Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 21 – Patriarch
Kirill, who has become the leading promoter of the traditionalist national
values in Putin’s Russia, says on the occasion of his 70th birthday
that the Moscow Patriarchate will never allow an independent Ukrainian Orthodox
Church or the appearance of multiculturalism in Russia itself.
Feted by Orthodox and Russian state
leaders, including Vladimir Putin who not only gave Kirill another award but
suggested that it is likely it was Kirill’s father who secretly baptized the
young Putin many years ago (interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=65227), the patriarch used the occasion not only to
reaffirm his hard line but to declare that he has “only just begun” to push it.
Kirill made that declaration in the
course of an extensive interview with the Moscow newspaper, “Kommersant” (kommersant.ru/doc/3148819), which
he began in the best traditions of the Soviet background which he shares by
providing statistics about the growth in church institutions rather than
concern about religious faith itself.
“If you’ll permit me,” the Russian
church leader said, “I will begin with statistics.” Since he became patriarch,
the number of Moscow Patriarchate churches has increased by 5,000, the number
of priests by 10,000, and the number of monasteries by 122. There are now 160
more parishes in Moscow, and the number of bishoprics has gone up from 159 to
296.
The expansion in the number of
bishoprics has been especially important, the patriarch continued, because it
means that his administration has “more information” about what is going on in
the country, including anti-church attitudes, and is better positioned to
promote the values of Orthodoxy in Russia.
“We are only at the very beginning of that,” the hierarch said.
His two clearest declarations on policy
have been about church affairs in Ukraine and cultural and ethnic relations in
the Russian Federation. With regard to
Ukraine, he declared, “our Church will never leave in misfortune our brothers
in Ukraine …We will never agree to a change in the holy canonical borders of
our Church” (interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=65240).
The reason for that is simple,
Kirill said, “Kyiv is the spiritual cradle of Holy Rus just as Mskheta is for
Georgia or Kosovo for Serbia.”
Unfortunately, he continued, there
are forces in Ukraine that are trying to undermine that. They are “forcibly”
seizing churches, “ignoring the decisions of courts, conducting an information
campaign against the Church,” and even proposing laws which “discriminate and
put in the most difficult conditions the largest religious community of the country.”
According to the Moscow patriarch,
those behind this consist primarily of “Greek Catholics or atheists.” And in words certain to offend Ukrainians and
the Vatican, he declared that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church is “continuing
aggressive and offensive attacks on Our Church as a whole and also on canonical
Orthodoxy in Ukraine.”
With regard to Russia itself,
Kirill, who has often been criticized for his support of archaic and
obscurantist views, maintained his tough line against modernity, democracy and
human rights but took at least one position that may bring him into conflict
with the Kremlin (russian.rt.com/russia/article/334313-patriarh-kirill-intervyu-rt).
In an interview on Russian
television, he said that “multiculturalism has no future” because it promotes “cultural
mixing” and that in turn “carries within itself a source of division.” He noted that “the ideas of multiculturalism
didn’t exist even in the times of the USSR.” And he insisted that they should
not be introduced or accepted now.
When in Soviet times, Moscow
proclaimed the formation of “a Soviet people,” it nonetheless “recognized that
within it Turkmens will remain Turkmens, Tajiks will remain Tajiks, Uzbeks
Uzbeks, Russians Russians and Jews Jews.”
That same approach must be developed “in the new Russia.”
Kirill’s defense of Russianness is
certain to be seen by many in his country as support for Russian ethnic identity
and thus indicate his support for those who oppose the idea of a creation of a
civic and non-ethnic Russian identity, something that at the end of October,
Vladimir Putin appeared to support.
If Kirill has decided to come out
swinging against any move in that direction, the prospects for the enshrinement
in Russian law and the constitution or at least the enforcement of what might
be inserted in either of the idea of a civic nation worthy of the term are
certainly far less bright than many had thought.
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