Church in the World

Orthodox Church offers to talk to academic opponents

Russia

Russia's Orthodox Church has offered a dialogue with its critics, after a group of top academics accused it of "spreading clericalism" in an open letter, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

"Far from isolating ourselves, we are ready to engage in serious, non-populist and non-politicised talks with these people," said Metropolitan Kirill, director of the Church's foreign relations department. "We have still not healed the wounds inflicted by the terror and genocide visited on the Russian Orthodox Church, and are only now beginning to get up off our knees. So what kind of clericalisation of society are we talking about?"

   The Church leader was reacting to the late July letter to President Vladimir Putin, signed by 10 members of Russia's prestigious Academy of Sciences, including two Nobel physics laureates and the human rights spokesman, Sergei Kovalev.

He told a Moscow press conference the signatories had wrongly evaluated the Church's changing role "from the perspective of  Soviet times". "We know we live in a secularised society," Metropolitan Kirill told journalists. "Instead of defending our interests at any price, we aim to seek the Church's good in line with the good of all society."

In their open letter, the academics criticised plans for compulsory classes in "Orthodox Basics" at Russian state schools, and said they wished to "draw society's attention to the grave danger of a clericalism which attacks the constitution". The letter, which has since been co-signed by dozens of journalists and human rights activists, said a "new national and religious ideology" was being formed in Russia, which claimed a religious sanction while negating democracy and "endorsing xenophobia and a cult of power".

The controversy erupted during a Russian visit by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, vice-dean of the Vatican's College of Cardinals, during which he discussed a possible meeting between the Pope and Patriarch Aleksei II, who awarded special Church medals in early August to an arms factory at Udmurtsya, as well as to General Mikhail Kalashnikov, the 90-year-old inventor of the Soviet assault rifle.

Speaking earlier this week during a conference at Moscow's St Filaret's Institute, Metropolitan Kirill's deputy, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, said "Orthodox civilisation" upheld the "ideal of unity between Church, nation and government" and would "resist a Western democracy whose ultimate fall is drawing ever closer".