“TIME OF SPIRITUAL UPGROWTH” New Year interview by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad to the Trud newspaper
12.02.2003 · English, Архив 2002
“TIME OF SPIRITUAL UPGROWTH”
New Year interview by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad
to the Trud newspaper
(“Trud“, December 31, 2002)
– Your Eminence, please assess the outgoing year in view of the development of church-state and interreligious relations. What urgent problems do you expect to be solved in the coming year?
– The outgoing year was marked with a further development of cooperation between the Church, the state and society. The 7th World Russian People’s Council on Faith and Work: Spiritual and Cultural Traditions and Economic Future of Russia held in December can be placed among the most important events. The Council discussed the modern state of the Russian economy, prospects for its development and its moral fundamentals, discussed results of political and economic reforms of the last years and estimated new potential and threats posed by the economic globalization.
The Russian Orthodox Church continues to work together with various branches and levels of Russian state authorities. In particular, she carries on consultations on cooperation between the church and secular educational systems and on the place that the traditional religious culture should occupy in secular school. These issues were among the themes addressed by the action-reflection conference on Cooperation Between the State and Religious Associations in Education organized by Presidential Envoys to the Central, Volga and South Federal Districts, the Russian Ministry of Education, the State Duma Committee for Public Associations and Religious Organizations and the Interreligious Council of Russia. I hope that in the coming year we will make a progress in exercising our citizens’ right to gain thorough knowledge about their religious and cultural tradition already in secondary school.
We managed to achieve understanding with the state on the taxation of religious organizations and their payments for electricity and heat power. However, new challenges are arising. According to the recent Land Code, the Church cannot use a plot of land even if church buildings standing on it are conveyed to the Church. The Code proposed that the land be purchased or rented, but the first variant is impossible if a church standing on the land remains in state possession as an especially significant architectural monument. The second variant is strange at all, because this property was illegally expropriated from the Church after 1917. We hope that this knot will be “undone” through consultations between the Church and economic authorities, as well as through our Parliament.
Some events of the outgoing year distressed us. The hostage taking by terrorists in Moscow that hurt the whole Church was one of them. In interconfessional cooperation, 2002 complicated our relations with the Roman Catholic Church. The tension was a result of the Vatican decision to upgrade its administrative structures in Russia to dioceses. Our Church was presented with a fait accompli while such issues require a preliminary discussion, the more so as in this case Catholic full-fledged dioceses are established in the country with the thousand-year Christian background, not in a land that has never known Christ. We regard attempts of Catholic missionaries to preach among Russians as proselytism and stealing of souls, because the most of them were either baptized in Orthodoxy or are Orthodox Christians by their habits and cultural self-identification. We would like to hope that the coming year will give us fewer causes for concern.
– Returning to the 7th World Russian People’s Council… Did the forum address the problem that arose in the last decade: the problem of sharp property stratification with the two thirds of our population barely making both ends meet? What is the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on the issue?
– The Word of the Council, the final document of the 7th World Russian People’s Council, points out that heavy social situation and sharp property stratification are rooted not only in purely economic factors, but also in the extremely negative moral condition of society. For out of the human heart come criminal immorality in economy and business, bean counter at any price, corruption, dishonest competition and everything we have got tired so much with for the last years.
I am deeply convicted that no economic programs and no efforts exerted by the state will bring prosperity to our country if they are not accompanied by the revival of the moral fundament in human activity and if society itself does not lay down strict and executable rules regulating the behavior of state officials, businessmen and workers, in a word everyone involved in economic processes.
– The question of Alexander Skachkov, our reader from Vologda, is traditional for the pre-holiday newspaper’s post: “How can I intelligibly explain my children that on January 1 we are celebrating the beginning of the year 2003 after the Nativity of Christ, while the Feast of the Nativity is celebrated only in seven days?” Is the commitment of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Old Calendar a matter of principle? Can she accept the New Calendar in future?
– The modern chronology dates back to the year when Christ was born, not to the Nativity of Christ itself. The church mentality does not see a problem in it. As to the demand to carry out a calendar reform, it comes at present from people who, as a rule, have nothing in common with the Church and are inclined to revise any traditions. By the way, their demands are not confined to the calendar reform as regards the Church.
A possible adoption of the New Style by the Russian Orthodox Church was a subject of discussions in the past century. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon decreed that the Church should change to a renovated Julian Calendar after the Soviet State introduced the Gregorian Calendar in 1918. Immovable feasts were celebrated according to the Gregorian Calendar, and the method for calculating the date of Easter stayed unchanged. However, the reform was not accepted by the faithful and later all parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church returned to the Julian Calendar. If the majority of Orthodox Christians dismiss the idea of this reform now, we should refuse it. The unity of the Church is preferable to the settlement of calendar issues and therefore my opinion is that in the near future the change to the New Calendar will not be possible and even expedient. The top priority for the Church is to consolidate the foundations of the Orthodox faith in human life, so that it would be Christianity, not any other ideology, that would motivate people’s actions in private, family, public and political life.
– The New Year is not a temptation for pious Orthodox families. What about families with some members fasting and others not keeping the Advent? Do you think a religious person is allowed to drink a glass of champagne to the accompaniment of the Kremlin Chimes?
– The New Year is a family holiday. Therefore the Christian should determine his behavior at this day bearing in mind the words of St. Paul: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). At the same time, the Apostle warns us: “only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flash” (Gal 5:13). Of course, one can share this holiday with one’s family, the more so as New Year prayer services are conducted in churches on December 31 and January 1.
– Your Eminence, what are your hopes in the coming year? What would you wish the Trud readers?
– I wish the Trud readers that the New Year and Christmas may be joyful for them. I hope that this year will be a time of spiritual upgrowth for all of you, will bring peace and prosperity to our homeland, and well-being and joy to our families.
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