Why are you tormenting Kirill?

Some members of the Public Chamber came to the defense of Patriarch Kirill, saying that a “massive information campaign” was launched against him, ordered, paid, perhaps even by Berezovsky, in general, by all the enemies of Russia, who want no less than “to break the traditional structure of Russian statehood " In general, as usual: if you criticize the government, you are a traitor and enemy of the people; if you criticize the head of the church, you are an apostate and destroyer of Christian values.

I don’t know how substantiated the accusations are that the attacks on the patriarch are organized and somehow coordinated. But even if this is so, then this is a completely natural reaction of society to what Kirill himself did as a citizen, and not as the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. And he did one simple thing - he got involved in the political struggle, supporting one specific candidate in the presidential election.

As a citizen of Russia, he has such a right - to participate in elections and campaign for whom to vote. However, he had another option, to speak to Orthodox believers precisely as their spiritual mentor and say something like this: “Brothers and sisters, in the coming days you will have to make a responsible decision, to choose the head of our state. Do it according to your conscience, not out of fear, not out of personal gain, but so that you are not ashamed of this decision either before your conscience or before our Lord.” I'm sure he could find more beautiful words if he wanted. Or maybe he wanted to, but they didn’t let him, considering that calling for a vote according to one’s conscience was campaigning “against”, which is unacceptable on central channels from such authoritative persons.

In any case, Vladimir Gundyaev chose to remain Vladimir Gundyaev, although when he spoke on TV, he forgot to take off his church vestments, but this is forgivable. In a secular suit and tie, his fellow citizens might simply not recognize him and even confuse him with Churov. But now, they are trying to defend him with this cassock, apparently forgetting that you can be a believer, go to church on Sundays and vote for Prokhorov, Mironov, Zhirinovsky and even Zyuganov, but against Putin.

Having entered the political battlefield, he now receives this abuse. Yes, Putin has political opponents, there are even those who can organize something well or not very well, for money or for interest. I think that such a narrow-minded character in Putin’s entourage as Vladimir Gundyaev will become more and more interesting every day as a reason to criticize the government with which he so unambiguously identified himself, only, now, this has nothing to do with Orthodoxy, culture and statehood has no relation.