Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin called on protodiacon Andrei Kuraev to repent

The chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department on the relationship between the Church and the Society (Sheep), Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, said that the last statements of Protodiacon Andrei Kuraev about the alleged cases of homosexuality among Orthodox priests are gossip, and called on the missionary to repent, RIA Novosti reports.

As if, the previously well-known Orthodox missionary and blogger, Protodiacon Andrei Kuraev, dismissed on December 30 from the professor of the Moscow Theological Academy (MDA) for shocking on social networks and the media, published on his page in the “Living Journal” several anonymous letters with statements about the existence of the priests of the gamies of the gamies. He also connected his dismissal from MDA, including his statements about homosexual scandals in the church environment, but at the university this information refuted this information.

According to Chaplin, "this is precisely gossip."

“The texts that he publishes and comments on his own behalf or allegedly from someone else’s name contain neither evidence of the guilt of a person, nor officially formulated accusations,” the head of the sheep on the air of the Comment of the Weyz said on Friday on the Orthodox television channel Soyuz.

To resolve such issues, the priest noted, there is a church court that takes into account the testimony of witnesses, but they cannot be anonymous.

"No judgment can be made on the basis of gossip or rumors, on the basis of a campaign that is in a very certain way to revenge on the dismissed teacher of spiritual schools," Chaplin said.

In his opinion, Kuraev should "repent, change, become a new person." He wished the protodiacon of spiritual recovery and warned against joining the rods. The commentary of Kuraev RIA "Novosti" has not yet been obtained.

Earlier on Friday, the Protodiacon published in his LJ post “Patriarchate Camingout” with a video message of Chaplin, in which the chairman of the sheep declares that Kuraev’s comments are caused by the desire to “take revenge and the desire to insist that he is not like other people, that he can count on completely special relations, because he has some information opportunities in his hands.”

Recall that on the eve of the rector of the Holy Filaret Orthodox-Christian Institute, Priest Georgy Kochetkov in an interview published on the website of the Orthodox newspaper Kifa, said that the dismissal of Protodiacon Andrei Kuraev from the Moscow Theological Academy is a logical step.

“Everything that is now happening in connection with the former Protodeakon of All Rus',” this is a certain pattern. This could not happen. On the one hand, he himself provoked these things, deliberately inflated the scandal. On the other hand, all this naturally follows his shocking, often irresponsible and dishonest, although bright and memorable behavior, ”said Georgy Kochetkov.

In his opinion, Andrei Kuraev always played several roles, and those whom he used to work on - "these are not very church people, and all this could not last too long, because he really failed both the church and the patriarch, substituting both her and him."

As for the story with the “blue lobby”, about which the protodiacon writes in his blog, according to George Kochetkov, “served in such a somewhat provocative, either antipatriarch or anti-church manner, it still solves sharp modern spiritual and moral problems in the church and in society, how much discredits some people.”

“By the way, the removal of Father Andrei is hardly a greater loss for the Academy: he has never been a good specialist in theology and religious studies. He, of course, is a stupid person, but this is not enough to be a church man and even more so a church figure who affects the discussion of church issues in modern Russian media,” the Rector of SPI summed up.

A little about the life path of Andrei Kuraev

Andrei Kuraev was born in 1963 in Moscow. In 1993-1996, he was the dean of the Philosophical and God-Supreme Faculty of the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian. Since 1997 - Professor of the Orthodox St. Tikhonovsky Theological Institute. From the autumn semester of 2004, the main place of Kuraev’s work is MDA, although he continues to give lectures at the St. Tikhon Institute (now the University).

In 1994, Kuraev defended a dissertation at the Institute for the Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences, and in 1995 defended the candidate dissertation on theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1996, Patriarch Alexy II, on the proposal of the Academic Council of the Russian Orthodox University, appropriated Kuraev’s academic rank of professor of theology. The protodeacon is also a senior researcher at the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University.

On December 30, Kuraev was excluded from among the professors of the Moscow Theological Academy for "provocative" performances and publications in the media and blogosphere. The resolution of the Academic Council on its exclusion was called by the Archpriest's "stupid and illogical" decision, "not by reason, but by passion."