Translated material
You were rides early
The Vatican and the spiritual center of Orthodoxy at the same time, but very differently now they find out how the modern church should relate to minorities. Review of concepts
Photo: Alexey Dushutin / "New Gazeta"
Two papers
The two centers of the Christian world - Catholic and Orthodox - adopted at the end of the outgoing year two very different documents on a delicate issue, which suddenly became especially relevant for Christians.
On December 18, the Vatican Dicastria (or Congregation) of the Vera doctrine (until the beginning of the twentieth century, known as the Holy Inquisition) issued a sensational document on the conditions of the blessing of same -sex couples. And after a couple of days, the Holy Synod of the Elladsky Orthodox Church (the Athenian Archbishopric, or the State Church of Greece) issued an encyclic explaining the unacceptability of a same -sex family from the point of view of children's rights.
The voluminous Vatican document , called the “Request of trust”, is a guide for clergymen on how to show “pastoral proximity” to the laity, which is in relations not legalized by the Church. It is not only about same -sex pairs, but also about any extramarital unions united by the term “non -standard situations”.
The text is trying to find a balance between the “firm and unchanged” teaching of the Church about marriage as an eternal union of one man with one woman and modern realities, primarily by Western marriage. The leadership was compiled in response to a request from a group of cardinals, who in July turned to the pope to finally formulate a clear response to new legal and sociocultural realities.
The main idea of the authors (Dikster is now headed by the compatriot Francis - Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez) is that in addition to “ritual”, liturgical blessings in church practice, there are informal, “spontaneous” ones. Simply put,
There can be no special rite (especially, God forbid to the sacrament of marriage) for “non-standard” unions, but outside of any formal rites, clergy will be able to bless “non-standard” “without official confirmation of their status”.
On this, the Vatican wants to put an end to the issue that has been tearing the Catholic world for many years on liberal and conservative, warning: "We should not expect any further answer about possible ways to regulate details or practical aspects of blessings of this type." But the feeling of incredited still remains ...
The domestic document on this topic was released in February 2021, it concerned the ban on the wedding of the LGBT PAR. Now the Catholic “gender theology” has taken the following step: without blessing the lifestyle of LGBT people, the church is ready to bless them as the children of God, whom the Lord who wants their salvation loves. The very life that people have is the blessing of God. And how, seeing such a high blessing, the Church can refuse blessings of a lower order? A complete refusal of the blessing of the LGBT people on which the conservatives insisted, “can overshadow the unconditional power of God's love, which forms the basis of the gesture of blessing,” the document says. Moreover, “an exhaustive moral analysis should not be a preliminary condition for granting a blessing”,
After all, the Church has always blessed sinners, but not to commit sin, but on purification and transformation in the image of Christ.
Dicastria even hints that the appeal of LGBT people in itself means a certain repentance: "The one who asks for blessings at the Church recognizes the latter with the sacrament of salvation that God offers." The result of this movement of the soul and the answer to it the church should be "enrichment, healing and exaltation by the action of the Holy Spirit of all the true, good and humanly valuable in their life and in their relationship."
In order to avoid scandals, diplomatic disasters prohibits teaching such blessings “simultaneously with the ceremonies of the Civil Union and even in connection with them” or to allow any signs (clothes, gestures or words) at the time of blessing reminding the wedding. Finally, in conclusion, it is again emphasized that the blessings of “non-standard” couples do not contain “intentions to legitimize something”, but are “calling the Holy Spirit so that the values of the gospel can be realized to a greater extent”.
Incidentally, in the Gospel itself homosexual relations are not separately distinguished (there is condemned “fornication” without concretization); Their rejection by conservative Christians is based on the words of the Apostle Paul and on the commandments of the Old Testament, as well as on the traditional interpretation of the plot about Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Orthodox Greek Church in fresh encyclical does not say anything about the blessing of homosexuals. Leaving the state for the state to register any unions (in Greece, the same -sex civilian unions are legalized in 2015), the Athenian Synod requires preventing the same -sex couples to adopt/adopt children. “Single -sex education,” the encyclical says, “does not satisfy the rights of children to have both a father and mother” and forms some distorted ideas in children. “Children,” the Greek Metropolitans argue, “are neither pets for those who want to feel a guardian, nor“ accessories ”who legalize or make uniform cohabitation socially acceptable.” The Athenian Synod even refers to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights,
Introducing the concept of “a suitable family environment for growing a child”, which the state is obliged to ensure, in the sense that the child should receive both his paternal and maternal education, and not any one.
Nobody should be unhappy?
By the way, it was with the problem of discrimination against LGBT people in the issue of adoption/adoption that Pope Francis, then Argentine Cardinal Horge Mario Bergolo, began to preach his “gender theology”. In the sensational film, the American director of Russian descent Evgeny Athenaevsky “Francis” sounds the following words of the pontiff: “homosexuals have the right to a family. They are the children of God ... no one should be unhappy because of this. " The author of the film explains that the future dad said this in the context of discussion in Argentina a bill on adoption by homosexuals of children.
Already ascending the Roman throne, Francis scandalized conservative Catholics several times by asking for forgiveness from LGBT people, kissing their hands, and recently invited a whole bus of transgender people to the Vatican. As the “new” noted , commenting on such non -standard actions of the pope, the point of view prevailed in Western Christianity, according to which
Sexual orientation is biologically caused, so it is not sinful, but illegal sexual relations (“fornication”) or sinful passions on this basis.
A number of Protestant churches (mainly Lutheran or Anglican traditions) came to the official equalization of hetero- and homosexual marriages, but in Orthodoxy everything is difficult (more on this).
With the blessing of Francis, almost three years ago, the diploma of the doctrine of Vera, led by the Spanish Cardinal Louis Ladaria, issued the first cautious document against discrimination against homosexuals in the Catholic Church. The dipster then called on bishops and priests to assist people who show homosexual orientation, "for understanding and fully fulfilling God's will in their lives." The Vatican LGBT Catholics themselves called for “adhere to his baptismal call” to reject the sin and rush to holiness.
At that time, the wilderness was not yet ready to divide the “liturgical” and “extra -religious” blessings, therefore she explained that the church blesses “only those realities that themselves are called to serve” God's plan about man, in this case, only a classic marriage. In 2021, the Vatican allowed only “blessings given to individuals with homosexual inclinations that show the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God, proposed by church teaching”, that is, if it is impossible to enter a heterosexual marriage - chasedly.
The epicenter of the struggle for the rights of such people in the Catholic Church became the dioceses of Northern and Central Europe - Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and partly France. They are not satisfied with “medieval” approaches, so semi -legally in these dioceses they began to practice the blessing of same -sex couples.
In September last year, Bishops Flemishy approved the “liturgical” ceremony of such a blessing, and in March of this year, bishops of Germany made a similar decision. The Berlin archbishop even published on his official website a list of priests, who are recommended to contact a similar ceremony. The new document of the Vatican dicastria is a step towards these trends. The American Jesuit priest James Martin contrasts the documents of 2021 and 2023, noting the latest thoroughness and elaboration of the latter. “Today - with some restrictions - I can make a public blessing of a same -sex couple. Yesterday I could not, ”the priest states.
The radical softening of the Vatican position suggests that the churches were really afraid there as a result of the consolidated protest of German bishops.
The expected Catholic world was divided in its reaction to a new document. The bishops of Austria, Germany and France perceived him positively - for example, the chairman of the conference of the Catholic bishops of Austria, Archbishop Franz Lakner, said that the priest could no longer refuse a homosexual pair in the blessing. The French archbishop Erve Giro in an interview with La Crua shared his personal experience of the LGBT PAR blessing and noted that the Vatican’s decision “is based on the miraculous understanding of the blessing-in accordance with the Gospel and the image of Christ.” And in the statement of the conference of the Catholic bishops of the United States, whose flocks are more conservative, notes of self -justification are already sounding: “The teaching of the church has not changed about marriage, and the declaration confirms this, simultaneously making efforts to support pastoral blessings, because each of us needs God's healing love and mercy.” In such a spirit, the statement of the conference of the Catholic bishops of the Latin rite in Ukraine is withstanded, which insists that there can be no blessing for life in sin - “without a call to abandon the sinful life of homosexual couples may look like approval.”
Not all the national conferences of the bishops spoke out on this subject, but the Catholic hierarchs of Kazakhstan, Malawi and Zambia, who directly condemned the Vatican document, took the most stringent position for today. Archbishop Tomash Pete and Bishop Afanasy Schneider, who are nourishing the Astana diocese, called the text evil and fraught with “destructive consequences”. The blessing, they reason, is accompanied by the call of the name of God, which is offended when it is combined with the "objectively sinful union." Kazakhstani hierarchs saw the humiliation of the church in the “propaganda of globalist and wicked gender ideology” and banned the priest subordinate to them to fulfill the new leadership of the Holy Throne.
Orthodoxy: between "Adelefopoeisis" and the anathema
There was a time when the current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which devoted his best years to ecumenical and Orthodox Catholic contacts, spoke about the problem political correctly. At a meeting with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in 2009, Cyril claimed :
“We accept any choice of a person, including in the field of sexual orientation. This is a person’s personal matter ... We always categorically opposed any repression and discrimination of people of other sexual orientation. ”
In his youth, Cyril was the closest student of Metropolitan Nicodemus (Rotov), who was friends with the dads of the Roman and shared reform ideas and practices of the Catholic world. Until recently (naturally, before the beginning of his and related international isolation of the Russian Orthodox Church), the Patriarch spoke at the World Russian Folk Cathedral: "The Catholic Church, despite the huge pressure from the outside world, remains faithful to the gospel values." This is also stated in the declaration, which Cyril signed with Pope Francis in Havana in 2016.
Of course, officially the Orthodox Church rejects homosexual alliances, but in its ancient tradition, the idea that orientation itself did not depend on the conscious choice of a person. In the ancient Greek and ancient Slavic trembliks (up to 1651), the “rank of fraternal” (“adelfopoeisis”) was published, which was very similar to the follow -up of the sacrament of marriage: “Men who want to join the Union were put in front of anal [in the center of the temple, opposite the royal gates], on which they lay a cross and the gospel. Candles were given to them, the priest connected their hands, prayers, scripture were read. The priest drove them around an anal with the singing of church [troparia], communed with the pre -communications. (...). " Some historians suggest that the ceremony was used to establish a twineling relationship between Christian principalities. The priest Pavel Florensky analyzes the Adeelfopoesis in the book “Pillar and the Assistance of Truth”, illustrating with its help the difference between love as “Agapi” and “Fili” and love as “eros” (the Russian word “love” immediately translated by four Greek concepts that have very different meanings).
In the zero years, in Russia, attempts were semi-footed in Russia to crown LGBT pairs on the Orthodox rite. Mostly, “alternative” reformal trends such as the association of the communities of the apostolic tradition were engaged in this, which television ties were removed about. In 2003, the current priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Vladimir Energ in the chapel in the center of Nizhny Novgorod also committed this and, of course, was deprived of the dignity, and the chapel was destroyed by order of the diocese.
Currently, opponents of the conservative approach (they declared themselves during the All -Orthodox Council of 2016), of course, are not achieved by weddings, but a dialogue and recognition of the problem at the theological level. In the Finnish Orthodox Church, LGBT receivers are allowed to serve as lower clergy (readers, singers). In the Russian Orthodox Church, where they refuse such a discussion, the phenomenon acquires bizarre forms:
The “blue lobby” among the episcopate is indicated openly, but the relevant practices have the status of “secret legend”, initiation with a criminal shade through which many church careers are launched and corporate-hierarchical relations like prison are built.
Today in Russia, not only LGBT propaganda is criminalized (no matter what it means), but also belonging to the virtual "international movement of LGBT"*. Following the new rules, the Russian Orthodox Church criticizes the Catholic Church to retreat from Christianity. In response to the new Vatican document, the Russian Orthodox media and blogs erupted with “prophecies” that the mass exodus of conservative Catholics in the Russian Orthodox Church will begin soon, and only lecherous and unprincipled politicians will remain in the Catholic Church. As reminds of propaganda spells that tens of thousands of morally healthy Americans and Europeans, growing up by traditional family ties, are already selling everything and heading for Russia! The organic part of the same virtual “reality” of Russia, in which a large family is being revived, are filled with temples, the economy is growing violently and there are no unemployed ...