Yakov Krotov

ESSAYS

UNITY OF THE CHURCH

Russian Orthodox seeking communion with Rome

My idea of the papacy is absolutely the same which was expressed by Fr. Robert Taft's interview on the problem, 2004. I understand that Fr Taft's view is not very popular among Roman Catholic nomenclature, but it is what Eastern Orthodox Christians thought about Pope during the first millenium.

Here follows a quotation from the disclaimer of Taize community. His founder Roger Schultz (killed in 2005) was a Protestant and Catholic simultenously--or at least he himself thought himself to be such. I think he was also Eastern Orthodox, and many Russian Orthodox friends of mine visited Taize as a native home. There have been icons in their church.

I can compare my problems with explaining why I am Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and, I dare to say, Protestant in one and the same only with problems of explaining that I am a Jew, Judaist and Russian in one and the same time.

So Community of Taize wrote on September 8m, 2006:

"From a Protestant background, Brother Roger undertook a step that was without precedent since the Reformation: entering progressively into a full communion with the faith of the Catholic Church without a "conversion" that would imply a break with his origins. In 1972, the bishop of Autun at the time, Armand Le Bourgeois, simply gave him Communion for the first time, without requiring any other profession of faith from him besides the creed recited during the Eucharist, which is held in common by all Christians. Several witnesses were present and can attest to this.

Whoever speaks of "conversion" in this respect has not grasped the originality of Brother Roger's search.

There was never anything hidden about this undertaking of Brother Roger's. In 1980, during a European meeting in Rome, he spoke these words publicly in St. Peter's Basilica, in the presence of Pope John Paul II: "I have found my own identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone."

Those who at all costs want the Christian denominations each to find their own identity in opposition to the others can naturally not grasp Brother Roger's aims. He was a man of communion, and that is perhaps the most difficult thing for some people to understand".

MAKE-UP, NOT WAR

Many people hate consumerism. Communists and anti-Communists, Atheists and Christians, men and women.

I enjoy consumerism. I enjoy shopping as a definitely consumeristic rite. The difference between shopping and real buying and consuming is as obvious as the difference between praying and receiving.

Shopping was an anti-Communist demonstration for me when Kremlin belonged to Communists. Shops were empty, shopping was full of sense still.

Russian Communists hated (and still hate) "Western corruption": jeans, glamour magazines, wealth. Kremlin still hates comsumerism. Consumerism is a threat to Patriotism, Strong Russia, Russian Values. I enjoy shopping even more now, because one small step in a shop is a great rebuff to all these nightmares.

Russia has supermarkets now. So shopping now can be super-resistance to anti-Westernism.

Judy Brown, President of the American Life League, is as anti-consumptionist as any Bolshevik. Or as a Roman Pontiff. She recommended the book of Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker "Architects of the Culture of Death."

410 pages of criticism, demolishing Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, Jack Kevorkian, and Peter Singer. Oh, and Helen Gurley Brown, editor of "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Brown is "another driving force in the Culture of Death."

"Cosmo" has been found guilty: "Magazine's disdain for chastity was a central tenet of its successful world-wide marketing of the Cosmo girl."

This is a recommendation of Ignatius Press, the pope�s publisher in the U.S. Cited in the news-letter of "Zenit," semi-official Vatican news-agency.

St. John Chrisostom hated cosmetics. Still, he never said that the use of make-up leads to abortions.

"Culture of death" - this is the culture of crusaders, knights, executioners. They've killed much more people than all readers of "Cosmo" taken together. Still, the Pope's of the past never criticized them.

Charles Darwin could be a poor researches. He definitely was a poor militarist. Many of his Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican contemporaries of Darwin waged imperial wars. Establishment of all churches blessed these wars and waged a war against Darwinism.

When Church ruled over European culture, it was a culture of death. The population was stable and miserable.

Inquisitors read bulls, not glamour magazines.

Population explosion happened not due to any Church initiative, but due to the discoveries made in order to improve the health of consumers. Whether it was Leo XIII of Pius XI who invented antibiotics?..

Church hierarchs are a useful and necessary part of the Church body. Ascetics is a useful and necessary part of the human life. Shops also. There are some hidden and open shortcoming in lents and shops, make-up and MinPeace. Who is God's Enemy #1?

MiniLove

Despotism cannot produce anything but words. Marxist propaganda produced tons of words. Despotism cannot produce anything valuable or at least interesting. Even lies of despotism are primitive and dull like a shadow. Orwell was very precise when he invented �newspeak� as a simply linguistic perversion: war will be called peace, hate will be called love. Lies can be more subtle in more free society. War in Middle Ages was called not �peace,� but a �just war.� Hate was called not �love� but �inquisition.�

John Allen Jr. reported from Rome in 2006:

�In his six homilies and messages during Holy Week, totaling (in Italian) 6,958 words, Benedict managed to use the noun "love" 29 times, plus some form of the verb "to love" 10 times. That's one reference to love for every 178 words, meaning that it was rare for a paragraph to go by in which the pope didn't return to the theme. The word for "sin," by way of comparison, appeared only three times, the word "evil" only four times�.

This is not good old inquisition of Torkvemada. This is MiniLove of Stalin and Putin. This despotism doesn�t have fantasy or need to invent something original. It constructs lies simply by using antonymes. When Putin declares that �war in Chechnya is over�, this means that the war in Chechnya will escalate. When Putin declares that �law must guard private property� that means that one more businessman will be imprisoned soon. When Ratzinger declares �All you need is love�, you need not love, but a lot of prudence and soberness.

Defenders of despotism enjoy using presumption of innocence. But only person has presumption of innocence. Caesar�s kingdom has presumption of culpability.� Any power, whether secular or religious, is obliged to prove (not by words, but by deeds) that she is not guilty in newspeak, collectivistic arrogance, deafness and violence.

THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID, SO--NO VIOLENCE!

�Continue dauntlessly to proclaim that prescinding from God, acting as if he did not exist or relegating faith to the purely private sphere, undermines the truth about man and compromises the future of culture and society� (Pope Ratzinger, 11 July 2006, letter to the Spanish bishops).
This phrase seems to me mist typical for the modern religious fundamentalism (not only Christian).

The word �dauntlessly� reveals a resentment-like paranoia. Why �dauntlessly�? You must speak about being dauntless when there is some danger only. But in nowadays Europe bishops are not in danger. Catholic bishops are persecuted in China, but Popes never asked Chinese Catholics to be �dauntless.� The late archbishop Oscar Romero was �dauntless� in proclaiming Gospel in El Salvador, and he was killed.

The desire to be �dauntless� is the source of terrorism (not the only one, certainly). It implies that modernity is more dangerous for life than Middle Ages or any other previous epoch. But is democracy more hostile to Christ than Roman civilization based on slavery and despotism?

The slogan "Don't be afraid" can be used by Bin Laden. The slogan "There is nothing to be afraid of" is Christian really. "Don't be afraid" can be understood as "Don't be afraid to use violence." No! There is nothing to be afraid of, so no violence and coercion are needed to Christians.

SEX: CHRISTIAN

I am and old feminist and to some extent a transvestite -- because I were a cossack everywhere, and cossack in modern Russia is often called "yubka" (skirt) by anti-clericals.

In my own family women have been always more clever than man. My grand-mother Golda (Ol'ga) Goldberg was a better chess-player than my grand-father Lazar' Gindin. She was even so wise that she often let him win the chess-party and stepped back to make him real "pater familias." My mother was cleverer than my father, and the same is true concerning my own wife: she is much cleverer than her husband. Certainly, this can be pure coincidence (I now a lot of families where husbands are cleverer than wivaes), or this can be the result of the "ghetto phenomena," when oppression makes oppressed develop some hidden abilities.

I have enough experience of contacts with women-pastors and woman-preachers to state that they are nor better nor worth than males. Alas, power tends to corrupt females precisely in the same way as power tends to corrupt males. Russian Orthodox have a very rich and sad experience of priests and archpriests wives and mistresses being de facto rulers of the parishes and dioceses, and generally they've tend to be more cruel than makes.

That is why I think feminism has only a limited potential. It is good to overcome male-domination. But it cannot help to overcome domination as modus vivendi. I don't have any dogmatic objections against woman's priesthood, but I have dogmatic objections against understanding of priesthood in terms of power. Power is often an obstacle on the way to communication. The struggle for women's priesthood and women's priesthood are all too often barriers to communication.

Let me take example from the other field. I've translated a lot of Russian Orthodox worship into Russian (from the Church Slavonic to vernacular Russian). Still, I prefer to serve in Church Slavonic, in order for the members of our community to keep common context and common experience (which are necessary for communication) with other Russian Orthodox. Our Church is very liberal, but I will vote against women's ordination, because this will alienate us from thousand and millions of co-believers. But should this ordination become a fact, I won't leave my Church.

ANTI-ABORTIONISTS: ARE THEY CONSECUTIVE?

Opus Dei Fr. Martin Rhonheimer suggested recently that American Catholics have made a mistake by exalting the abortion issue above virtually everything else, neglecting other important human and social rights issues.

I completely agree and I can add one detail. I don't beleive anti-abortionists are completely sincere. Roman Catholics in Russia are completely silent about abortions, althouth in Russia abortions are absolutely legal and very widespread. I can see only one reason: the well-being of the Church establishment is more ligh value than "the life of innocent." Anti-abortions are active only in countries where Roman Catholic Church is in safety.

AGGRESSION UNDER CHRISTIAN BRAND

Lust for power opposes love in modern world as well as before. One of the greatest achievements of freedom is this lust for power doesn’t dare to be as open as before Christ. Aggression became more hypocritical now. Caesar’s speak now usually speaks about the defense of defenseless.

Dostoyevsky was against aggression against children, he called to wipe the tiniest tear-drop of the child. Hundred years after Dostoyevsky, beginning from 1995 Russia exterminated thousands of Chechens children under the pretext of defense of helpless Russian boys and girls.

Russia is not an exception from the rule. The same can be said about most democratic (really democratic) countries of modern times.

“Right-wing Christian Fundamentalism has nothing at all to do with democracy and basing political policy on it's narrow-minded, short sighted moral code of good must conquer evil no matter the cost is without doubt going to cost many more Americans their jobs, homes and lives. … America has flaunted it's contempt for the rights of it's own population and those of many other countries. The US military has invaded several countries killing thousands of civilians. … The Bush administration has compounded on lie after lie in it's bid to make Americans fear the 'bogeymen' that threaten the existence of Christian civilization.” (http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/006538.php, 11.04.2004).

Christ in modern global world is still used to justify aggression. Christian rhetoric dominate only in two countries, but these countries possess most powerful weapons. One country is Russia, where Russian Orthodoxy became semi-official ideology from 1991. Another country is America, where Protestant fundamentlists play the role Russian Orthodox conservatives play in Russia.

American critics of American president in 2004 began speaking about his “Christian coalition”, about “a hardly tamable Christian fascism that starts to scare the bee-Jesus out of blue States” (http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=3738). Christianity again, as in the Middle Ages, is identified with anti-Christian spirit of domination and bloodshed.

The paradox of Toqueville is still at hand.

That people enjoy slavery not freedom is the favorite idea of Berdyaev, but he is the best evidence of the contrary! This is nice prophetic rhethoric, but bad pastorship, psychology and history. People enjoy life, and to enslave others seems the best guarantee for survival. Any aggression is an enslaving of others. We all are guilty in aggression, and as a result we all are slaves to some extent. As concerns special inner-church enslavement, I think it is secondary to the social ambitions of Christians. The truth of protestant charismatic churches lies in their denial of social. The greater distance from Caesar's, the better. Graham near American president, Pope near endless presidents, patriarchs near all sorts of bosses--all this must go. Christians must be real salt of the earth, invisible as a salt in bread.

NEWSPEAK: COLLABORATION MEANS SYMPHONY, SYMPHONY MEANS REPRESSIVE SOCIETY

Bishop Gervasio Gestori of San Benedetto del Tronto tried to specify the limits and ways within which the state and Church can intervene to oppose the spread of sects. He addressed a diocesan congress of the Socioreligious Research and Information Group on "Supplanting and Religious Sects: The Deviation of Tolerance." (Zenit, June 8. 2006.)

"The state must take an interest in sects and, in general, in religion, when it is a question of public order, but it has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of a religious group," he clarified.

This seems to be a well-known to any Russian �soviet newspeak.� One thesis is liberal (�the state �has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of a religious group�), and it is purely formal air-cover, hiding the desire of the Church leader to interfere with the State officials into religious life. The second thesis is: �The problem of the regulation of sects remains an open question and its evolution merits the careful attention of the Catholic Church in order to collaborate with the state�.

Let us imagine Christians in some Muslim country. Some imam says that the state must not interfere into religious life, in order to follow Western standards, but still the state must collaborate with imams to regulate the situation with such sects as Christians and others. �Collaborate� is a genuine newspeak, meaning �unofficially, secretly and illegally �persecute religious minorities.�

In modern Russia the Moscow Patriarchate �collaborate� with the government with great success to �defend� Russia from Roman Catholics, Protestants and even from �disloyal� Russian Orthodox minorities.

"Collaboration" in modern newspeak means what "symphony" meant in the Byzantine theology: using Caesar's Kingdom for the sake of God's Kingdom.

* * *

�In his six homilies and messages during Holy Week, totaling (in Italian) 6,958 words, Benedict managed to use the noun "love" 29 times, plus some form of the verb "to love" 10 times. That's one reference to love for every 178 words, meaning that it was rare for a paragraph to go by in which the pope didn't return to the theme. The word for "sin," by way of comparison, appeared only three times, the word "evil" only four times�.

Defenders of despotism enjoy using presumption of innocence. But only person has presumption of innocence. Caesar�s kingdom has presumption of culpability. Any power, whether secular or religious, is obliged to prove (not by words, but by deeds) that she is not guilty in newspeak, collectivistic arrogance, deafness and violence.

PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS CRITICISM OF THE WEST

* * *

American theologian George Weygel said on the conference in Vienna (quoted by Allen Jr., http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word050506.htm):

"That failure is one expression of what I have called Europe's 'crisis of civilizational morale;' the sources of that crisis are, fundamentally, in the order of ideas -- metaphysical nihilism and its offspring, epistemological skepticism, moral relativism; these corrosive ideas have had, and will continue to have, profound consequences for the democratic project throughout the Western world, and, indeed, for the very future of the West."

Weygel criticism of the West is word by word replica of the anti-Western criticism by anti-Semitic and totalitarian Solchenitsyn, by Muslim fundamentalists from Iran. They differ only in conclusions. Islamic and Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox fundamentalist say that to overcome "metaphysical nihilism" and "moral relativism" You must stop democracy. Weygel say the opposite.

The real opposition is not betwenn "moral relativism" and Christianity or Islam. It is between collectivism and personalism, Islamis or Christian collectivism and Islamic and Christian personalism.

"Weigel points to the refusal of the EU to even acknowledge God in the preamble to its constitutional tractate, which, following Joseph Weiler, Weigel argues reflects a "'Christophobia' in European high culture". Both Pope and Moscow Patriarch were chocked by omitting God in the EU Constitution. Why?!! I love Lord Jesus, and this is why I am against mentioning Him in any law or constitution. Every time we put God in anything over-personal, such as Law, we expell Him from our personal life. It is a great temptation to combine personal and collectivistic, but Christians must struggle with this temptation.