Vatican City, Aug 3, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican Secretary of State’s visit to Russia later this month comes at a crucial juncture for the country, and is packed with both political and religious significance.
He is expected to meet with President Vladimir Putin and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church during the trip.
On a political level, the visit of Cardinal Pietro Parolin – the dates of which have yet to be announced – comes as Russia faces rising tensions with the West over Syria and Ukraine, and possible meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Just this week the U.S. slapped Russia with more economic sanctions due to Russia’s involvement in the election. The decision prompted Putin to expell 755 people from its U.S. embassy and consulates.
On a religious level, Cardinal Parolin’s visit also comes at a key time, falling just a year and a half after the historic February 2016, meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The meeting marked the first time leaders from each Church sat down together since the Russian Orthodox Church was founded some 400 years ago.
While there might be fear and criticism regarding their engagement with Russia, “the Vatican is nevertheless willing to take this risk,” seasoned Vatican analyst Robert Moynihan told CNA.
“On the world scene there is no more important and more significant relationship right now than that between Russia and the West,” he said. So for the Vatican “to bring the highest diplomatic figure to the center of Russia and to have him speak with the highest authorities is a dramatic and significant gesture on the part of Pope Francis.”
“The benefit of direct contact and of sitting and talking is so great, and the threat of wider conflict in Ukraine and of deeper division between the West and Russia is viewed in Rome as so dangerous, that the Vatican … is willing to publicly make this trip and underline the fact that they have hope that these types of talks can lessen tensions,” he said.
“So this is the delicacy of the moment. I think it’s a courageous act on the part of the Vatican.”
Moynihan is an American journalist and is the editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine. Holding a Ph.D in Medieval Studies from Yale University, he is also founder of the Urbi et Orbi Foundation, which is dedicated to building relations between Catholics and other Christians throughout the world.
Throughout his career he has taken a special interest in Russia, having traveled there some 30 times since 1999.
Moynihan said the significance of Cardinal Parolin’s visit and the meetings he will hold have deep historical roots, making the trip a pivotal moment not only for the present, but also in terms of what the future could look like.
Political Relevance
Quoting an Oct. 1, 1939, BBC broadcast with Winston Churchill, Moynihan said Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” As such, it’s something “difficult to penetrate, to understand, [and] is a fascinating and important country.”
Russia is “a country that we should not put into a corner and condemn, but a country we should engage with and a country which can teach us many things,” he said.
In many ways still grappling with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is in a sense trying to find its place, he said, adding that the complexity of the current situation has been triggered at least in part by the events that followed the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Among these events are the re-unification of Germany, the integration of Eastern bloc countries into Europe, and current questions on Russia’s own integration into Europe and what role border countries – namely the Baltic states and others such as Belarus and Ukraine – will play.
Looking specifically to Ukraine, Moynihan pointed the severity of the situation, and noted that most Ukrainians would sadly recognize that the democratic process in their country is going though “an extremely difficult transition period.”
This is due largely to the conflict in the eastern region of the country, which has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014, and crippled their economy.
With Cardinal Parolin’s visit, the Holy See will have the opportunity to play a similar role to the one it had in helping to broker restored ties between the U.S. and Cuba during the Obama administration, leading to the thaw of a 50 year freeze in relations.
Part of this mediation could come through the Catholic Church’s close ties with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is 4-5 million people strong in a country of 40 million, and with the Latin and Orthodox communities in Ukraine.
“I’ve always thought there could be a religious off-ramp that could cut through the geopolitical and political haggling and distrust to say we are all human beings, we all have the faith in God and in Jesus Christ,” and even with differences, are able to go beyond “this geopolitical conflict,” Moynihan said.
In looking at the situation between Russia and Ukraine from both the religious and geopolitical sides, the Vatican recognizes “that it’s always good to have channels of communication open,” he said.
“The idea that the Vatican and that Cardinal Parolin himself continually emphasize that it’s better to communicate and to talk than to be in a cold, non-communicative standoff.”
Religious Relevance
Cardinal Parolin’s expected meeting with Patriarch Kirill comes as part of what Moynihan termed “a longing” to restore at least partial, if not full, unity among the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Since the 1964 meeting of Bl. Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, the two traditions have reached a point “where the profound suspicion and distrust of some past centuries has diminished by the hard work of thoughtful men of both Churches as they’ve come to respect and appreciate the faith and learning of their counterparts.”
There are still those in the Orthodox community who view Rome with suspicion, believing them to be a controlling entity that would limit their freedom and strip them of their traditions. On the other hand, many in the Latin rite hesitate to draw closer to the Orthodox for fear that they are often closely linked with their governing states.
According to Moynihan, many fear that the meeting between Cardinal Parolin and Putin would be used “as a piece in a chess game for geopolitical purposes,” to make Russia seem less aggressive.
“The Vatican is nevertheless willing to take this risk,” he said, because they have hope the meeting might help “prepare the way for a just peace in situations of conflict and for closer union between these thousand year-divided Churches.”
Turning to the days of St. John Paul II, Moynihan noted that the Polish Pope, who was very familiar with Russia and the Soviet regime, had said that “the Church needs to breathe with two lungs, that we need to have closer relations with the Orthodox.”
Russian Orthodox themselves were “brutally and cruelly suppressed” under the Soviet Union, he said, noting that thousands of churches were burned, many thousands of Orthodox Christians were arrested, and hundreds of priests executed.
“The atheist, communist regime was a brutal regime for our Christian brothers in the Soviet Union and in Russia, so I think this is a cause for us to feel compassion toward them,” Moynihan said.
When faced with accusations that the Russian Orthodox Church is nationalistic and is being used as a puppet of the government, the journalist said he insists that, in his opinion, the Russian government “is attempting to become more of a normal country’s government.”
“It’s in reaction to the ideological rigor of the communist system that they are still torn by the mixture of nostalgia for the Soviet time and the attraction of this Western, liberal democratic culture.”
“They’re right in the middle of this transition process,” he said, noting that in recent years they have been rebuilding their churches and re-studying Christian tradition.
In his opinion, Moynihan said efforts are those of a people trying to return to the “wellspring of faith” that was cut off for 70 years by “a very pitiless, tyrannical, atheist regime.”
“For this reason I feel up and down the line we ought to engage with the Russians and with all Eastern Europeans, and that we should gain from them a sense of how Christians can survive under cultural and political pressure as we ourselves face our own challenges in our increasingly post-Christian Western societies.”
In this sense, Cardinal Parolin’s visit marks “one more step in a multi-decade, multi-century process in which the Church tries to keep communications with the Eastern Churches.”
One point Cardinal Parolin and Patriarch Kirill are likely to touch on in their upcoming meeting is the joint declaration signed by the Patriarch and Pope Francis during their meeting in Havana last year, which highlighted the need to work together to protect the environment, the poor, and the persecuted.
But odds are, when he meets with Putin, Cardinal Parolin will try to move the political pen on touchy issues, reinforcing the idea that the Holy See “can serve as a type of honest broker in between colossal powers, which are as we all know positioning themselves in very significant ways that will effect the future of Ukraine, the future of Eastern Europe, the future of Europe as a whole and the future of the world.”
So it is against this political and religious backdrop that Cardinal Parolin will enter “right at the hinge-point of this decision, of whether we will keep Russia excluded from polite society, whether we will actually confront Russia and have a conflict or a war,” Moynihan said.
“This is a dramatic moment, and I wish Cardinal Parolin all the best. I think he’s a balanced, competent, thoughtful man,” he said, but noted that there are still those who are concerned, wishing to keep Russia isolated on the global playing field.
“I take a different view,” he said. “I think it’s a trip that’s filled with hope and is something that must be done in order to allow us to evade, if we may evade, a great tragedy of wider conflict that could harm the entire region and the world.”
[…]
Having addressed this specific report earlier at, “Pope Francis: Partisans have used Benedict XVI’s death ‘to serve their own interests’”, this comment addresses Pope Francis’ 2013 in flight comment repeated by him here that, “If a person with homosexual tendencies is a believer, seeks God, who am I to judge him? This is what I said on that trip”.
Accompaniment by priest, or God of the struggling homosexual is a good thing. Conditionally. That is if the priest emulates God, revealed to us in Christ drawing the penitent away from actions that Francis admits are gravely sinful and under no circumstances permissible.
It’s clear then that same sex attraction, homosexual tendencies are not [always] sinful. Nonetheless, it’s also true that homosexual tendency and acts can be voluntary, a willful perversion. That is why the Church must resist this administration’s intent to cultivate in our youth a homosexual oriented mentality. Bad sexual behavior can be learned and adopted especially by the young and vulnerable, addressed here by Susan Ciancio “The sexualization of children”. We’re not hearing much if anything from the Vatican on this far reaching moral dilemma. That said, the statement “Who am I to judge” has a context to which we have to make a prudent judgment.
Assignments to the Casa Marta, Synod on Synodality, Vatican communications of an active homosexual, advocates for normalizing homosexuality. Both the Synod on Synodality with Card Hollerich SJ relator, the Pontifical Academy for Life Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia president are assigned homosexual advocates [John Finnis recently assigned, member Card Willem Eijk both doctrinally orthodox to the Pontifical Academy may be simply window dressing when the entire direction of the Church is considered]. Add the Card Coccopalmerio Vatican residence homosexual scandal, Francis’ reinstatement of defrocked child rapist Fr Inzoli speak a different story to the Pope’s explanation of Who am I to judge.
Some of us want to love this pope are taken by his compassionate overtures. The visible moral sea change transforming the Church into an accommodation of the gravely sinful, of perverse behavior makes that a split of sorrowful compassion salted by strong rejection.
Never emphasizes the justice part of that same coin and only drudgingly and barely reiterates the Catechism.
How many active homosexuals have you brought back to Christ, Pope Francis?
God’s accompaniment is never for the legalization of anyone’s sins. Calling on God’s Holy Name for such things breaks all the Commandments starting with the 2nd; but as Pope, the 1st!
You can not uphold anyone’s dignity by “legalizing homosexual civil union”. It is the opposite, by doing such a thing you degrade and demean everyone altogether and offend God gravely.
“The pope reiterated what he said on his return flight from Brazil in 2013: “If a person with homosexual tendencies is a believer, seeks God, who am I to judge him? This is what I said on that trip.”
“EWTN is SATAN!” my priest screamed in his homily. My Priest was really going off on how EWTN was ‘Satan’, for their comments on Pope Francis’, “Who Am I To Judge”. So I started a page, with a poll, to discuss just who Pope Francis, can’t or can, judge. I invited my Priest to the page to help us discuss.
Priest Judges EWTN as Satan for Their Comments on Pope Francis’ “Who Am I To Judge”
https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/catholics-only-priest-judges-ewtn-as-satan-for-their-co mments-on-pope-francis%E2%80%99-%E2%80%9Cwho-am-i-to-judge%E2%80%9D.250177/
I do not hear the enormous, horrible, Catholic issue of child molester priests being discussed in Pope Francis’ “Synod on Synodality”. Is Pope Francis and his Vatican Gay Lobby trying to slide in the decriminalization of man-boy-lover Priests molesting children, when he says ‘Who am I to Judge’? Yes, respect the human dignity of man-boy-lovers, but please Pope Francis make sure the world knows child molesting is a grave sin and heinous crime!
P.S. We have a new Awesome Priest now.
Well, the theological arguments are needed to understand the elements that make for the gravity of the dilemma. Although, the cat is now out of the gunnysack [an ordinary bag is too small for this cat]. What with His Holiness allegedly telling Spanish clergy no need to hold back absolution if the penitent refuses to repent, otherwise openly broadcasting that no one should be denied the Eucharist, that the only requisite is the garment of faith. Will Martin Luther be next up for canonization?
Would it be better for Papa to interpret scripture rather that presenting his own point of view? If we care for the eternal soul of one who is misguided, we are obliged to speak the truth in love. We all have our besetting sins, yet God finds the sin of homosexuality egregious.
Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Unfounded response to ungodly behaviour helps no one.
We read: “The pope reiterated what he said on his return flight from Brazil in 2013: “If a person with homosexual tendencies is a believer, seeks God, who am I to judge him? This is what I said on that trip.”
Indeed, the pope simply repeats the original ambiguity–the off-the-cuff remark about a particular “him,” conflated with silence on universal moral truth; the failure to distinguish between accompaniment and accommodation.
Nine years of non-dialogue. With no apologies for another repetition, this again from Veritatis Splendor:
“A separation, or even an opposition [!], is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a ‘moral judgment’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions [!] contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not!]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
Who in the media is asking the Pope questions about the many Christians being persecuted and killed in Nigeria? Why does every press engagement devolve to the same topic?
I hate the way the press constantly distorts the Holy Father’s views. If they would ask him the right questions on the right topics his brilliance, orthodoxy and sanctity would shine forth. He has, for example, been very clear in condemning Islamic violence against Christians in Nigeria when given the opportunity. Or he has at least condemned some kind of violence against someone or something. Anyway, it’s all the media’s fault!
First, this pontificate is almost a decade in. If you are correct (and I don’t think you are), one would have to question the Pope’s/Vatican’s choice of media outlets. But, really, isn’t ten years enough time to find a way to consistently express matters with clarity and cohesion?
Secondly, a truly brilliant man would be able to take even distorted or leading questions and respond (again) with clarity and cohesion. So…there’s that.
Very painful load of sarcasm from Tony. Might be a Babylon Bee journalist.
If so, he got me! Heh.
This comment is intended to be sarcastic, right? Brilliance, orthodoxy, and sanctity are not qualities people associate with Francis, not even on his best days, which are sadly quite rare.
Perhaps I should give up sarcasm for Lent. No, my comment was not intended to be taken literally. Like someone else I can think of, I have been guilty of spreading confusion.
Pope Francis’in-flight pressers are not helpful, let’s say. Why does he keep playing the secular media’s games?
Like the word “inclusion,” the term “accompanies” should be dropped from the vocabulary of those who take their relationship with Christ seriously. God does not accompany us anywhere. He convicts us of sin and calls us to repent and believe. It’s that simple, and it’s perfectly clear. “Accompanying” people is leftist code for accommodating sin, a response that clearly violates biblical teaching and the catechism.
There’s nothing wrong, per se, with the word “accompanies”. The problem (or part of the problem) is that it is a such neutral word. Far, far better are the exact, clear words found in the first paragraph of the CCC:
Created…draws close….calls…sent his Son….invites. These are words that demand our response, just as Christ’s words—”Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”—demand a response. But the language of faux synodality is banal, neutral, and far too conversational. It certainly isn’t biblical.
Good points, and a neutral word can be bent in all kinds of directions to suit people’s agendas. I’m thankful that God speaks clearly and directly to us. He doesn’t mince words, but He always tells us the truth.
God is all powerful. Accompanies the weak and the strong on their brief common journey forward.