Window on Eurasia

Some in Moscow Patriarchate Seek Orthodox-Catholic ‘Alliance’ Against Islam

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 29, 2006 – Despite President Vladimir Putin’s bow to anti-Catholic sentiments among many Russians and repeated repeated
calls by Patriarch Aleksii II for Muslim-Orthodox concord, senior churchmen within the Patriarchate itself are pursuing an Orthodox-Catholic
alliance against Islam, according to a leading Russian historian.

In an essay posted online this week, Yevgeniy Anisimov, a professor at
the European University in St. Petersburg, argues that many Russian
Orthodox churchmen believe that they and their country stand before
what in their view is a critical “strategic” choice
[http://www.islamnews.ru/index.php?name=Articles&file=print&sid=587].

According to Anisimov, these church officials are convinced that their
church must either form “an alliance with Islam against the influence
of the West as a whole or [seek] a union with Western conservative
Catholics against Islam and Western Protestants.”

Those favoring the second option, the St. Petersburg historian says,
are concentrated in the Patriarchate’s powerful External Relations
Department. Under the direction of Metropolitan Kirill, the second
ranking figure in the Russian Church, that group and its
representatives abroad are responsible for relations with other faiths.

With the passing of John Paul II and suggestions by some in the Papal
Council for Promoting Christian Unity that the Vatican would welcome
closer ties, Kirill and his deputies, especially those serving in its
representations in Western Europe, have been pushing hard for an
alliance of Eastern and Western Christianity against Islam.

At a conference in Vienna in May, Archbishop Illarion, who prior to his
appointment to the Austrian see of the Moscow Patriarchate served as
deputy to Metropolitan Kirill, made the most impassioned argument in
recent years for ties between the two branches of Christendom.

“Disturbing processes are taking place in Europe, the cradle of
Western Christianity,” he said. “In many countries of Western
Europe, there is a catastrophic shortage of candidates for the
priesthood … The number of young people who consider themsevles
Christians and who attend Church is falling sharply.”

Indeed, the archbishop continued, “the Christian population is
unceasingly falling, while at the same time, the number of European
Muslims is growing rapidly.” That in turn, he said, is giving rise to
“Islamic fundamentalism” which “represents yet another challenge
for traditional Christianity.”

“The rules of political correctness imposed on the majority of
Europeans,” Ilarionov suggested, “do not permit them to speak about
‘an Islamic threat.’ … Liberal politicians call on Muslims to
integrate in Western society, but many Muslims are not seeking to do
this, and from several of the most militant imams come calls for a
jihad against all Western civilization and the take over of Europe.”

Given this threat, one that Christians have faced before, Ilarion
continued, “both Orthodox and Catholics must today respond to the
following questions: without being a single Church, can be learn to act
as a single structure, as a union of like minded people, as strategic
partners in the face of the outside world?”

Over the last year, Archbishop Ilarion told the meeting in Vienna that
he had proposed creating such “an Orthodox-Catholic alliance.”
Since then, he continued, he had heard many expressions of support for that
idea, although some, he acknowledged, had been put off by “the
militarist or politican connotations” of the world “alliance.”

Consequently, the archbishop said, he was quite prepared to label
cooperative efforts between Orthodoxy and Catholicism not a formal
“alliance” but rather, at least for the time being, ”an
Orthodox-Catholic committee on cooperation in Europe or a Consultative
Council.”

Some in the Patriarchate are concerned about this thrust, Anisimov
said. They see it as a break with the political course of Putin and possibly
threatening not only the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church, many of
whose prelates are openly anti-Catholic, but also that of the Russian
Federation as such, by ushering in a new “time of troubles.”

But these efforts at rapprochement between Russian Orthodoxy and
conservative Catholicism may help to explain both why Benedict made his
ill-fated citation to the comments of a Byzantine leader about Islam as
a threat and why so many Muslims in the Russian Federation have been
particularly concerned about the Pope’s words.

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