When the “Pussy Riot” protesters were sentenced last week for their
performance in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, a friend asked me
why Orthodox Christians were so upset about what they’d done. For him,
this was clearly a political protest. It was aimed at a too-close
entwining of church and state, so it took place in a church. What’s the
big deal?
But, in practice, there’s a difference. If you protest at a
government building, you impact people in that government. If you
protest at a business, you impact people in that business. But when you
protest at a church, you don’t hit only those in power. You hit all the
ordinary people, too, the ones who don’t have any influence or power.
They come to church on a weekday afternoon just to pray, because they’re
worried or sad about something. When someone mocks their faith it
wounds them. It wounds their fellow-believers all over the world, who
have no connection at all to the target of the protest.
What caused this pain was that the women sang a song that contained
obscenities and a parody of a prayer. Those on the outside might not get
why it was so hurtful. Well, for one thing, the altar in an Orthodox
church is felt to be especially holy; it’s not like the stage of a
church auditorium. Because Christianity grew out of Judaism, the altar
is like the Holy of Holies in the ancient Temple.
But the form of the protest, a mocking and obscene prayer, also hit
on particular, and painful, memories. My spiritual father, Fr. George
Calciu, spent 21 years in communist prison. (He died in 2006). He was
subjected to the brainwashing process, and they used both physical and
emotional torture. They mocked everything and everyone he loved—his
wife, his child, his faith. A centerpiece of the brainwashing program
was to subject prisoners to parody church services, with obscene and
mocking prayers.
All Christian prisoners endured this abuse. Millions of clergy,
monastics, and lay people died for their beliefs. Fr. George survived,
and, thanks to the efforts of Romanian expatriates like Eugene Ionescu
and Mircea Eliade, he was freed in 1984.
It’s not that long ago.
The problem was the mockery of our prayers, not the protest against
Putin and the official church. There are many Christians who share these
women’s concerns, and our faith has a long history of prayer for
deliverance from unjust rulers. A sincere prayer might have had an
entirely different effect; it might have attracted allies everywhere.
Sincerity is always better than mockery.
Also, the church where this happened has a sensitive history. The original Christ the Savior Cathedral was built in the 19th
century, modeled on the finest Byzantine architecture and filled with
treasures of art and iconography. In 1931, the Soviets destroyed it—they
blew it up. You can see the footage online. Artworks were thrown in a
pile and burned—destroyed specifically because of their religious
content, like the Buddha statues dynamited in Afghanistan.
But in the 1990’s there grew up a popular movement to rebuild the
Cathedral. A million citizens of Moscow donated to the fund. The new
cathedral is identical to the one that was destroyed. So this church has
a significant story: it was destroyed by the powerful, and rebuilt by
the people.
The new cathedral was consecrated in 2000. It’s not that long ago.
What’s the right punishment in such a case? We could try picturing
analogous incidents, imagining protesters invading a mosque or a
synagogue and chanting obscene parodies of the worshippers’ prayers. But
I don’t know that there’s a need for punishment. Community service
would be better. These women could use their talents to gather and tell
the stories of those who lived through the bad times, and the stories of
those who did not make it through. That would be something we could all
agree on—a project that could bring healing and understanding, and
strengthen memory against future abuse.
When you’re young and strong, like these women are, it can be hard
to imagine that anyone was ever weak, or suffering, or persecuted, or
afraid. You might think, “It can’t happen here.” But it did happen—right
there. And not that long ago. We know this from history: if you forget
the times when the faithful were mocked with abusive and obscene words,
it won’t be long before we’re hearing those words again.
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