03 May 2006
State Duma deputy urges Russian Church Outside Russia not to doom itself to role of ‘ethnographic museum of gone civilization’
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=dujour&div=75
Moscow, May 2, Interfax – Natalia Narochnitskaya, a State Duma deputy and well-known historian, suggests that the Russian Church Outside Russia cast away doubts as to the advisability of restoring unity with the Moscow Patriarchate.
‘Today’s doubts are like temptations endured by a person who wants to adopt baptism but the enemy of humankind whispers into his ear: Wait, you are not ready; don’t do it today but tomorrow!’ Narochnitskaya writes in her article published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
However, she continues, there may no tomorrow. ‘At a time when all the forces in the world have united to prevent Russia from restoring her national and religious identity, Russian people cannot understand the virtue and ‘truth’ of a Church which cannot put away the secondary things and, instead of offering an embrace, asks to meet a bill.’
‘What kind of faith is it if there is no all-forgiving love in it; what kind of Orthodox are those who try to see the mote in a neighbor’s eye; what kind of love of Russia is it if it looks more like admiration for itself rather than for Russia?’ the author of the article asks.
She draws the attention of hesitant pastors and laity of the Russian Church outside Russia to the fact that today when ‘Christian Europe has surrendered without resistance and is going away, it is post-Soviet Russia alone, however paradoxically it may seem, that is revolting’.
According to Narochnitskaya, ‘it is sad to read those lay emigrants who, shutting themselves away in a ivory tower, endlessly reproduce and transfer to today’s Russia and Russians the notions of ‘the cursed days’ and demons of the 1920s. One should probably isolate oneself from reality intentionally and refuse to change anything in it to fail to see how different today’s Russians, Russia and her much-suffering Church are from the idea of them drawn up from antiquated clichés.
‘To reject with pride an superiority a hand offered today, to repel the hopes of Russian people who await the reunification of the family with sinking hearts and a children’s unreasoning joy would be a blow on Russia, the more so that it comes not from an enemy but from a brother. It will by an irremediable insult to the most sincere feelings of millions of people who have admired the feat of the Church Outside Russia but have not even suspected their own Russian brothers abroad to treat them with such disdain’, the author of the article believes.
In this connection, Narochnitskaya asks the question: ‘Will such a rejection devalue the feat once performed by the Russian émigrés who have preserved their Russian nature and faith in foreign lands and who preserved in their hearts ‘the Russia we have lost’ and remained committed to it in their love and faith?’
Do not then lose forever the true Russia which has survived through suffering and is now in a search’, she adds urging the Russian Church Outside Russia not to doom itself to ‘the role of an ethnographic museum of the gone civilization, to a reservation existence outside the theme of Russia and Russians in world history’.
