Andrey Primed

The New Year’s dismissal of Protodiacon Andrei Kuraev from the Moscow Theological Academy for saying in his own blog caused a scandal that seemed to not correspond to the scale of the event. However, it is worth paying attention to the fact that in the recently published rating of the influence of Russian intellectuals, Kuraev turned out to be one step above the current patriarch, while neither the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, nor any other teachers of this God-related institution fell into the list. And it is no coincidence.

Kuraev and his blog in LiveJournal are Church Svetlana Mironyuk and RIA Novosti under her leadership. Orthodoxy with a human face, unsuccessful attempts to ennoble the image of the Russian Orthodox Church in front of an educated audience. This is done due to the recognition of obvious errors and limited disclosure of intra -church information in the format of “personal opinion”, but with the goal of sophisticated propaganda, urging the imperfection of the current Russian Orthodox Church for the sake of eternal truths and the highest considerations.

Kuraev succeeded well for almost twenty years. No wonder he, along with the eternal church official for public relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin and the current Patriarch Kirill, was one of the three most cited in secular media representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the game on the bestowback that the Moscow Patriarchate cannot officially declare is fraught with risk. Like Mironyuk, who put on five objective news and one profitable power, but not managing, from the point of view of the Kremlin, to withstand the balance in the lighting of the Maidan (the complete moral and, as a result, the opposition’s media winning was not prevented from Yanukovych), so Kuraev became victims of tightening customs in Putin's Russia for the third term. The protodiacon made only one serious mistake that overwhelmed the patience of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Kuraev himself calls his dismissal from MD " the triumph of the blue lobby ." Over the past two weeks, he published several materials about the results of the investigation of the ROC training committee in the Kazan seminary. There, several students complained about the inspectors of the seminary engaged in harassment in relation to the wards - and, lo and, lo and about Moscow, the commission arrived from Moscow. A lover of young men was subjected to rather soft transformation: a fired from work, he retained the holy dignity and soon discovered in the Tver diocese as head of the department of theology at a local university.

Kuraev sees himself as an exposure to priests, interconnected by a "blue radar." Based on the words of the near -Patriarchy publicist Kirill Frolov, who sometimes voices sharply anti -liberal (but not pronounced publicly) considerations of Fr. Vsevolod Chaplin, Protodiacon claims that the “last straw” was the publication of a letter of anonymous author in his blog. In it, one of the students of Metropolitan Nicodemus (Rotov), ​​who during the 1960-1970s was the second person in the Russian Orthodox Church and raised dozens of followers, including the current patriarch, describes the homosexual nature of this community and is recognized in his own homosexuality.

There can be a lot of conclusions from this substantial letter with a clearly expressed civil position. Kuraev went along the simplest way, interpreting the document as an important confirmation of the presence of a “blue lobby” in the Russian Orthodox Church. Here he, to put it mildly, is not original: the accusations of the "Nicodimians" in homosexuality were sounded back in the late 1990s. Even then, it was obvious that a non -church journalist simply published a “drain”. In those years, the corporation is mostly married and very conservative in socio-political views of priests who belonged to the circle of teachers of the Orthodox Holy Tikhonovsky Theological Institute (Pstby), including Andrei Kuraev and the head of the Commission for the Verification of the Kazan Diocese, Maxim Kozlov, fought for her place in the system of church administration with the “Nikodimovites”, who played (and before Still playing) the most important role in the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church - the Holy Synod.

The battles then ended with a denouement favorable for Pstby’s corporation: almost all the leaders and most vivid teachers of the institute received their pieces of power, entering the leading bodies of the Moscow Patriarchate (or even heading them, as Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, Arkady Shatov and Vladimir Vigilyansky).

Thus, the subject of conflict is not new. Why did the story go to the second round? And how right about. Andrei in his attack on the "blue lobby"?

I see in his arguments two problems indicated by an anonymous author of a letter with a story about the Nicodimas. Kuraev is obviously cunning, trying to imagine the "blue lobby" in the church as individual priests, even if patronized by individual bishops. Yes, Metropolitan Anastasius has a powerful homosexual reputation, which, as a result of the corresponding scandals, has already become the subject of discussion in the local and even central press. The Tver bishop, a lover of peas, is not so lit in public, but his circle of interests is also quite known within the church. However, how many more bishops in the Russian Orthodox Church have a similar reputation? In the discussions that are being conducted about this scandal on social networks, church people say that up to thirty bishop's departments can be freed if the “anti -respect” cleaning is carried out sequentially. The lists of candidates (numbering more than 30 names) are already on the network, and I can say that they are unsuccessful.

However, if you go further, the question of the “blue lobby” will affect a number of members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church and the leaders of some of its structures. Among them are many Nicodimists. Kuraev desperately hints to understand (which are quite a lot) that it is from them that the initiative of the prejudice imposed on him comes.

But in his arguments there are no ideas about leaving the situation. Consistent cleaning is impossible. And he understands this much better than his readers. Therefore, Kuraev, like Mironyuk, plays the game: it hurts me, they acted unfairly with me, but I hope that the big boss will forgive me. Hence his unequivocal statements that the Patriarch, being the closest student of Nicodemus, nevertheless does not belong to the Blue Mafia, and the Lisobate statement about Putin's humanism, which allowed him to defeat Khodorkovsky.

In this regard, Kuraev consistently defends the theses formulated by the Metropolitan of Kazan Anastasius, who performed before the seminarians following the work of the commission. He stated that, having complained to Moscow, the young men "betrayed" the diocese and personally the bishop, who created good material conditions for their studies. The metropolitan in a simple and understandable form taught them the basic principle of coexistence of the clergy and the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church: the younger ones in no case take out the CROs from the hut, and the elders feed them or allow them to feed.

The second significant question raised in a letter is left unanswered. The anonymous person asks: how long will the abnormal position be preserved, when the Gei bishops in the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church encourage the homophobic campaign by the lower church activists and ordinary clergy? This question can be addressed to Kuraev himself, and to those who may admire his courage, sympathize with him as a victim of a “blue lobby”.

Let me remind you that at one time Kuraev gained fame in the church and near -church environment as a publicist who incites hatred in relation to various groups. These were Jews, and followers of the oriental religions, and Muslims, and Crimean Tatars, and intra -church liberals. In the early 2000s, he and his fans created an extremely aggressive network “Andrei Kuraev Forum”, where methods of combating church liberals and critics of the Russian Orthodox Church were worked out. So the struggle of Kuraev against the “blue lobby” (in excess of logical calls to punish a particular rapist) can be regarded as a common way to encourage xenophobia for him. In any case, it is difficult to imagine a Western publication that would agree to publish his discussions about the "blue radars."

If from the discussion about the danger of the “blue lobby” in the Russian Orthodox Church to move on to a simple stating of facts, it will quickly discover that there is no “lobby” in the church. The interconnected groups of gays inside the Russian Orthodox Church, including the central structures covering it, exist, but there is no lobby as such. It’s just that there are so few Necheev among the leadership, the episcopate and monasticism of the Russian Orthodox Church that the presence of the bishop (yes, the same one who has been connected by a vow of celibacy) of an unofficial wife or a permanent girlfriend, is the subject of pride for his close associates. And they will not slow down to notify those who are interested in that our bishop is not “like”, he has “everything is fine”.

So, although Kuraev, in some ways, reminds Don Quixote, attacking the mythical giant, but faced with a dull but effective windmill, for a complete resemblance to the great idealist, he is too cautious and calculating. And he somehow does not want to wish him success in his struggle.

However, this story also has other consequences, not so sensational, but no less important. In addition to the post of professor MDA Kuraev this week lost a place in the Synodal Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church, that is, he fell out of the list of official church theologians. In addition to the protodiacon, two more noticeable people were excluded from it - Honored Anti -Communist Andrei Zubov, Professor MGIMO and the author of the alternative Putin promotion of the Russian Century History Textbook, and the former head of the ACCS of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and then the First Deputy Head of the ROCS (now modest scholarship university) Archimandrite Cyril (talk). Both of them were distinguished by positions that were non -standard for the church elite on a number of issues. In particular, Cyril openly supported the Maidan .

A little earlier, by the decision of the Holy Synod, one of its most authoritative members was dismissed - Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeev). It was replaced by the faceless, but unequivocally scorching Metropolitan of Ryazan Paul (Ponomarev). The Belarusian Orthodox were put before the fact of the appearance of the Moscow appointment, which even Alexander Lukashenko was in no hurry to welcome.

Analyzing this series of resignations, it can be stated that the five -year term that Patriarch Kirill took to reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church and the consolidation around his own person of sensible and educated people of the Church ended. Around the Primate, a selection began, which leaves no place for those who doubt something or can be suspected of illness - both to him and to Putin.