This kind of response is not unexpected:
Wednesday, September 25, 2013It is a cardinal rule...
...of blogging to never post while drunk. You might accidentally put up something as silly as this.
A friend shared these observations this morning:
The Russians will take offense, Brian. Orthodoxy permeates Russian culture, even those sectors of the population that consider themselves secular and unbelieving. The Russian State in general, and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular, still subscribe to their own notion of "manifest destiny" as defined in their dictum "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth." For centuries, the notion of "Holy Russia" has stood unshaken. Add to this firm belief the "bleakness" - I don't know how else to call it - of the Russian character, a kind of dark fatalism and sense of victimhood that rose after the Tartar invasions, and then Napoleon's, and then Hitler's, and you get a national consciousness suspicious of anything coming from the West - or Mongolia, but Mongolia is no longer a factor.The Patriarch of Moscow will reply that Russia has been the Theotokos' dowry since Prince Vladimir converted to Orthodoxy along with the entire Kievan Rus, and that no further consecration, even less one arising from the first, "fallen" Rome, is necessary.
Putin, an authoritarian cleptocrat, needs the Russian Church to maintain social order and Russian national identity. He's not going to alienate a political ally of the stature of the Patriarch. Putin will use the Church as a foil against the West and against internal enemies whenever he thinks is necessary to maintain his power and Russian national unity. That's the way he is.
It'll take a miracle, Bri, like the Sun dancing over the Kremlin, to persuade all the Russian powerbrokers to go along with your suggestion. Fortunately, I do believe in miracles.
+JMJ,
~P.