#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, UCADI #162 - The Orthodox question in #Europe (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Recent decisions on EU enlargement put the countries that are currently part of

it facing the "Orthodox question". In a period of time that, according to the
reckless promises made to the Ukrainians, should not be very long, the countries
adhering to the European Community with an Orthodox majority will go from the
current 4 (Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania out of 27 to 7 out of 30 (8 out
of 33, in the case of a further enlargement to Moldova), which would bring the
ratio between countries with an Orthodox majority and the others to about one
third of the members of the Union, with a total population, on paper, of more
than 100 million In fact, the candidate countries are North Macedonia (since
2004), Montenegro (since 2010), Serbia (2012), Albania (2014), Ukraine and
Moldova (both candidates since 2022 ), but while the first 4 candidates have been
carrying out the necessary reforms for some time to adapt to the set of legal
rules and values ​​of the EU, provided for by the Treaties, (aequis comunita)
only the first of them and Albania have concluded positively this path, while the
last two are or distant at a sidereal distance, so much so that only the forcing
due to the Russian aggression against Ukraine enabled them to acquire the
qualification of candidates. Having said that, one wonders what would change in
the equilibrium and in the structures of the Union, and with which
consequences, if all these countries entered the Union in a short time,
especially since the political and social weight of the Orthodox diaspora must be
taken into account, i.e. the migrant communities of citizens from these countries
who for the first time in centuries have given birth to the birth of Orthodox
Churches in the Western States, organically linked to the Churches of the
countries of origin.
There is no doubt that these Churches have conquered an institutional and social
space that acts as a partial rebalancing of the certainly hegemonic role of
Catholicism in most of the countries of the Union and represents a growing
presence also in the area of ​​Protestant countries or countries with a strong
composition. multireligious, to the point of placing a serious mortgage on the
possible review of the relationship between states and confessions in the
political and institutional space of the European Union.
But the organized presence of orthodoxy in the West also affects the heritage of
values, traditions, customs, ethical beliefs that combine to form the community
equis. If only for these reasons it is appropriate to take stock and reflect on
what pan-Orthodox relations are today, and on how these are reflected, operate
and will operate in the Union space, to ask ourselves how these relations will
evolve, since this also depends on the maintenance of religious peace in Europe,
a balanced relationship between confessions and the existence of a delicate
balance between secularism and tendencies towards secularization, within the
framework of satisfying the need for identity self-preservation, in a
relationship of compatibility with the needs of separation and secular states.

The rebirth of "empires"

Among the causes and effects of the war in Ukraine interact with the future
structure of Europe, the size of its territory, the resources it must and can
dispose of, in its economic role in the world balance, its access to markets and
its participation in the international division of labor. All this is
irremediably connected to the internal balance of the Union, the social
composition of its populations, its value baggage, the nature and role of its
institutions.
The Ukrainian war is the litmus test that clearly highlights the ongoing clash on
the chessboard of international policy of redefining borders in a multipolar
world made possible by the defeat of the US in Afghanistan which demonstrated the
inability of the United States to impose the own domain. The trend that seems to
emerge is that of a reconstruction of empires. The BRICS countries (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa), but also Turkey, are claiming an imperial
vocation. Other actors who aspire to this role, but can be defined as regional
powers, are Iran and Saudi Arabia, Israel.
Great Britain plays on this complicated chessboard. despite the miserable
conditions of its economy and the fragility of its political union (the growing
separatist tendencies of Northern Ireland and Scotland are known) it aims to
sabotage the unity of Europe in order to break it up and build its own space
thanks to bilateral alliances and fomenting their internal divisions. (War in
Ukraine: The British Track, Political Growth Newsletter, April 2022, No. 158).

The two Patriarchates

To understand what is happening in Europe today, it is necessary to look at the
strategies of two actors: the Patriarchate of Moscow and that of Constantinople.
The first, headed by Patriarch Kirill, has established a symphonic relationship
with the Russian state and together with it works to ensure hegemony over all the
Russian-speaking populations and constitutes the ideological and value cement of
the Russian-speaking world, carrying out an identity function of the more
traditional values. and backsliders of the Orthodox tradition. An opponent of
gender policies, of the secularization of civil society, of women's rights, of a
society open to a debate on the reasons for living that privileges the quality of
life and self-determination of individuals, he is deployed in defense of a
traditional ethics of values ​​and fills on his own and on behalf of the oligarch
Putin, the void left by the fall of the Soviet system: today it constitutes the
ideological and value foundations of Russian democracy.
To contend with him the political use of orthodoxy is the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, also known as the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the first in the
hierarchy of honor of the Orthodox defined).
These Churches have an important role for countries in which the majority of the
population is Orthodox or of Orthodox tradition, because they create a privileged
relationship with the State, called technically "symphonic" which, by dividing
the spheres of competence with respect to society, turns out to be a formidable
state support. It is for this reason that the states
of Eastern Europe who did not have an autocephalous Church did everything to have
it because this legitimized and strengthened the state. This is the case in North
Macedonia and Ukraine; the Moscow Patriarchate gave Belarus a self-administered
State Church, which instead granted autocephaly to its Church in Moldavia where
an Orthodox Church linked to the Romanian one also operates.
To grant autocephaly, the Ecumenical Patriarchate places precise economic and
power conditions that find a place in the Tomos of recognition of the Church: it
asks for the opening of its representation in the country, the ownership of one
or more churches, some monastery, from which it will collect the economic
proceeds, while the extent of the cash gifts given by the Governments of the
States concerned is not known. But what is more important, the Ecumenical
Patriarchate asks for the transfer to its jurisdiction of the diaspora, that is,
of the faithful emigrated outside the State, and this is because the Ecumenical
Patriarchate which has its seat in Turkey, and therefore does not have its own
people of faithful. Thus the Ecumenical Patriarchate
it drains resources from the Orthodox especially residing in the rich dioceses of
the United States, Canada and Australia, as well as the rest of the world.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate is linked by close relations with the United States,
starting at least from the end of the Second World War, proof of this is that its
Patriarch from 1948, Atenagoras, was naturalized a citizen of the United States
in 1938 where he exercised his ecclesiastical office. . It is in this context
that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has promoted the
birth of an Autocephalous Church in Ukraine, recognizing it, to counter the
presence in the country of an Orthodox Church linked to the Moscow Patriarchate,
thus contributing to the outbreak of the conflict.
Continuing its policy, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has recently recognized the
autocephaly of the Church of North Macedonia (calling it the Church of Ohrid) and
has favored the stabilization of the situation in Montenegro, guaranteeing the
Serbian Church the possession of churches, monasteries and buildings of worship,
no case, another candidate country, run by a pro-Western government. All this
happens - obviously for religious reasons - and the greater glory of Jesus Christ
who, risen, we imagine, cannot hold back a retching.

Europe in the face of orthodoxy

The reasons why all this has consequences on civil society reside in the fact
that the Churches we are talking about are strongly identifying and tied to
traditional and regressive values. They are affected by the fact that they have
worked in closed and illiberal societies, they have a strong link with the State
which they support with their ethical heritage in matters of family, gender
relations, the role of women, quality of life and end-of-life problems,
palliative care , etc. They tend to take the role of assistance to themselves
through structures managed and financed by the state, promote the confessional
school and claim its funding, ask for religious teaching in public schools and
the adaptation of its programs to the values ​​they support .

Therefore, the entry of countries with an Orthodox majority into the Union would
only make possible a "natural" convergence with those fundamentalist Catholic
components subversive of the Community Equis that operate in Poland, promoting a
strongly repressive legislation on the rights of minorities and choices of women
on termination of pregnancy and management of their bodies; Hungary where similar
measures are adopted; Croatia where the Catholic component pushed the
Constitutional Court to promote the protection of the rights of the fetus; of
Slovakia which follows similar policies on family and gender relations. It should
not be forgotten that all the confessions of Ukraine have spoken out against the
Istanbul Convention which combats violence against women and gender-based
violence; that in the country minorities are repressed, that the use of the
Russian language was lost even before the war, that political organizations of
minorities are banned.
This convergence could lead to a political project tending to introduce profound
changes in the set of values ​​shared by the Union in ethically sensitive matters
and as regards political and social freedoms. To avoid this danger, the current
member states of the European Union need to closely monitor
process of accession, deferring and conditioning it, diluting it over the
decades, so as to allow that as the accession process develops, the Community
legal system produces the necessary antibodies to maintain coherence and
organicity with the Union system of values, in accordance with as established in
the Treaties.

G. Cimbalo

http://www.ucadi.org/2022/08/25/la-questione-ortodossa-in-europa/
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