Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 26 – In Soviet
times, the KGB engineered the promotion of gay priests into the hierarchy in
order to control the church from the outside, Father Gleb Yakunin says. Now,
reflecting that past of which he was a part, Patriarch Kirill is doing the same
but from the inside, confident that he will be able to control the hierarchy
and use it for his own political ends.
According to Yakunin, who was jailed
by the Soviet state, twice anathematized by the Moscow Patriarchate, and is now
secretary of the independent Apostolic Orthodox Church, the majority of the 70
priests Kirill has elevated to higher church ranks are gay and thus under his
total control (novayagazeta.ru/politics/61944.html).
“We democrats and members of the
religious avant-garde are against homophobia,” Yakunin told “Novaya gazeta.” “And we say that the danger is not in the
fact that someone is a homosexual but rather in what he [may out of fear be
forced] to say.” Andrey Kurayev is wrong when he talks about a “homosexual
lobby” in the church. “The danger is elsewhere.”
It lies, Yakunin continued, with the
way in which Patriarch Kirill is using the presence of gays in the hierarchy to
convert the church into “a political force” that he alone controls. “No one
ever has dealt with this theme,” the dissident religious leader says, “because
there was a taboo on it.” Kurayev, for all his shortcomings, has opened the
door to discussion, Yakunin said.
“The chief reason and misfortune of
[the Russian] Orthodox Church is that the elements of democracy which were in
the early church are now completely absent,” Father Gleb says. “That tradition must be restored,” he
continued, as part of the purification of the church from its descent into
magic and authoritarianism.
For the church today, he added,
homosexuality is a problem not because some people think it is a sin but rather
because its exploitation by the hierarchy has “been converted into a system, a
social-political lift” that allows the patriarch and those around him to
enforce absolute discipline. They have
become like “members of the Politburo.”
“This creates a serious threat,”
Yakunin says, “and Kurayev feels this sharply. He is afraid even to speak
openly about this [because] he does not want to draw the whole unattractive
picture.” But even if he is suppressed,
the issue is now more out in the open, and its discussion should force society
and the church to change.
Given President Vladimir Putin’s
willingness to exploit anti-LGBT attitudes and his signing into law a ban on “homosexual
propaganda to children,” the Kremlin leader has put Kirill in a difficult
position: Putin can’t be entirely comfortable with a religious leader whose
control rests on exploiting fears among hierarchs of exposure and legal action
against them.
Yakunin pointed out that the current
situation represents a kind of paradox. In Soviet times, “when the church was
under the complete control and influence of the KGB, it was still possible to
explain [what was happening] by reference to the fact that the church was ‘a
prisoner.’”
But today, Father Gleb said, “if one
speaks about the FSB, then [that security agency] fears the church [more than
the other way around] because in fact the church has been put in the position of
the former Central Committee of the CPSU.” That makes what Kurayev is doing all
the more important.
In the past, the Soviet security
agencies pushed the church to promote gays knowing that they would be at risk
and thus subject to KGB control. Now, the Patriarchate is doing the same in the
expectation that it and no one else will be able to control the hierarchy. From the perspective of the church, that is
even worse, Yakunin suggested.
“For me,” he concluded, “what is
important is not who supports Kurayev but who opposes him.” What he is doing
presents an opportunity for cleansing the church not so much of its
KGB-dominated past but of its Kirill-dominated present, Yakunin added, and he
thus deserves “all possible support.”
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