conviction in the presence of a certain higher power - a god, providence, a prophet, just anything. All disassemblies with autocephaly cannot exactly affect this conviction, that is, faith can be immediately excluded from the whole process - it either exists or does not exist, autocephaly and exarchs have nothing to do with it. Religion is already a certain system of orderly and accessible explanation, or rather, even presenting to people what they actually believe. Religion is only a form in which people can openly express their faith in a higher power. And it can be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or, for example, paganism with many gods - the essence is the same: there is a certain higher power over us. Who is capable of imagining and accepting this is already a matter for each group of people, people, or even an individual. But in this case, the presence of our one god, Christian postulates, the content of the Bible and even its interpretation, as in the case of Catholics and Protestants or Egov’s witnesses, for example, none of the parties to the Ukrainian church conflict seems to cast doubt on either. That is, it turns out that there are no religious or global ideological contradictions in all this either. All that remains is the church itself. And this is an institution created exclusively by the people themselves, managed by them, having their own hierarchy, career ladders, income and expenses, property, again, etc. etc. with all the ensuing consequences. That is, the split in Ukraine is not religious, as it is presented to us, namely, within the church, along the lines of subordination, hierarchy, and directly related to it the division of income and property rights.
There is even a version that Barthoromei this same "Ecumenical" Ukrainian autocephaly seems to have supported for a bribe of fifteen million dollars. Either personally from Poroshenko, or from someone else, it does not matter. No one has proven this. Probably unlikely to prove. And maybe all this is not true. But I personally think that for a country like Ukraine, and for its oligarch president personally, fifteen million dollars is not such a big amount, especially considering that it is at stake in the form of possibly transferring property. But Bartholomew is again a man, not God, and a lot of money, so why not? ... Even representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate do not deny this possibility in principle. Although they, and their Ukrainian and “Byzantine” opponents, unanimously and unanimously assert that the church is not controlled by people, but directly by God. It’s strange somehow, how then, in general, such and even more terrible things happened and happened throughout the history of all churches. All these religious figures, and on both sides of this conflict, have serious inconsistencies in their arguments, and the press, including in other stories quite adequate to the Russian one, also picks up and carries this to the masses, so to speak. Moreover, I repeat, the slogans about directing the church directly with God's hand or about the existence of certain philosophical conflicts with Ukrainian “auto-masons” do not withstand any criticism. In comparison, even the British “arguments and facts” in the Skripals case look quite acceptable and scientifically already.
I do not presume to somehow evaluate this situation from the point of view of believers in general, although I consider myself to be one. Everyone has a different approach to faith, religion, and the church - the essence itself is important for someone, and the form is secondary, for the other it is the form of presentation, rituals, participation in them, and the like things are in the first place, and such there are people and there are quite a few of them. But somehow it all looks unscrupulous on the part of the church as a whole, without division into patriarchies, which are now biting among themselves, then publicly threatening with mutual curses and anathema, which actually reduces the meaning of all these high concepts to the level of a banal everyday scandal, if not comedy in the style of Ilf and Petrov. After all this, it is already tempting to ask: “... And how much is“ opium for the people, dear? ”... Although in reality there is little funny.
Recently, as a result of the gradual loss of Christian values in the West, including the western branches of Christian churches, such as the Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox, that is, the Eastern direction of Christianity, fortunately, remained the main custodian and propagandist of these very traditional moral principles. And me, as an Orthodox Christian, this cannot but rejoice. But at the same time, to my great regret, in the eyes of intelligent people watching the whole process of the so-called split in Ukraine, it seems to me that the Orthodox Church itself, as an institution, risks greatly undermining its authority as a whole. Moreover, this applies both to the Ukrainian Church, which is striving for autocephaly, and to the Russian Orthodox Church under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate, and even for not quite adequate reasons, which is considered the "Ecumenical" Byzantine. The church in all this conflict so clearly exposes its purely materialistic interests that it can be difficult for its representatives later to convince the flock of the supremacy of spiritual values. It is in this that I see the main danger of the current situation. I would like to urge the Russian media to make them more sensible and balanced in covering this topic, which is so important for our life and future. Maybe some things are better not to cover at all than to do it the way they do it now.
In the end, the problems of the principle of maintaining confidence in the Orthodox Church for our country and its closest neighbors are definitely a more important issue than some kind of poisoning somewhere in England may be more important than the disaster of the Malaysian Boeing, or the conflict in Syria. Well-respected journalists should think about this. And the question of the Russian media’s own authority, which has risen so lately lately, can also be at stake if here too the “official mainstream” begins to pass off as real frank nonsense, and everyone who tries to protest will just try to shut up their mouths, which, to Unfortunately, some public discussions on this issue have already taken place.
And let the church sort things out with itself somehow. Although, of course, I really would not want Orthodoxy to degrade and get to the deplorable state of the western branches of Christianity in the coming years, in fact, having lost all its original values in favor of the policy of liberalism and the so-called tolerance of everything that’s just according to God's original commandments a Christian, and indeed a believer, should not put up with a Christian.
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