What is the year, so is the arrival

Alexy II reported on the work of the Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church has not remained aloof from the secular tradition of presenting a report on the work done in the weeks leading up to the New Year. Yesterday, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II, speaking at the annual diocesan meeting of the Moscow clergy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, played the role of a kind of auditor and presented the church’s statistical indicators for 2007. The figures presented by the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church would be the envy of many general directors - the church is demonstrating what in secular language is called good growth rates. In particular, during the reporting period, the number of parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and abroad increased by 639 and reached almost 28 thousand. The number of dioceses increased from 136 to 142, and the number of monasteries increased from 713 to 732. The number of clergy increased by 300 people - now in Almost 30 thousand priests and deacons serve in churches in Russia, the CIS countries and far abroad.

In the old days they said that there were forty forty churches in Moscow - translated into the language of statistics, “religious institutions” were at least 1600. Judging by the report presented by the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, now the Mother See is rapidly catching up with lost time: in the past year, the number of Orthodox churches operating in Moscow and chapels increased from 730 to 851. “Divine services are performed in 725 churches and chapels. Services have been resumed in 15 churches, 25 churches have not been vacated by their previous tenants,” the patriarch said. True, noting the successes of Moscow priests, the highest hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church scolded them for their “non-statutory” appearance. According to the Patriarchal Vicar, Archbishop Arseniy of Istra, some clergy allow themselves to pin up their hair with ladies' hairpins, so that “only a bow is missing.” The priests' habit of wearing sandals in summer was also severely criticized - according to church regulations, shoes must be closed.

At the diocesan meeting, they talked not only about the merits and demerits of current priests, but also about the training of new personnel - it is in full swing. According to Alexy II, there are now 87 theological schools under the Russian Orthodox Church, including five academies, three Orthodox universities, two theological institutes, 38 seminaries and 39 theological schools. More than 10 thousand Sunday schools are opened in churches.

Summing up the year, Alexy II, of course, could not ignore the topic that became the leitmotif in the dialogue between the church and secular authorities in 2007, namely the teaching of “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture” in Russian schools . “The Education component, which will be adopted from September 1, 2009, includes the subject of Spiritual and Moral Culture,” the patriarch told representatives of the Moscow clergy. It is expected that the defense-industrial complex course will be taught within the framework of this component. In recent years, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church emphasized, the church has constantly insisted that the teaching of “Fundamentals” should be “not optional, but as part of the school education program.” The introduction of “spiritual and moral culture” into the general education component, according to Alexy II, provides all the opportunities for this - thus, long-term negotiations between the church hierarchs and the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science were crowned with success. At the same time, the principle of tolerance is not violated: children from Muslim and Jewish families will be given the opportunity to study the basics of their faiths, and atheist schoolchildren will have the right to take a “course of non-religious ethics.”

The main event of 2007, according to the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church (and the patriarch is no exception), was the signing of the Act on Canonical Communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and the foreign church. “The division caused by political reasons, primarily the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that broke out after it, is a thing of the past,” emphasized Alexy II. “That’s why we rejoice at the reunion, which has healed a wound that has been bleeding for more than 80 years.” The Patriarch paid tribute to Vladimir Putin’s help in establishing contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church MP and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and quoted the president’s words that the reunification of the church in the homeland and abroad is “an event of truly national historical proportions and enormous moral significance.”

“The era of scattering stones must finally give way to the era of gathering them, and the Russian Orthodox Church gives this expectation a positive example,” added the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. A negative example is set by those who attack the church with accusations. “The summer speech of atheists with fears that the Russian Orthodox Church is leading to the collapse of the country looks strange, to say the least,” noted Alexy II, referring to a letter from ten academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences who reproached the Russian Orthodox Church for putting pressure on society and the secular state. On the contrary, the patriarchate believes that the church has a beneficial effect on society, in particular by reminding us of the sanctity of family and marriage. The Church calls to “rejoice at every new child as a guarantee of love and family happiness,” and therefore, the patriarch emphasized, “when sharing a marriage bed, spouses should desire children, and not use various tricks to avoid the birth of a child.”

The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church considers one of the successes of the outgoing year to be that he had the opportunity to remind about Christian values ​​from the rostrum of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Patriarch emphasized that for the first time such a significant European structure “provided its platform not only to the head of the largest Orthodox Church, but also to a representative of the Christian denomination in general.”

Mikhail MOSHKIN