churches at the front - the other war

The historical and religious mosaic of the Orthodox world and its contradictions. An analysis

The important, although not primary, is the role of the Churches in Russia and Ukraine with a large Orthodox majority. Christianity profoundly shaped their Slavic cultures. A belonging and a pride to be Orthodox. While today, unfortunately, their strong national roots are part of the ongoing tragedy.

On the threshold of the war, in 2018, Poroshenko, candidate for presidential re-election of Ukraine, to beat Zelensky, then winner and current president, strongly supported the request for "autocephaly" (autonomy) of the local Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. He personally asked Bartholomew I, patriarch of Constantinople, primus inter pares of all the Orthodox hierarchies, who in January 2019 claimed his "primacy of honor", and approved the tomos (decree) of autonomy to be exhibited in the cathedral of Kiev. The patriarch of Moscow, Kirill, reacted extremely harshly. He declared the new Ukrainian autocephalous Church schismatic and, as usual in tradition, excluded it from commemoration in the prayer of the divine liturgy.

Putin commented: "This division will become heavy, if not bloody." The prediction is certainly coming true due to the much blood shed. But perhaps it was not imagined that one of the most tenacious opponents to his military intervention was Metropolitan Onufryi, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, not separated from Moscow and still a majority. Until the last he tried to dissuade Putin from the invasion. Attitude shared by a very large part of Ukrainians, Russian speakers or not. This is also attested by the mass flight to the West and certainly not to the "liberators" sent by the Kremlin. The Ukrainians attacked and plundered by the invader have more than one reason to heroically feel their resistance and appeal to solidarity, to international recognition.

Meanwhile, the war is deeply upsetting traditional references. It was not inevitable and even less necessary for any purpose. And even today it would be possible to contain it and finish it. Nobody can say what will happen to national identities. Perhaps, the main task that falls to the Churches is to prevent the conflict from stagnating and strengthening extremisms in both fields, the ideological infatuations that justify and even exalt it, silencing the human havoc it produces, indeed showing contempt towards those who seek mediations, possible compromises and prospects for peace. In this, even the attacked and oppressed Ukrainians have something to watch out for. Their history knows forms of extreme nationalism in some components of society, up to the pro-Nazi drifts, albeit in reaction to Stalinism.

In Russia, too, ambiguous ideologies have spread widely and run on the lips of politicians and believers.

For years the Moscow patriarch Kirill has been proposing a very particular interpretation of the world. Which? We would be at an epochal turning point: attacked by the single thought of Western secularized modernity, with its degradation of moral and spiritual values, the collapse of the family and unbridled individualism. In the face of this aggression, the historical mission of standing up in defense of civilization and faith would belong precisely to Orthodoxy and Russia. And the war? It would represent a secondary aspect with respect to the global clash taking place. According to Kirill it would be only a "physical war", the one that appears on the outside; while the most profound one on which we should instead concentrate would be the "metaphysics" one mentioned above. The terrible war in progress thus receives its blessing.

Similarly, Putin, firmly in power, also proclaims his own vision of the world in the wake of Alek-sandr Dugin and his ideological platform of the Eurasian Movement. In short: once fascism and Nazism are defeated, communism and liberalism remain. Western liberalism wins with its "everything is allowed", with its confusing multiculturalism, with its destabilization of sexuality and the family, with the principle of freedom. The time would have come to restore the idea of ​​eternity instead, drawing on the perennial values ​​preserved in the specific identities of individual peoples, without appealing to universal human rights, an abstraction of the West. That is to say, democracy and freedom are your business. In Russia we have our own rules.

Planet Earth certainly does not need ideological simplifications. Invaded Ukraine and neighboring countries fear the opposite, that is, of being "Russified", of which they have extensive experience, but this is not abstract.

The main task of the Churches is to prevent the conflict from stagnating and strengthening extremisms in both fields, the ideological infatuations that justify and even exalt it.

Ermis Segatti

NP Maggio 2022