"Putin's altar boy" reaches new low, converts Russian Orthodox Church into Asatru for Russian people

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Muh "Russian world" is literally the Trinity now, or something:

In his speech to the WRPC Congress, the patriarch wondered which countries in the world enjoyed an “authentic state sovereignty” and concluded that less than ten countries, including Russia, qualified. He opined that the remaining countries were not actually sovereign states but depended on other power centers. As explained in “The Present and Future of the Russian World” document, Russia is the “geopolitical center of Eurasia.” Furthermore, “Russia must return to the three-centuries-old doctrine of the triunity (triedinstvo) of the Russian nation, according to which the Russian nation consists of the Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belorussians, which are the branches (sub-nations) of one nation. The term ‘Russian’ comprises all Eastern Slavs, the descendants of historical Rus’.” This “doctrine” is pure mythology; its pseudo-religious character is betrayed by its use of the term “triune,” which is properly applied only to the Holy Trinity, not to opportunistically selected Eastern Slavic countries.

Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny. Real religious leaders are doing Mr. Gundiaev a great kindness in pretending he's one of them and letting him sit at the grown-ups' table.

I expect various African and Eastern European Catholic bishops to be at least as forthright in distancing themselves from this apostatic swill as they were in approvingly quoting Putin to bash the Pope for not being mean enough to the homos a few months back.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     One of my favorite Twitter accounts, Orthodox History, posted a series of tweets really pulling apart everything wrong with this. My favorite was this one comparing this recent statement with the words of St. John Maximovitch, a diaspora bishop of the Russian Church Abroad who fled Russia shortly after the Revolution and spent his life laboring for the Church in Serbia, France, China, and finally the United States:

https://twitter.com/OrthodoxHistory/status/1775260321718141151

     The difference is quite striking, in that the statement on the left says that the Russian diaspora is charged with transmitting the love of Russian culture and thereby spreading the Russian World, whereas St. John says their purpose is to bear witness of the Orthodox faith and spread that around the world. What's more, St. John notes that God allowed the USSR to be constituted as a punishment to the Russian people for their sins, while the new document continues to refuse to grapple with that blighted chapter of Russian history. Thankfully, the Russian diaspora here continues to be heavily influenced by St. John and is not easily deceived by nationalist propaganda that forgets the basic reason why they have come to these places.

     A side note, but I have friends who were big fans of Pat. Kirill until the war erupted in Ukraine and he cheerled that event. One of them pithily noted that he has a talent for undermining every good argument he can use against Constantinople in their current dispute. People have complained for years about the extent to which the Greek Orthodox Church has taken it upon itself to make the spread of Hellenism and the maintenance of the Greek diaspora a priority over the critical work of Orthodox mission, which has led to many missions around the world being founded under the omophorion of the Russian Orthodox Church. For these Church authorities to turn around and simply declare that actually their main interest is in Russian culture is a betrayal of the trust that these people had placed in Moscow to be a champion of the Orthodox faith at this juncture.

     Thankfully Pat. Kirill is not some Orthodox pope who has the ability to command the submission of our wills in this matter, but it is tragic nevertheless to see his fall from grace.