Religion in Russia Today

...Moscow's slogan is "Freedom"--for religion as well as for atheism...

...Exarch Leonid Theodoroff, the brave priest who heads the Russian Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite, has been pardoned lately and allowed to live on Russian territory...

...Speaking in general, the religious bodies in Russia are much freer today than they were in 1923 . The Soviet government is still deeply anti-religious, but it has ordered that the pious feelings of the people shall not be hurt...

...Erasmus, most human of humans, is among them, and Plato--Plato in the Greek, and Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, and others...

...but Rome has never cut off the Slavs or Roumanians, or the Eastern Orthodox Church as such...

...This will be a truly Christian life, a pledge of the day when the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost shall guide every soul of good will...

...Who were the authors that helped Mary Stuart in her hours of mental anguish and bodily pain...

...Knowing she was no mean l.,atinist, they presented her with Buchanan's now historic libel on her and her alleged relations with Bothwell, written in Latin, and but newly published anonymously in LondonJDe Maria Scotorum Regina...

...Father John was a very holy marled priest who preached much and offered the Eucharistic Sacrifice daily...

...BOOKS OF MARY OF SCOTS By NIGEL TOURNEUR M ARGARET OF NAVARRE is usually looked upon as the most brilliant feminine-exponent of sixteenth-century culture and intellectual attainment...

...Classical scholar though Mary Stuart was, she had her story- books, as the list reveals...

...Its structure, its style, its images, and its concepts are abrupt and dazzling as lighming...

...To such a master in creative criticism as $ainte-Beuve or Walter Pater, they lend indications which may be developed into a synthesis, vivid and deeply comprehensive, and setting forth evidence as sure, if not surer, than documents and tradition...

...It must be said, too, that the Vedenskyites dislike some character- istics of Roman Catholicism--the very skilful central- ization of church rule, the niceties of western canon law and scholasticism, the lack of liturgical folk-song...

...Their strength lies in their remarkably extensive means of propaganda, and in their monopoly of culture, which they hold firmly in hand...

...It is this which gives solidity to the group...

...To save the faith, no longer may we count on the re- ligious genius of the Russian folk...

...The Tykhonite clergy do not preach or catechize...

...In I922, Lipkittsky of Kiefi founded the Independent Panukrainian Orthodox Church...

...The northern Rus-sians are naturally socialistic...

...Work, therefore, for the kingdom of God, through His universal Church, in brotherly love and the truths of the faith...

...Who, therefore, is Christ...

...The Russian language comes next to English in linguistic popularity...

...But her unfortunate sister- sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots, had she been as consonantly situated, would have gained the laurels rather than she who is generally associated with The Heptameron...

...This frank endeavor is ineffective with Russian grown-ups, but it does influence the young people...

...It acknowledges the actual Russian government and, like the Anglicans and American Methodists, allows married bishops, remar-riage of priest-widowers, the Gregorian calendar, shaved beards, and short clerical hair...

...But, luckily, there is proof in another direction that her collection was not only a large one for the sixteenth century, but had been well chosen...

...The Patriarchate of Constantinople is only one portion of Eastern Orthodoxymand that not a very considerable one...

...In romance, history, philosophy, religion, and politics, her library was a comprehensive one...

...In the country as in the town, among factory-workers' children as well as among peasant children, one simple axiom is taken for truth: "Religion is a fraud that has had its day...

...The Baptists find many among poor folk of the cities who are drawn by the simplicity of Baptist ethical teaching, and by the severity of the lives of those who teach...

...Metropolitan Vedensky went on to make clear the dogmas of transubstantiation and of the reserved Eucharistic Presence...

...We must teach...

...Religion is attacked from all sides...

...and, too, Lucian, Herodotus, and Cornelius Nepos...

...It is the story, at one and the same time sober and violent, of a priest tempted of Satan, who only works out his own salvation and the accomplishment of his task by extra- ordinary and superhuman efforts...

...then we must know how to teach it, how to answer the anti-religious objections spread so sys- tematically by the schools, by the countless scatterers of Bolshevist propaganda...

...In 1924, Theodosius passed from the Tykhonites to the Panukrainians...

...Whom of them did the Queen recollect in her last days at Fotheringay...

...At Eastertide, 1926, P~re d'Herbigny journeyed from Rome to visit the Russian Catholic col- onies of Moscow, Leningrad, Kieit, and Odessa...

...At one time, Metropolitan Anthony Krapovitsky, some time ago of Kieff, but now in Serbia, considered organizing an emigrant Russian patriarchate...

...P~re Michel d'Herbiguy, S.J., president of the Pontificial Oriental Institute in Rome, visited Moscow in October, I925, and attended the Third Council of the Synodist Pan-Russian Ortho- dox churches...

...The Soviet policemen are watchful, and the Tykhonites in Russia suffer more than their needful share of police espionage...

...Inspired partly by the life of the Cur6 d'Ars and certain writ- ings of Rancr, it is the novel which has most moved, most interested, and most excited the French reading public during the last six months...

...such worship will not last if the baptized lacks knowledge of what he ought to have been taught to believe with regard to the Saviour...

...Rus-sian blood is a fusion of the Aryan and the Asiaticp of the Slav-Teuton with the Mongolian...

...and, too, Ronsard's Nues ou Nouvelles...

...Without a doubt, although no blue stocking, she was deeply read...

...In Moscow, in October, I925, a Soviet official said to the president of the Oriental Institute of Rome: Humanity is headed for a centralized internationalism...

...The very titles of the volumes going to form a library will always give clues to the taste and character of their owner...

...Its 37 ~ pages are a long paroxysm, permeated with lamentation...

...In Moscow on October 7, 1925, he spoke thus to the Third Council of Pan-Russian Orthodox churches...

...We have, however, undoubted proof in her books that her education and mental calibre were far in advance of her age...

...Every Russian hears again and again that faith is opposed to knowledge, that religion is a disease of the nerves, a perversion of the sex instinct...

...It offers an amaz- ing picture of the intensity of Catholic spiritual life...

...Therefore, we must master these problems...

...all religious teaching is quite forbidden--even in church--to persons under eighteen years of age...

...The First Buik of Froisart ; and Amyot's Plutarch...

...The emigrant patriarchist bishops have been criticized by their brother bishops in Russia for running away from Russia, and for weakening the Tykhonite cause through their counter-revolutionary, political propaganda for a revived Russian monarchy...

...We have entered on a new religious policy in keeping with our altered economic plan...

...This mixture of fact and fiction is the only book on which we have the Queen's opinion, and she treats it trenchantly in one of her letters to Monsieur de La Mone Fenelon, French ambassador to England...

...It will be seen now to what an extent French Cathol- icism is attesting its vitality and force in literature...

...Most sees are claimed by two rival bishops, sometimes by three oli four...

...He is metropolitan but has never been consecrated bishop...

...The faith will be saved, strengthened, and motivated not through political means, but through spiritual union with Christ and by a filial yielding with Him to the Father...

...The preamble to the laws drawn up by the Department of Worship of the People's Commis- sariat for Justice, lays down definitely that every mis- deed that might give the people reason to think of their church officers as victims of iU-treatment must be shunned...

...The number and importance of the Moscow libraries strikes one with wonder...

...The Russian government still works for the spread of atheism, for they consider that to be one of their great duties toward mankind...

...They, in turn, were catalogued in I573 as they lay in the castle after its surrender to the English and the collapse of the Marian cause in Scotland...

...The collection of Le Roseau d'Or would deserve to be mentioned if it had done nothing more than reveal to French attention a new writer whose first book has created a tremendous impression...

...The spiritual revival caused by the upheaval in 1917 seems to have died down in 192o...

...There are two lists of Queen Mary's collection, which are in safe keeping in the Register House at Edinburgh...

...Since their excommunication, the Eastern Orthodox churches have never been able to summon an ecumeni-cal council, which, according to their own theologians, would be the only tribunal competent to settle the dif- ferences with Rome...

...The Synodist hierarchy has the backing and blessing of the Greek Orthodox Church of Constantinople, though it must gain the recognition of all other self-governing Ortho- dox churches before it has the right to unquestionable Orthodoxy...

...The Eastern Orthodox Christians accept the "Filioque," but they deny any eternal procession...

...Bernanos especially has pages upon this point whose sheer movement is irresistible...

...The bishops of the patri- archates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were excommunicated for taking the side of Cerularius...

...Today there are in Russia more than five hundred validly consecrated bishops...

...Nevertheless, with the exception of the adoption of the new style calendar, very few Synodist bishops or priests have taken advantage of the new rules...

...Nothing has taken its place except homelessness, disease, and the sins of paganism...

...The overthrow of the home, the family, and many moral duties seems to have been attained in Russian cities...

...He urged the Orthodox clergy to cultivate a fitting faith in the liturgical sacrifice and called on them to enliven the laity with a like devotion: Then will souls throw aside their selfishness...

...But an aggressive dogma is not despised, nor is philosophy neglected...

...Again she had the divine Ariosto...

...It behooves us to ponder the following truths: The future men and women of Russia are today growing up in anti-religious, pagan culture...

...Because homage given to Christ's image is not enough...

...Vedensky is a skilled antagonist of atheism, and his business is to oppose unbelievers in philosophical and theological arguments...

...They are willing to leave the future to God...

...This is done, of course, on condition that religion is not used as a cover tor political agitation...

...Such visits would have been impossible three or four years ago, and are instructive tokens of the changed state of affairs in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics...

...He is much more...

...The second great section of Russian Orthodoxy is the Synodist Church, which claims lawful succession to the Synodal Church that functioned in Russia from the end of the Moscow patriarchate in 1721 to the set- ting up of the second patriarchate immediately subse- quent to the revolution of 1917 . This hierarchy is made up of 2oo bishops, and I7,OOO priests...

...If we fail to teach our good Russianpeopie, they will become infidels and mockers...

...God ought to rule every man, family, nation...

...One refers to her library in Holyrood Palace, and it was compiled by the Reformers, or rather the Lords of the Congregation, on the Queen's departure to imprisonment in Lochmaben Castle, June, I567...

...The Synodist Russian Church is Orthodox in teaching and progressive in its hier- archical make-up, and anti-monarchical in its civil and ecclesiastical political trend...

...Some half-dozen books are all which are left of the library of Scotland's tragic queen...

...There are three rival internationalisms in the world today: the materialist, communist, Asiatic empire centered in Moscow, and served in every country by skilled propagandists...

...after, unluckily for us, many of her books had been de- stroyed by over-zealous iconoclasts...

...Not that her jailors were remiss in supplying reading matter...

...This has resulted in the patriarchists' choice of an extremely passive, though unyielding, behavior toward the Russian government...

...Mere activity will not do...

...The other inventory deals with the volumes which, in the spring of the previous year, had been shifted up to Edinburgh Castle for the Queen's solace as she abode there for safety during her travail of James VI...

...Among the first may be mentioned Three Re- formers, by Maritain himself, which contains a mag-nificent portrait of Martin Luther...

...266 THE COMMONWEAL January 12, I927 him the direction of a literary collection entitled Le Roseau d'Or, comprising novels, poetry, and critical essays--all orientated toward Catholicism and the spiritual life...

...it con-trols 6o,ooo parish churches and has the allegiance of at least one-quarter (possibly one-third) of the total Russian Orthodox population...

...the universal internationalism centered in idealist, papal Rome, and founded on God...

...He is the Son of God, true Son of God--not only in a figurative mean- ing, but really of the same substance as the Father, as the Nicean definition has it...

...The spell of violence has passed away, but the "scientific" struggle with belief in 268 THE COMMONWEAL January I2, 1927 God goes on...

...It is only a year since the volume appeared, and it has already given the French literary world several excellent books, and at least one master- piece...

...In czarist days, there were only seventy dioceses and not more than a hundred diocesan and auxiliary bishops...

...Its aim has not changed during the past few years, but it is being realized today in a spirit less openly hostile 'to religion than during the unhappy period of 1917-1923 . The Soviet authorities recently told P~re d'Herbigny: We have learned that millions of men--most of the Russian people--are closely bound to their God...

...No novel at the present moment is being so dis-cussed, or commented upon with such passion, as Sous le Soleil de Satan, by Georges Bernanos...

...Hilarion, the fifth Russian metropolitan (lO51-1o72) and his successors, George, John I, John II, Ephraem I, and Nicholas I (lO96-11o6) did not support the schism of Cerularius, but were in union with Rome...

...Among cultured Russians there is not more than a slight attraction to Tolstoism, theosophy, or Catholicism...

...bound closely to Christ, they will learn the feelings of brotherly kindness and broad-minded heed for men of all countries-- sentiments they lack so much...

...At every great street corner, the government has set up books of natural science, history, political economy, sports, physical culture, atheism, blasphemy, fanaticism...

...The separation of 14o,ooo,ooo Byzantine Christians from Catholicism was, and is, due rather to circumstances of worldly political hatred and racial jealousy, than to dogmatic differences...

...Metropolitan Philaret of Mos-cow believes that it is impossible for the Orthodox churches to hold an ecumenical council as long as they remain separated from the West...

...He is Man, a Man of faultless intelligence, moral life and teaching, perfect in His love for the lowly...

...Very human is the interest still attaching itself to this castle list...

...but they seek to kill the spirit of religion, rather than the body...

...RELIGION IN RUSSIA TODAY By LAWRENCE MAYNARD GREY T HE news we get of religious affairs in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, continues to be scant and fragmentary...

...Then, her missal was all the library she had...

...A time was to come when she had to be content with one book--her book of devotions...

...Every Russian school must be atheistic in name and in deed...

...Of the nine or ten rival churches, the most numerous body comprises the fol- lowers of the late Patriarch Tykhon...

...and in August, I925, it decided to take up monthly collections for theological schools in every diocese...

...On October 2o, 1925, a considerable number of LipkitL sky's followers broke away and grouped themselves under Bishop Peter Tarnoffsky, who had been made bishop in 1922 by Theodosius Serguieett of Prioutsk...

...The Synodist Church has begun classes for theological students at Rostoff, Krasnodar, Vologda, Koursk, Orenbourg, and Oufa...

...the materialist, capitalist, American empire centered in London, and founded on the international ring of banks...

...There are many small religious bodies in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics: three or four Red_ hier- archies, the Old Believers, the self-governing Georgian hierarchy, and three separate independent Ukrainian hierarchies...

...We must be able to prove the spirituality of the soul of man, his power to reason, his free will, the existence of God, Who is maker January 12, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 267 of the world and of man, the need of religion...

...It insists, in its poetry, its essays, and most of all, in its novels, upon the depth which religion gives the soul...

...with $allust and Livy in French translations...

...Plena, et Tragica Plane Historia...

...Its greatest thinker and preacher is Alexander Vedensky, the thirty-six-year-old ascetical Metropolitan of Moscow...

...Significantly symbolic of the Vedenskyite Russian Orthodox movement is the fact that a picture of Father John of Kronstadt hangs on the wall of the Russian Orthodox cathedral rectory in New York...

...The Orthodox Church, the former organ of culture in Russia, is today splitting up into a pandemonium of rival sects and bishops...

...First we must know what we ought to teach...

...there- fore, we have decided to stop direct attack on religious inclinations...

...In 1923 , he had been condemned to ten years' imprisonment...

...Details concern-ing Queen Mary's intellectual range are all too few, though we know that she could sharpen the edge of polemics with that very acerb controversialist, John Knox--mighty disputant that he was...

...Of course, the Tykhonite body has lost prestige since this great lead- er's death in 1925...

...They do this through their schools, books, a special publishing firm, a journal called The Atheist, and theatres...

...The priest, the bishop, the layman ought to know Jesus Christ more intimately...