(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The story lags. For a long time now, an unknown Polish bishop braved the cold in the small working-class town of Bienczyce, where the midnight mass was held outdoors on Christmas Eve 1963. The communist regime did not want to build a church in the model city of the new Poland, Nowa Huta, to which Bienczyce belonged. But the relocated workers did not see the matter in the same way. They erected a cross at the intersection of three streets bearing the names "Karl Marx," "Proletariat," and "Revolution." It was in 1960, and it was the people – and not the church – that started the first silent uprising against the atheists in Warsaw.
Year in and year out, the same Christmas fair was held in Bienczyce. But it was only when the bishop himself began to practice that the matter became political. The communists skimmed that the church in this way opposed the authorities. But Bishop Karol Wojtyla; later Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, was to return to Bienczyce Christmas Eve for six years. In 1969 he forced the regime to his knees and got his church.
Bienczyce was a fair worthwhile for Wojtyla. He got not only his church, but the whole kingdom of God. In 1978, he was brought to the Vatican as Pope John Paul II. In 1979, he returned to Poland, where he gathered millions of people. A barrier was broken, and Polish workers at Stocznia gdanska im.lenina – the Lenin shipyard – used their newly discovered power to settle down. The strike was underway.
It was Solidarnosc, KOR and Lech Walesa. It was Mikhail Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall. In 1991, the pope received another kingdom of God; when millions upon millions of people in the East were freed. Nor had they had any church. And at least some of them had been Catholics, back then, 70 years ago.
When atheism fails
The story of Karol Wojtyla as pope is the story of the collapse of communism. It did not happen suddenly, in 1989, eleven years after its inauguration. It happened all the time, in the form of bits and pieces in the communist building that loosened and came crashing down.
It wasn't just the dictatorships that fell. Atheism also fell. In the new Russia, which had suddenly shrunk in half, the Orthodox Church could somewhat summarize that the religious landscape looked completely different. The Catholic, Protestant and unarmed satellite states were gone. Parts of the Orthodox Church had also broken loose, and spent their time establishing autocephalous churches. Islam as a religion was not completely gone, but significantly reduced.
In the new Russia, the changed boundaries had provided a framework around the ancient Orthodox core areas. And very soon it became clear that the church had not only preserved its religious strength and authority, but also its position as moral counselor to most people. A poll a few years later confirmed the orthodox dominance of the Orthodox Church: 49 percent of Russians considered themselves Orthodox believers. 3.2 percent said they were Muslims, while about one percent hooked on each of the three religions of Judaism, Protestantism and Buddhism. It was a thousand-year-old tradition that broke through from the time Russia transitioned to the Eastern rites in 988.
In such a setting; confident in himself and in his own role, there was not too much resistance to be traced when the Catholic Church began to seep into Russia from the mid-90s. For the Vatican also had its believers in the great empire in the east; from 600.000 to 1.3 million Catholics – depending on the eyes that saw. The way the Orthodox Church provided for its subjects outside of Russia; so the Catholic Church should also have the right to take care of its flock. Mente Patriarch Alexei II. And the state, for that matter.
For Pope John Paul II, the situation was completely different. The church that had properly helped to overthrow communism in Poland – and thus helped to overthrow communism in general – saw the opening to the east as a kind of God-given gift to Catholicism. The Vatican plunged into a religious offensive into the core areas of Orthodoxy, with predictable results: an unchristian dogfight between two sister religions.
What is Russia?
The Catholic Church had an important argument; that time, almost ten years ago. For Catholicism in Russia is not new. It rests on a long tradition; from the 1100th century when the first Catholic congregations were formed.
In 1917, the Catholic Church had two dioceses, 250 priests and half a million believers in Russia. But what was Russia? It was the Russian core areas, of course. But before the revolution, one Russian tsar after another – from Ivan the Terrible in the 1500th century to Peter the Great and Catherine II in the 1700th century – had secured large areas to the east, south and west. This meant, simply put, that the Russian state had expanded beyond its orthodox framework, which gave the country its religious and cultural identity.
From 1772 to 1795, then-Poland, which included Lithuania and parts of Belarus, was divided into three between Russia, Austria and Prussia. This is where the Catholics were, Patriarch Aleksey recalls today. The fact that Russia has shrunk only means that Catholicism has fewer rights within the new borders. However, fewer rights are not the same as no rights. The Orthodox Church only believes that the Vatican, the Pope and the entire Sulamite must recognize the Orthodox character and canonical claim of the Russian state. That means, in practice, that they should ask about law before setting up Catholicism as a spiritual and physical edifice in Russia.
The Catholic Church disagrees – not surprisingly. It points to religious freedom as a fundamental right, and that where the people choose a god, the church must follow. The Vatican also sends the argument about the core areas of Russian Orthodoxy back to the state and the patriarch: it was possible that the Catholics former held in areas outside present-day Russia. But that was before the Russian tsarist government – and to an even greater extent Stalin – decided that Siberia was a suitable haunt for political dissidents.
By deporting a considerable number of Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians; as well as Germans and Belarusians, to Siberia, the Russian state itself created a Catholic room in the Orthodox house. This is the space the Catholic Church will fill. But they have already rented that space from the Orthodox church. The problem is, the Russian Orthodox team says, that the Vatican is not satisfied with this.
Canonical attack
And that is exactly where the core of the conflict lies. Patriarch Alexei and his priests believe the Catholic Church should provide for its flock and satisfy their spiritual needs. But it was never intended that Catholicism in Russia should rise to a national religion… and get away with it.
In February last year, the decision brought a smoldering dispute into another phase: full war. Then the Vatican decided – innocently enough, at first glance – to upgrade the Catholic administrations in Russia to four full-fledged dioceses. It happened administratively in Rome, without either the Kremlin or the patriarch being consulted or informed. Thus the definition was laid: Russia had become one of the "provinces of the Vatican." The Catholic Church had conquered the exclusive marks of the Orthodox Church; made its canonical territory his.
That was the downfall of Patriarch Alexei. “This means, in practice, that a national Catholic church has been established in Russia, with a center in Moscow; a church that demands the Russian people – who belong to the Orthodox Church spiritually, culturally and religiously – as its flock… Something similar has never happened before in the history of our country… The Vatican has thereby endangered cooperation between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East , ”It said in the statement from the patriarch.
The declaration had consequences for the position of the Catholic Church in Russia. In the last year, it has suddenly become particularly difficult for priests to obtain an entry permit. Visas are confiscated at the border, new ones are not issued and employees must leave before the residence permit expires. Churches under construction face a lot of new bureaucracy, months after building permits are granted. Domes must be made lower, churches smaller and in some cases construction will be stopped. Negotiations to get back confiscated church buildings – seized under the Communists – have stalled in many places.
The tightening is not just new. Already under Boris Yeltsin, the lower house of parliament – the Duma – tried to pass a stricter law for the presence of other religions in Russia. After much deliberation, the law was signed by the president. It obliges the Vatican to re-register Catholic souls and property. What is not re-registered is perceived as non-existent. The Catholic Church rightly fears that it is all an attempt to throw them out of the country.
From the papal point of view, one has never admitted any guilt for what is happening now. For the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, the division of guilt is clear: one does not go into Russia and behave unpunished as religious imperialists. And you definitely do not go to Russia to mission for the benefit of another church!
A lost mess
The Catholic Church rejects accusations of proselytism. "We do not stand in front of Orthodox churches and ask people to come to us," it says from that edge. But part of the reason for the anxiety bites of Orthodoxy is that the Catholic Church finds its way among people and in environments that have no historical connection to the pope.
It means Russians who are not descendants of Poles, Lithuanians, Germans and so on, but who are Russians, that is, Orthodox Russians, because Russians can not be separated from their Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church can hardly be separated from Russians, who see their Moscow as "the third Rome." How the church interprets history.
Young people looking west are drawing inspiration from an alternative church. So does the new intelligentsia. Not many people convert. But in a situation where everything is eating its way east – the EU, NATO, democracy, human rights, liberalism, Catholicism – Patriarch Alexei is no dumber than he realizes Orthodoxy is under attack.
And thus his church has been locked. One of the things it has backfired on is a papal visit to Russia.
After first a visit to Ukraine, then to Kazakhstan, it ended with Pope John Paul II canceling a visit to Kazan this summer. "Some do not want the pope here," Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev summed up dryly and concisely. For the Pope, Russia had probably been worth a mass. But that fair will never be held, either outdoors or indoors.
