In society

Pillar

December 8, 2008 Leonid Radzikhovsky

Not a connoisseur of church intrigues, I cannot meaningfully participate in the discussion of this issue. But it seems to me more important than another - to understand what the Russian Orthodox Church is and what role in its history was the deceased Alexy II played?

Happy family

The Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch personally is constantly accused of conformism.

The accusation, from my point of view, is unfair.

The “conformist” can be considered the one who himself does not believe in what he says: for example, he is added to power, although he considers this power “bad”, “wrong”, for himself alien. And it is added - for money, with fear, for the sake of the rank, etc.

So, this does not apply to the Russian Orthodox Church. Of course, individual hierarchs are not averse to getting out of money, someone “on a hook” for certain incriminating circumstances, many try to make a career, etc. This is the whole matter of everyday life. I know a little true heroes who serve the authorities, having nothing from it-these are mainly TV-beams who do not even consider money, so absorbed in thoughts about the homeland.

But whatever the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Church itself as an organization always - at least the last 300 years certainly - is part of the state in Russia. The most important part. The system -forming part: spiritual "roof". And the state is the most important, system -forming part of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is not the conformism of the church. This is the essence of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is her mission, if you like.

The Russian Orthodox Church saw and sees its main goal and sees in the preservation-expanding and strengthening of the Russian state and strengthening its role in this state. The Russian Orthodox Church is a church with a state-patriotic-nationalist genome, mentality.

In this sense, by the way, the Russian Orthodox Church is no exception. For any country-tribe, the Church-religion-Vera served as the most important support, the main (along with the language) way of self-identification, and distinguishing “their own-alien”. Religion - along with the language and mental features - raised people into the tribe and contrasted another tribe. All this is all the more entertaining because, as a rule (with the exception of “honest savages”), all “developed religions” proclaimed their versatility, i.e. They claimed that “our God” is a common one, one for humanity, like a moon and the sun. Only now the indifferent sun shines to all stones, blades, people, people, without asking anyone, not demanding anything from anyone, not suil anything to anyone, and the god of each tribe (including the god of the Sun) communicates only with his own, shines them and demands from them. There are religions more prone to missionary and less inclined (or not at all inclined), but absolutability, the only fidelity of their religion and, at the same time, its universal (for all people) character proclaimed, as far as I know, almost all religions.

The features of the Russian Orthodox Church are associated with the fact that this seems to be the most conservative, the least reformed from the Christian churches and b) it is in Russia that the country and the people are completely subordinate to the state. Accordingly, and the church too.

As you know, the builder of the empire, Peter the Great finally fixed the Russian Orthodox Church, "he bent a horn into Barani." Patriarchate, with which, with which, but the elections, some kind of, but partnership with the authorities were eliminated. The Russian Orthodox Church directly and rudely subordinated to power. The church was headed by an official appointed by the emperor, the Minister for Religion, the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod. Among them were large educated people (gr. Tolstoy, victorious), but most were gray bureaucrats. Almost all of them were extreme reactionaries who saw the “salvation of Russia” only in the struggle with seditious, with the corrupted influence of the West, in preserving the undead of autocratic power.

Orthodoxy-Samotraviv-people. That was the symbol of the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church. They in this triad represented not just “Orthodoxy”, but Orthodoxy, bringing the ideas of autocracy to the people. Autocracy (hard dad) and Orthodoxy (good mother) on both sides took care of a resort people. At the same time - as it should be in a happy family - dad and mom loved each other. The emperors were people who are eagerly believers in the Russian Orthodox Church, and even more zealous defenders of the monarchy than priests, the more there were no.

One trouble: the people the farther, the more they saw in the state - stepfather, and in the church - the stepmother. But the happy know for yourself and did not observe the clock - before the bullet hit the clock and they became.

"Divorce"

The ideology of the Russian Orthodox Church remained autocratic-state after 1917.

The Bolsheviks did a terrible thing: they completely preserved (and even lifted to heaven) autocracy (“party dictatorship”), and they fit it with a nationality - but rudely threw “Orthodoxy” from this ligament. They replaced the "Orthodoxy" with some Abracadabra-"Scientific Communism", etc. babble. “Dad” threw “mom” and took the children!

Therefore, by the way-and not only because of persecution-for the Russian Orthodox Church there were periods (1917-1941, and then back in the late 1950s), when the state pushed the church, declared it its enemy, fought with it. The Russian Orthodox Church did not have not only physical, but also moral, spiritual forces to resist the Russian state. Having lost the state support, the Russian Orthodox Church hung not in the material, but in the spiritual vacuum.

And that is why - and not just “fear for the sake of the Jew” - the Russian Orthodox Church so sought to “reunite with the state”. Let Stalin, let Brezhnevsky, albeit through the secret police, albeit through the "godless Central Committee of the CPSU." That is, it is clear that individual hierarchs pursued their, purely personal, pragmatic goals. But this did not contradict the fact that they understood this mission like that - to serve and help the state as much as possible. Communist? Well, “I have no other Russia for you,” albeit communist. And more importantly, not “individual hierarchs” understood their mission exactly their mission, but their totality.

Therefore, someone’s personal “nonsense” of the sympathy of part of the Russian Orthodox Church to Stalin.

They know perfectly that he was not just an executioner, not just destroyed priests and temples much more than Lenin. They know perfectly that he was an evil, convinced, militant atheist. I don’t even mention such small things as a man-senior and serial killer ... In general, if anyone has the right to be considered an “exemplary antichrist”-this is how this failed Orthodox priest.

But! Stalin - even in a minute of life, is difficult, during the war years - again began to use Orthodoxy. He again, albeit from under the floor, albeit Shulersky, “inserted” Orthodoxy in the power triad. No, he not only “discovered” several temples. He again “introduced” the Russian Orthodox Church to the sovereign. Let it are not that power or autocracy ... But again, "we do not have another autocracy."

The figure of Patriarch Alexy I (1945 - 1970) characteristic in this sense. The nobleman, monarchist, chairman of the Tula branch of the Union of the Russian People, before the revolution, Archbishop of Novgorod, he, as it seems to me, did not go out of naked conformism at all “to the service of the Bolsheviks”, and began to lead the Russian Orthodox Church “under the control” of the colonel of the state security of Karpov. No, this is, among other considerations, the patriotic-maintaining instinct of the Russian nationalist. (By the way, Alexy showed his patriotism-he bravely behaved in the besieged Leningrad in the blockade.) Of course, the foreign church or priests who found themselves in the occupied territory, completely cooperated with the Germans, condemned the godless communism, prayed for the defeat of the USSR ... And yet the true spirit of the Russian Orthodox Church-the patriotic, sovereign, nationalist-did not express them, they expressed it. And the "Stalinist priests", who prayed (and, I believe, quite sincerely) for the victory of Russian weapons, for the victory of the Soviet Union. For another Russia, another power, another empire "I have no for you."

And "new marriage"

Another “ministry” fell to Alexy II.

The Russian Orthodox Church during the years of freedom, in a short moment of democracy-the beginning of the 1990s.

Liberation? Yes. From the rags of "communist ideology."

Renaissance? Yes. The return of countless temples. Open return of state honor and respect. The “candlesticks” shone around the patriarch-all these “Zhirinovsky”, ineptly, but sticking out the tip of the tongue from the effort of the baptized and so zealously rushing “to the hand of his Holiness”, which once, Luzhkov and General Poltavchenko, were knocked down by his foreheads ...

But the main ideological question was different. "About the place of the poet in the working system."

On the ratio of the Russian Orthodox Church and the new "democratic" state of the Russian.

There was no vertical. The state did not have ideology. In general, there was not a damn thing. “Take how much you can take away,” dropped from the height of his two meters “King Boris”. “Take” referred not only to the contracts for tobacco-water products ... No, take ideologies, take freedom as much as you can.

How much could the Russian Orthodox Church?

In principle, she could really “separate” and get rid of the state. Only then would it be another church. Which would have to be urgently starting "from the beginning."

And the Russian Orthodox Church did everything so as not to separate.

There are many reasons.

And material, from all the same “tobacco-vodka”, to the construction of temples. There was a fear that, having separated from the state, in conditions of free competition, one can lose to the flock of a variety of competitors, from Catholics and Protestants, to Krishnas and various sectarians, etc.

But along with these - undoubtedly, very important - I believe, and other reasons.

All the same instinct, state -owned mentality. If you like, faith. Belief in its purpose, in their duty to Russia and the Russian people.

There is a state church without a state.

The deep instinct told the Russian Orthodox Church that a) a child of freedom will quickly dissipate, the authorities will again become authoritarian, adjusted to the modern style, Russia will return to the rut of Russian history and b) that neither the Russian Orthodox Church, nor the state without the Russian Orthodox Church, will not. "We do not live without each other."

The state clearly felt the same - it did not want to, but simply could not afford the luxury of rule, without relying on the Russian Orthodox Church.

They again reached out to each other: the state-dad and the church-mother. A new, mutual union has become a happy find for both of them.

Of course, the Russian Orthodox Church took advantage of the situation, for her the Golden Age came, in fact.

Opportunities - almost like in the Russian Empire, practically state religion. And freedom is much more. There is no chief prosecutor of the Synod, there is a "free patriarch." There is no need that de facto is almost the same thing. De Jure is not at all. And in fact ... not a single chief prosecutor (except for “Pobedonostsev himself”) had such an influence, such a situation in power as the Patriarch in modern Russia.

At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church, of course, was a little “relaxed” within itself. There are different priests, they are pressed much less stringent than in Soviet times. In general, the Russian Orthodox Church was modernized - in comparison with the royal or Soviet times - to about the same extent as our whole state.

But in the main one, both the state and its church remained true to themselves, their history, to their genotype. Vertical. Authoritarianism. Sovereign. Confrontation to the West.

You can "blame" in this (who?!). You can "admire" for this (by whom?!).

But how do you not treat it, and this is exactly so.

And Alexy’s personal ministry was that he spent his ship with a sovereign course in his style - calmly, without sharaha, solid, “in the center”. He did what the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, and his own instinct, and the “mental field” of the country dictated to him.

I believe that his successor will also lead the same line - whoever he becomes.

To the question of God

Mighty Church. Tens of thousands of parishes, tens of millions of parishioners, including Putin and Medvedev, all ministers, all generals, all deputies (and communists), all oligarchs (both Jews, and Muslims, etc.), all artists (and stripper), all thieves in the law and all guards of the law. The whole elite and the whole people. Pillars of the state, vertical rod. Church of the Mikhalkov.

And - God?

Ah, yes ... Indeed, God ...

ROC is a responsible state-political organization. The most important and, as the whole story, necessary for the national-state self-identification of Russia and the Russian people showed.

Only God, “on behalf of which” the Russian Orthodox Church acts, is this cosmopolitan son of the Jewish Mary, an indifferent to politics, power and wealth of Christ, with his obviously anarchist ideas, who entered Jerusalem on a donkey, which had not had the slightest attitude to the Slavs, Scythians (well, to talk about “attitude of Christ towards Russia”, it means just to do it? And his sermons ... So Tolstoy tried to literally read the New Testament, pointed out his egregious inconsistency with everything that the Russian Orthodox Church does, and he excommunicated himself from the Russian Orthodox Church (formal excommunication was only the inevitable consequence of his scriptures).

But after all, the Russian Orthodox Church exists, so to speak, "not self -interest, but tokmo to his will." Yes, an obvious contradiction ... Communism was also “in the name of man” - only people from this were hard.

People, parishioners do not think over this contradiction, but they feel-something "wrong." State church. “A solid Lord for solid gentlemen” (Pelevin. They say that it is true that he also took it from someone.) Well, there is a spiritual alienation of Christians from the Russian Orthodox Church ... not a mother, but still rather a spiritual stepmother. So goodbye to say with the patriarch of tens of millions of parishioners, from millions of parishioners in Moscow, there were not so many-about one hundred thousand, in general, somehow there is no big shock in society ...

Yes, there is no among priests - imperceptibly, at least on the surface - moral authorities for the people. True, they are not at all, nowhere else, but the church is not sweeter from this. There are no new Avvakums and the men, “Zosim” and “Fathers of Sergius”. Although there are deeply believers, known for the true Holy Life, there are a person, even so far from the Russian Orthodox Church as me, I know about people. But not these “priests on earth” determine the face of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, maybe it should be? Parliament is not a place for discussions, and the Russian Orthodox Church is not a place for spiritual insights, they would have something even “indecent” in them, something just not appropriate for serious politicians and statesmen ...

“For what is the benefit of a person if he acquires the whole world, but will harm his soul?” (Mark, 8, 36).

A person may not have any benefit ... But the power and all its institutions, corporations are obvious from the “acquisition of the world”. And the soul ... What is the "soul" corporations?