Russia watchers are speculating whether the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church will begin thawing ties with the Vatican.This is unlikely.
The schism between Christianity’s two largest churches — the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church — date to the 11th century split over dogma and papal authority that resulted in the separation of Eastern Orthodox Churches from the Catholic Church.
But the reasons why the ancient schism will continue — even under a patriarch who is considered relatively liberal — are quite contemporary:
• First, the Russian Patriarch Kirill was instrumental over the past few years in fending off papal offers to meet with the late Patriarch Alexy II amid Russian Orthodox Church-floated allegations that the Roman Catholic Church was trying to proselytize in Russia — an excuse that works well in the increasingly xenophobic country.
• Third, the Kremlin still has possession of billions of dollars worth of real estate that belonged to the Orthodox Church before the Bolsheviks came to power and expropriated it.
In the past few years, the Kremlin has flirted with the church, hinting at some form of restitution. In return, the Moscow patriarchate has all but become the ideological arm of the Kremlin, with the focus on nationalism.
To be sure, it would be naive to expect the Russian Orthodox Church — with its history as an ideological pillar of czarism — to champion the liberal cause and resist the Kremlin’s effort to complete Russia’s return to autocracy.
But under the circumstances, one can’t expect the church leadership even to show disapproval of the Kremlin’s failure to properly investigate the assassinations of bankers, politicians, journalists, and lawyers who had openly opposed the Kremlin’s policies.
Take the case of the 2006 killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a world-renowned journalist and critic of Kremlin-condoned atrocities in Chechnya.
Those who had ordered the killing were never brought to justice. In the absence of independent television, viable parliamentary opposition, and largely nongovernmental organizations, the authorities’ failure to bring them to account has opened a de facto hunting season on dissidents.
As a result, the lawyer who used to represent Ms. Politkovskaya was shot to death by a masked gunman about half-a-mile from the Kremlin last month, along with a reporter who had witnessed the assassination.
Moreover, the Moscow patriarchate’s reluctance to accommodate the Vatican’s attempts to start normalizing relations between the two churches has been largely inspired by the Kremlin.
The latter is loath to give the Vatican even the slightest chance to make political inroads in Russia.
There has been no indication that the Moscow patriarchate disapproves of the authorities’ turning a blind eye on the assassinations of their critics.
As long as the church leadership condones the division of its own flock into those who are protected by law and those who aren’t, it is naive to expect the patriarch to go out on the limb in the name of Christian unity.
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Sotto Voce
(Source: TBC)