Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

When religious expression is suppressed for so long and there is no effective program in place by the Church to re-evangelize and re-catechize the people afterward, strange expressions of piety can arise. At least, this seems to be the lesson we are learning in Russia.

The Russian, English language RIA Novosti, is running an article telling of a “Christian” sect that is venerating an icon of Vladimir Putin. The article reports the explanation from one leader of the sect:

“We didn’t choose Putin,” Mother Fontinya told the Moskovsky Komsomolets paper, expounding on the first time she laid eyes on the “holy one.”

“It was when Yeltsin was naming him as his successor [during a live New Year's Eve TV broadcast in 1999]. My soul exploded with joy! ‘An ubermensch! God himself has chosen him!’” I cried.

“Yeltsin was the destroyer, and God replaced him with his creation,” claimed Fontinya.

Apparently they are convinced that he is the reincarnation of both King Solomon and St. Paul the Apostle. No one told them that the Resurrection obviates the possibility of reincarnation.

It seems that this is not unusual in Russia. The article goes on to say:

One of the most well-known sects in Russia has its base near the southern Siberian town of Abakan, where thousands of people, both Russian and foreign, worship a former provincial traffic policeman, Sergei Torop, as the second coming of Christ.

There are currently believed to be around 500-700 such sects in Russia, containing some 600,000-800,000 people.

If limited to the two, I think that the traffic cop sect made the better choice myself. If the article is correct about the magnitude of similar sects, this is not an insignificant number of confused people here. It seems to me that these people have the intuition that there must be an earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of God here on earth but they do not find it in their church, the Russian Orthodox Church.

If this is indeed the case, I suspect that it arises in large part due to the close association of Orthodox Church leaders to the former Soviet government, an arrangement that was justified by the strong Caesaropapist tradition in the East. This at least is the thinking of some commentators.

Of course, in the West we are seeing a large scale abandonment of the faith and often people resorting to different cults to replace their faith as well. Though, the greater tendency in the affluent West is toward secularism which excuses us from the hedonism that money makes possible.

The Sister Churches in East and West have an urgent need to reconcile and to join their efforts in order to reevangelize the culture. It is a task which requires a unified Church. As John Paul the Great said (more or less) now more than ever the Church must breathe again with both lungs.