Translated material
Cavemen
Just like a year ago, when under still unclear circumstances a priest and his family burned to death in a Tver village , the current incident, no matter how wild it may seem, is again being used by the Church to solve its corporate problems. For example, to further impose on society the course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” as a compulsory school subject, which, they say, will eliminate religious ignorance from the minds of Russians. As if in pre-revolutionary Russia, where Orthodoxy was the state religion and everyone studied the Law of God, there was no religious ignorance and sects that emerged in the field of Orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, if the defense-industrial complex course is taught in the spirit of the superiority of Orthodoxy over other confessions and religions, ignorance in people’s heads will become even greater. For they will believe that religion should teach pride, not humility, cruelty, not love and compassion. And this will further alienate people from the Kingdom of God, where, and not at all to a strong Orthodox state, the soul of every “man of God” should be directed.
Anti-cult cultists also want to get their piece of the pie that can be “baked” from the situation with the Penza recluses, who, using budget money, want to create programs for the psychological rehabilitation of sectarians - one can only guess how the “guardianship” of Soviet-style psychiatrists over the psyche of the living will turn out in fear of people.
Meanwhile, not everyone calls the walled-up followers of “Father Peter” sectarians, and their actions, which shocked secular people, are destructive (believers, even without accepting the motives associated with the end of the world, with codes, passports, etc., can understand on their own the desire to hide from the temptations, dirt and lies of the sinful world). Some Orthodox clergy - and this does them credit - are inclined to see the Christians who have gone into the catacombs as their “lost sheep” and even accuse the hierarchs of not seeing the “systemic crisis of popular grassroots Orthodoxy.”
Here the hierarchs should really think about why normal people, Orthodox believers, accuse them and decide to take such a step of despair, turning at the same time, in the words of Deacon Andrei Kuraev, into “cave people”? And the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church MP, who compete with other religious traditions and associations, would do well to think about the fact that while they label believers of other faiths and religious traditions as sectarians, sectarian consciousness is flourishing within the Church itself.
However, the Russian media are trying not to make unnecessary noise about the “filthy sectarians,” as the unfortunate anti-cultists have dubbed them. It would be a different matter if, for example, Muslims, Protestants or Hare Krishnas “studied” such a thing - the latter, by the way, are even accused of believing in Krishna by the American archaeologist Michael Cremo, who, among other things, lectures at the Royal Archaeological Society (Great Britain), wanted to share his anti-Darwinian ideas with teachers and students of Russian universities.
Listening to fictitious accusations of anti-cultists nurtured by the Patriarchy against other confessions and religions, one inevitably comes to the conclusion that people with cave consciousness today should be looked for not so much in dugouts, but in completely respectable offices of other dioceses and anti-cult organizations subordinate to them. By convincing society that it lives surrounded by dangerous sectarians from among law-abiding, officially registered religious organizations, they turn Russians into cavemen who must see enemies in every dissident. In other words, they prepare the ground for all kinds of fears, which Metropolitan Kirill spoke about when commenting on what happened in the Penza region, condemning those who exploit the topic of religion for their own interests, who use faith “for personal purposes, to fulfill their painful phobias.”
In this regard, I would like to ask whether those Orthodox patriots who want to cleanse the Russian land of infidels and foreigners are not pursuing personal goals? And on whose behalf and whose teaching does the learned deacon, for example, who has gained scandalous fame, preach, who, traveling through cities and towns, contrary to the commandment “there is neither Greek nor Jew,” insults people of other nationalities and beliefs? Is it not he who also sows confusion in the minds of ordinary people who cease to believe in the grace-filled mission of the Church?
I am afraid that in the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church MP, patriotic, worldly sentiments have long prevailed over spiritual aspirations. No one can prevent a person from loving politics and power more than God. The only thing that is forbidden is to cover up your power-hungry ambitions with God, religion, and faith. The Penza events are only a small fraction of the huge price that people have to pay who believe in politicians dressed in vestments and false shepherds with a cave mentality.