The head of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church today described Russians who stopped serving their homeland as “internal enemies” and patriotism as one of the “greatest virtues,” state news agency Ria reported.
Patriarch Kirill is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and has strongly supported the war in Ukraine, in which tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions have fled their homes.
“Today our prayers are directed to our homeland, which the Lord can protect from all external and internal enemies, from all those who do not associate their lives with Russia, who are ready to make money in Russia, but were never ready to serve the homeland,” Kirill said in his sermon.
“We must instill in the world, and through the ecclesiastical sermon, love for the homeland, which is the greatest virtue,” he said in his sermon from the Archangel’s Cathedral inside the Kremlin compound in central Moscow.
Read the rest here.
Kyrill's support for Russia's war of aggression against its neighbor, and willingly turning a blind eye to the dreadful atrocities being perpetrated by the Russian government is simply scandalous. But here he is flirting with heresy through his persistent attempts to link ethno-nationalism to the Orthodox Faith.
Although ethnophyletism is clearly the heresy into which Russia is most likely to fall (or has fallen already), I am not sure this particular statement is an example. The original reads: Мы должны воспитывать в людях, в том числе через церковную проповедь, любовь к Отечеству, которая является величайшей добродетелью. Потому что эта любовь связана со служением, а ведь служение ближнему есть заповедь Божия: «Возлюби ближнего твоего, как самого себя» (Мф. 22:39). The Patriarch indeed says that 'love for the Fatherland ... is the greatest virtue', but he immediately qualifies this dubious assertion with the the explanation: 'because this love is associated with ... service to your neighbour' [in which is the whole of the Law and the Prophets, etc.]. Other statements about 'Faith and Fatherland' in the sermon seem similar: he doesn't adequately distinguish the two, but he doesn't heretically merge them any more than the typical national hierarch anywhere. --Dionysius Redington
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