A Navalnist priest called on believers not to go to churches where they pray for the victory of Russia
Archpriest Alexei Uminsky, known for his support of criminal blogger Alexei Navalny, called on believers not to visit those churches where prayers are said during the Divine Liturgy for the victory of the Russian army.
He stated this in an interview with a foreign agent, former editor-in-chief of the radio station "Echo of Moscow" Alexei Venediktov, reports a correspondent for "PolitNavigator".
“If there is a church where there are priests who try not very much to strengthen the military spirit during the liturgy and from their own position pray more for peace than for victory, and understand that any victory is a Pyrrhic victory, which is equal to self-destruction, the Orthodox should look for them. Look for like-minded people who can console them during confession and resolve this problem in personal communication with the priest,” Uminsky said.
Bishop Pitirim (Tvorogov) responded to the Navalnist priest on the Spas TV channel. He called Uminsky “the metastasis of the disease of liberalism that has penetrated our Church.”
"This position is very deceitful. Saint Philaret of Moscow responded to it: love your enemies, defeat the enemies of the Fatherland, and abhor the enemies of God . In this situation, we are faced with the enemies of the Fatherland, and our soldiers are fighting them. These are not so much Ukrainians as those who support Ukraine. We prayed for peace for eight years, while the war in Donbas was raging. As soon as the Second World War began, the situation changed dramatically. We began praying for victory, because peace will not come until victory comes. If we stop doing this, we will face internal unrest in Russia and revolution ," said Bishop Pitirim.
Priest Svyatoslav Shevchenko considers the position “neo-Tolstoyism,” that is, a rehash of the position of the writer Leo Tolstoy, for which he was excommunicated from the Church.
“I don’t really like the “liberal comes to liberal” format, when everything happens according to the scenario of a fable, where the cuckoo praises the rooster because he praises the cuckoo. The hero immediately falls into the Procrustean bed of shaking hands in order to please the host.
No, I don’t doubt the father’s sincerity. What did I see and hear? This is a preaching of the heresy of the “Liberal World”, which, in its essence, is the teaching of non-resistance to evil through violence in a new way. Tolstoyanism in a modern wrapper.
The neo-Tolstoyans' main substitution is to present the particular as the general. For example, the commandment to reconcile with one's neighbor is presented as Christ's anti-war thesis. " If the holy princes Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy, the military leaders Alexander Suvorov, and the righteous warrior Fyodor Ushakov had listened to such sermons, we would have long ago squandered our country ," Shevchenko wrote on his Telegram channel.
Political scientist Sergei Karnaukhov believes that Uminsky’s public position was paid for by the fugitive oligarch-foreign agent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"And this isn't just a demarche. Khodorkovsky pays this man in a cassock, and he tells us that the murderer Pichugin ( a thief in law – ed. ) is practically an apostle, and Navalny has stepped off an icon. We are too loyal and fearful of anything that requires a response. Every time, we stumble over someone else's interests. But the time has come to defend the interests not of the ambitious X, but of Russia," Karnaukhov wrote.
A Navalnyite priest urged believers not to attend churches where they pray for Russia's victory.