EDITORIAL: Russia and its “Religon”
What follows is quite a scathing analysis of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, so those of a sensitive disposition, please don’t read this.
I’m putting this on as I found it interesting and also because I have been a little disturbed by recent proposed Russian laws that restrict the freedoms of non-Orthodox Christians and those of other faiths, which has been fully supported by Patriarch Kirill. He also seems to project an unquestioning, almost sycophantic loyalty to the Russian leadership, who can do no wrong in his eyes.
Last week, Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Pope, spoke about ” a country of poverty and crime, hunger, drug addiction, corruption, and a loss of moral values.” He opined that “many of these troubles are caused primarily not by failed social policy but by defects in the depths of the human spirit.”
Even though Russia is documented as being one of the most corrupt and immoral nations on the planet, with a raging drug and AIDS epidemic, horrendous crime and one of the highest murder rates on the planet, to say nothing of its vast ocean of poor folks (the average worker earns just $3 per hour, so imagine how the poor are doing) and its obscene disparity between rich and poor, Kirill was not speaking about Russia. Instead, he was referring to Haiti, which he apparently believes got what it deserved when it was rocked by an earthquake that killed 150,000 of its men, women and children.
Kirill apparently feels that since a natural disaster hasn’t struck Russia recently, this proves Russia is a moral nation which enjoys God’s blessings and approval. But what about the Beslan and Dubrovka terrorist attacks, and the conflagration of fires that kills thousands of Russians every year, more than in any other nation on Earth. Aren’t they sings of divine condemnation of Russia, of Putin and indeed of Kirill himself? What of the fact that Russians don’t rank in the top 130 nations of the world for average adult lifespan? Isn’t that, too, proof that God reviles Russia?
When right-wing nutjob Pat Robertson made similar comments about Haiti, the Obama administration immediately denounced him as “utterly stupid.” Will they now issue the same condemnation of the Russian Patriarch? We are waiting, Mr. Obama.
There is, of course, a gigantic difference between Robertson, who is properly viewed by most Americans as a senile extremist, and Kirill, who is not only the official representative of Russia’s dominant religion but who has been invited into the closest councils of power by the Kremlin itself, and who as such can only be seen as the Kremlin’s official spokesperson on religion.
And such, his crazed ravings are truly terrifying. It is time for the craven Obama administration to speak out against the increasingly horrifying outbursts being made by the maniacs who govern both the Russian state and its church.
Tags: Christianity, Law Moral Ethical, Politics