"S. Belkovsky's subversive anti-church plan." Religious assessment

Everything that comes into the realm of politics today takes on Kafkaesque features. Therefore, the requirements of a number of so-called deputies of the so-called The State Duma “checking” Belkovsky’s statements “for extremism” has nothing to do with concern for the well-being of the Orthodox faith. And they rather resemble the imperishable accusations of Christ that He threatened to destroy the Temple of Jerusalem. Without daring to compare Stanislav with the Son of the Living God, let’s try to consider what he proposed in one of the points of his “Road Map” for the transition from the dictatorship of a criminal oligarchy to a democratic parliamentary republic. And give a critical one. Evaluate his proposals.

Let me make a reservation right away: I do not specifically dwell on the form of “Belkovsky’s proposals,” because they could be the most severe, dictated by polemical courage.

Essentially.

1. As I understand it, S. Belkovsky proposes to reorganize the Russian Orthodox Church in the future, turning it into a confederation of Orthodox parishes. I categorically do not accept the verb “prohibit”, because there must be serious judicial grounds for this. Secondly, this will be the same Stalinist policy, which the monarcho-democrat Belkovsky views so negatively. By the way, even Stalin, while actually destroying the Church by 1940, never decided to formally outlaw the Russian Orthodox Church. And then, the reorganization and reformation of the Church is still not a matter of the state (if it is a democratic state) but of the Church itself. This is what democrats think)))). Those without "leather jackets and Mausers".

2. The ease with which Stanislav proposes to reform the Church he justifies by the fact that the modern Church is a Church founded not by Christ, but by Stalin (“Sergianism”) in 1943. At the same time (without going into legal subtleties) I would like to note that the author does not take into account the ecclesiological teaching of the Universal Church on apostolic succession, which is not based on the presence or absence of properly executed statutory documents. It is based on the continuity of the purity of the Orthodox Faith (Divine Revelation) and the continuity of Divine grace transmitted in the Sacrament of Ordination. All 4 bishops who were not in the Gulag in 1940 and who participated in the famous meeting with Stalin, on the latter’s initiative in 1943, retained both the first and the second. Each of them leads “the genealogy of their apostolic succession” along a long chain of ordinations, through centuries and millennia, from one of the Apostles of Christ. That is, of course, the current Church in Russia is not Stalin’s, Khrushchev’s, Brezhnev’s, Andropov’s, Chernenkov’s, Gorbachev’s, Yeltsin’s, Putin’s Church, but the Church of Christ. At the same time, I leave all “political games” in the format of church-state relations “outside the brackets”...

3. S. Belkovsky proposes to create a confederation of parishes and establish the principle of “democratic centralism”. Remember? Election of all links in the hierarchy from top to bottom and accountability from top to bottom. Seems like an attractive idea. Some might even say that this is a return to ancient Christian traditions. But that's not true.

The Church still exists today as a union of fairly independent entities. On the scale of Ecumenical Orthodoxy - the Union of Equal Local Churches. Within the Russian Orthodox Church there is a union of parishes. Even in a legal sense. Yes, the Russian Orthodox Church is registered as a federal public (religious) organization. But each parish is an independent legal entity. With your details, seal and bank account. Formally, there is a Parish Assembly made up of active parishioners, which must solve the most important problems of the parish. Formally, there is a Parish Council, a working body that governs the life of the parish between Assemblies. But all this is formal. There is and there will be. There are no living real church communities yet. And living church communities will not appear until the issue of “fixed membership,” which exists in any public organization, even in the conventional “Society of Butterfly Lovers,” is resolved. The issue of “fixed membership” is CRITICAL. Without it, no return to ancient Christian traditions can happen by definition.

And about the elections. S. Belkovsky does not understand the synergistic (co-worker, dual) nature of the Church, as a divinely revealed Living Organism, the Body of Christ. On the one hand, in this metaphysical “Body” there is the God-man Christ—on the other, his creations, as God, and his flock, as Man. On the one hand - the heirs of the apostles, bishops (and their assistants, clergy) - on the other, the flock, flock, parishioners. Agreement regarding the election of a priest or bishop must be mutual. Both from the episcopate and from the flock. And the flock from among itself can propose the best proteges for ordination as pastors, and the bishop can propose the candidacy of his protege in the hope of hearing from the flock, either “Axios!” (worthy-Greek), or "Nonaxios!" (not worthy). This happened in the history of Christianity. But this is only possible if there are real living church communities, i.e., fixed church membership.

But simply “appointing” priests and bishops from one’s midst in a democratic way means over time slipping into Protestantism, in which, in its extreme forms (neo-Protestant), the shepherd is simply the elder of the community, where everyone is his own priest, “a chosen generation.” ". The further path is clear - the abolition of the Sacraments, the abolition of the institution of monasticism, the abandonment of fasting, asceticism in general, the experience of the holy fathers of two millennia, the transition to modern spoken language in worship, improvisations on electric guitars on soles, etc., etc. But Christianity is all this, starting with Luther's reformation. From October 31, 1517 has already passed. And this is not the path that Orthodoxy should follow.

That is, Mr. Belkovsky DID NOT SAY ANYTHING NEW. But if he didn’t say anything NEW or destructive, why persecute him for his opinion, for his position, especially not an original one? I don't understand.

Isn’t it better for the repressive bodies and deputies of United Russia to leave us Orthodox Christians and our “defense” alone, and to deal with, for example, the problems of corruption? To begin with, it would be possible to ratify the corresponding Article 20 of the UN Convention, according to which officials must account not only for income, but also for expenses, which often unimaginably exceed their salaries? How are we going to deal with ecclesiological questions ourselves?