Got a miter

The Patriarchate publicly reprimanded the scandalous Archpriest Andrei Tkachev. What's happened?

For the first time in almost 11 years of his service in Moscow, the Patriarchate reprimanded Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, who fled Kyiv after the 2014 Maidan and delivered radical anti-Ukrainian sermons. Several times Patriarch Kirill called Tkachev his “favorite preacher” and invited him to give sermons at patriarchal services in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and in the Moscow Kremlin. The highest sign of patriarchal favor was the appointment of Tkachev as rector of the Trinity Church in Khokhly, not far from Kitay-Gorod and Old Square, in place of the hastily “defrocked” Archpriest Alexy Uminsky (now serving in Paris under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople), the famous shepherd of the Moscow intelligentsia. Tkachev’s boorish, criminal manner and especially his offensive statements about women caused shock among this very intelligentsia, but the patriarch liked it, and the church apparatus remained silent, impressed by the record views of Tkachev’s scandalous sermons on YouTube (often they exceeded the 1 million mark, unattainable for the patriarch himself).

But on these Christmastides, Archpriest Andrei Tkachev outdid himself. At one of the Christmas services, from the pulpit, in full vestments and framed by festively decorated Christmas trees, he decided to talk about human sperm. More precisely, about the consequences of her ending up in the wrong places, which, according to the archpriest, includes everything that is outside the “womb of his own wife.” The same wife whom, in his earlier homily, Tkachev called upon to beat, “break over the knee,” “beat off her horns,” “bend her, rub her, push her into the washing machine.” Now it turns out that no matter how terrible Fr. Andrey women, it’s all men’s fault.

“If seed flows, blood will flow,” Tkachev said. - Why war? Because the seed flows anywhere.”

From the further stream of archpriestly consciousness, we can conclude that spilling sperm “anywhere” is tantamount to killing the person for whose conception the said sperm was intended. Bravely calling “NWO” a war, Tkachev concluded: “Because of the murder of the innocent, the Lord is punishing us with these “Hymars” or “Scalps” that fly through our cities... And we will not have peace until we repent.” The sermon also included the names of cities that had already been subjected to “punishment”: Voronezh, Kazan, Taganrog and St. Petersburg. It is noteworthy that “Haymars” or “Skalp” did not fly to any of these cities.

One should not delude ourselves that the patriarch’s “favorite preacher,” at risk of losing this high title, has suddenly taken a peacemaking position. By “innocently killed,” he meant exclusively unconceived or aborted babies, and not already born Ukrainian children or old people who died as a result of the “SVO.” The archpriest more than once called for “with prayer” to strike at Ukrainian cities and villages, and equated everything Ukrainian with satanic, which does not deserve any regret: “Any freak in power is Ukrainian. The bastard who leased his tongue to Satan is a Ukrainian... As long as he is a bastard. That’s enough - you’re Ukrainian!” Such pious feelings were cultivated in his soul for his historical homeland and its people by a native of Lvov and a former cleric of the Ukrainian Church.

But let's return to the current scandal.

A few days after the “sperm” sermon in the Trinity Church, Archpriest Andrei Tkachev was pulled back . O. press secretary of Patriarch Kirill and long-term chairman of the Synodal Department of the Russian Orthodox Church for interaction with society and the media, Vladimir Legoyda. “Media figures should consider their statements especially carefully,” he said, hinting that the patriarchate is no longer inclined to perceive Tkachev as a priest, but views him primarily as a blogger broadcasting on behalf of the church. Legoida made a reservation that Tkachev is still “very talented, active and noticeable,” but even he is not allowed to “cross borders.”

Last summer, Professor Alexander Dvorkin spoke much more harshly about Tkachev - also not the last person in the Russian Orthodox Church, who has a reputation as “the main fighter against sects” and for many years headed the Council for State Religious Expertise under the Russian Ministry of Justice. On June 14, Dvorkin, who has served since 1993 as an altar boy at the Trinity Church in Khokhly under Fr. Alexia Uminsky, published an unexpectedly harsh post on his Telegram channel. He accused his new rector of creating “an unbearable atmosphere in the church,” “impossible sermons, ruining the entire community life.” Leaving the temple, poisoned by weavers, Dvorkin appealed precisely to his qualifications as a “sect expert”: “Now the argument does not work: since Dvorkin is there, it means it is not a sect.”

Tkachev’s habits and lifestyle sharply distinguish him from even the “patriotically” minded clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church. They are more like a television propagandist who travels only with security and punishes all those who disagree.

This style was demonstrated at the Trinity Church in Khokhly on November 10 - New Europe wrote about it in detail. Right in the church, the police detained parishioner Alexei Sevastyanenko, who tried to quote the peacemaking words of Christ in a conversation with Tkachev, refuting the aggressive militaristic position of the archpriest. Since it was impossible to approach Tkachev, Sevastyanenko shouted quotes as the archpriest walked from the car to the entrance to the altar. The police arrived quite quickly...

Previously, the scandalous cleric Tkachev had already had to take back his words - for example, his post about the fact that the victims themselves were to blame for the tragedy in Crocus City - concert spectators who decided to have fun at the end of the strict first week of Lent, was deleted after a few hours after publication. For the sake of a status position in the central Moscow church, he will sacrifice part of his hype. However, the very process of turning popular Internet priests into showmen who live not by church rules, but by the unwritten “laws of the genre,” sacrificing their priestly and simply Christian dignity to hype, is gaining momentum. Other popular priest-bloggers also go to the trouble of provoking scandals - oo. Pavel Ostrovsky, Georgy Maksimov or Vladislav Beregovoy. For now, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church retains overall control over them, holding in its hands the baton of canonical reprimands. But as the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church weakens in the context of the future transformation of Russia, the element of pop blogging will get out of control and take on the most unexpected forms.