Posted on 08/31/2012 2:02:27 PM PDT by NYer
August 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Russia and other European countries are suffering a wave of anti-Christian attacks and disruptive protests in the wake of the conviction of the Russian punk band “Pussy Riot,” including the destruction of crosses commemorating the Christian victims of communism, an attack on the Russian Patriarch, and the theft of relics from the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr in St. Petersburg.
In Russia the violence seemed to have claimed two lives on Wednesday, when a mother and daughter were found stabbed to death in their apartment, with “Free! Pussy Riot” scrawled on the wall in their blood. However, following the apprehension of a suspect who confessed to the crime, police say that the slogan was only a diversionary tactic by the perpetrator who was the boyfriend of the daughter.
In toto, five Orthodox crosses have been destroyed in recent weeks, including the chainsawing of a large wooden cross in Kiev, Ukraine, by a bare-chested woman from the the pro-abortion, homosexualist group “FEMEN,” and four anonymously destroyed in Russia. The Kiev cross and at least one of the four Russian crosses were erected to commemorate the murder of Christians by the region’s communist regimes.
A bare-chested FEMEN protester also attacked Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in July, with the words “Kill Kirill!” written on her body.
“Free Pussy Riot” protesters have even taken their disruptive “protests” to the Catholic church in western Europe, where a trio dressed up like the punk band was arrested after disrupting mass in Cologne cathedral. The incident follows another in 2011 when a FEMEN member was arrested in St. Peter’s square for removing her shirt and shouting anti-Catholic slogans in protest of the Church’s condemnation of abortion and homosexual behavior.
In what may be a related attack, several relics were stolen on Thursday from the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr, as well as a communion chalice and five neck crosses, according to local police, the Moscow Times reported.
Defenders of the Russian Orthodox Church have responded to the attacks by calling for the creation of Orthodox Squads to protect churches from desecrating behavior. Russia Today reports that the proposal is supported by Russian Orthodox and Muslim officials, while the country’s human rights ombudsman has denounced it.
In what may be a related counterattack, Orthodox protesters attacked Moscow’s “Erotic Art” museum yesterday with bricks in their hands, according to a report by Interfax, which cited the museum’s director Alexander Donskoy. Donskoy called for an investigation.
A recent poll has found that a majority of Russians, 53 percent, believe that the sentence meted out to the “Pussy Riot” trio was “fair,” as opposed to 27 percent who said that it is “not fair.”
Heads up alert to the Catholic List!
Sometimes I feel like Judgement Day is just around the corner.
This is all proof that Russia was never properly Consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Russians have their bad points and their good points, like everybody else. But I’ve been there and know a few and believe they are absolutely among the last people anyone with an once of sense would want to pi** off.
I shouldn't make fun of this, but honestly, until I read this article I thought the whole "Pussy Riot" thing had something to do with the Code Pinkettes in Tampa.
Pussy Riot and their ilk ARE the Bolsheviks.
If the desecration of the cathedral had happened in the USA, Obama would have invited them to the White House and given them a medal.
The title to the article caught my attention...
True.
Also the Communist regime was never put to trial or went to any reconciliation process; nothing that resembles Nuremberg (with all its defects) or various reconciliation committees of Central Europe or South Africa.
The Pussies story, however, has an aspect that probably escapes most Western observers. That aspect is Sergianism: the heresy by which the official Russian Orthodox collaborated with the commies since 1920’s. The essence of the heresy is that in order to save some salvageable remnant of the physical churches, some clergy, and some albeit severely limited, semi-public Christian life, the Church in Russia had to accept a servile attitude toward the regime and still undergo demolitions of most churches and near complete expulsion of Christianity form public life. So the patriarchs were all at the same time functionaries and secret informers of the NKVD/GPU/KGB; no priest could be approved to service unless cleared through the communist system. The Church, for example, made statements to the Soviet Leadership of the kind “your pain is out pain; your joy is our joy” at the same time as priests were fire-squadded and churches turned into warehouses or blown up.
There was also a Catacomb Church that did its service in secret, but by the time the Soviet system collapsed in 1991, it was virtually extinguished.
The free Russian Orthodox Church remained abroad, known under a number of acronyms, but most used was ROCOR, — Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. That mostly served the Russian emigres, and originally was the Church of the White Movement.
After the Soviet Union finally croaked, it was the Sergian, collaborationist Church that received government support, and also, naturally, immense support form the people, who simply did not know another Church. The symbiosis of the Church and the Russian post-communist government became pervasive under Putin. One might sa,y that was a natural development given the KGB roots of both the Patriarchy and the Kremlin. When Putin ran for his — one loses count — N-th term at the top spot in the country, Patriarch Kirill endorsed him. So the situation now is peculiar: all kinds of people, many of them pro-Western and pro-democratic in their intellectual makeup, the others — religious conservatives who would be of the same political and philosophical mold as the esteemed readership of FR, — all decent people that abhor Communism, putinism, and the present day Russian KGB-reared plutocracy, all people who would normally welcome warmly a resurgence of Christianity in Russia, — are now in firm opposition to the official Orthodox Church, the so-called Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy).
The Pussies’ protest seems to be either an outright provocation by the Kremlin or, at least, a stupid act by feminist youth exploited to the Kremlin’s advantage. The result is that now an attack on Putin is also an attack on the Russian Church, on Christianity, and by extension, on the Russian nation; the kind of cultural attack that we at FR are quite familiar with on the American soil. The Russian right wing is confused (isn’t that a familiar condition): Sergianism is abhorrent, — on that, let us agree with the Pussies,— but so is the desecration of the national shrine, the Temple of Christ the Savior, rebuilt after the collapse on the USSR on the spot where the first Cathedral was blown up by Stalin, and erected to commemorate the 1812 victory over Napoleon.
The West does not understand any of that, and given the Western notions of separation of Church and state sees only a legitimate political protest. In turn, the russian right wing only deepns its mistrust of the West, which once upon a time was seen as an ally against Communism, but now is a source of secularism and moral decay.
Patriarch Kirill, now a political player just as much as a religious leader, would like to have the religious conservatives in the West to see his plummeting popularity in Russia as a result of atheist resurgence. And indeed, 70 years of artificial selection did leave a mark: atheism, including militant one is a common feature in Russia and, not in a small way thanks to the Sergian heresy and Kirill-Putin alliance, it can feel vindicated.
So it is in that environment that public crosses are coming down.
It is a mess,... sort of like our condition here in America.
Then the time for the consecration to the Immaculate Heart has indeed come, finally, Deo Gratias.
That time was in 1917, when the request was received and Russia was falling.
In 1918 the Royal Family was murdered, ending the dynasty that held a unique connection to the soul of the Russians. Since then, no other leader came close to be such father and confessor and most ruled by terror.
In 1919 several White Armies: Youdenich, Denikin and Kolchak, consisting mostly of volunteers, were on the verge of driving out the Reds and restoring Russia. The Entente, — France, England and the US gave only token support. The Germans proved the most reliable partners, but the White Armies considered themselves in a state of war with Germany on the strength of the obligations toward the Entente, and Germany itself was defeated in the West; Germany was only interested in solidifying the gains they got from Lenin/Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. The Civil War was lost. The West turned around rebuilding Russia, already transformed into the Soviet Union, in exchange for raw materials and the looted wealth of the Russian upper class, and as a balance against Germany.
In the Second World War, the Soviet Union was the victor and Russian people - the loser. Germany, lead by racist ideologues, did not seize the opportunity to turn the war of 1941-45 with Stalin into the war for liberation of Russia. The hope of throwing off the communist yoke by military force was lost.
The Cold War, finally, allowed the Soviet System to collapse. But by that time the Russian spirit was broken, — it no longer has regenerative strength. Putin, it seems, is making a weak attempt to rebuild something of it, but his methods and his mentality are those of Homo Sovieticus. In the meanwhile another decade of convalescence has the patient on the wrong medicine and wasting away.
So these are the opportunities of consecration of Russia, — something that might be a pivotal point similar to the Christening of AD 988 done by Prince Vladimir, — that were crying out to heaven and they all were lost.
Annalex, thank you for these excellent posts although they break my heart.
You are welcome.
Also, God works in mysterious ways. Fear them not.
I wonder how much time and money Obama made the CIA waste creating “Free Pussy Riot” and the follow-up.
Obama: “It’ll bring Putin to his knees!”
CIA: “Er, uh, yes sir.”
Thank you for the wonderful posts!
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