A review of the book ''Heresies of Patriarch Kirill''

The Complete Collection of Heresies

by Lera Furman,

Editor of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta (New Newspaper)

 

 

American Orthodox activists Silouan Wright and Panagiotis Makris have published a book analyzing (and deconstructing) the religious teachings of Patriarch Kirill.

Putin's reign in Russia coincides with the most scandalous patriarchate in Russian history, embodied by Kirill (Gundyaev). Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis to date of his specific teachings and views has become publicly available —a book by Silouan Wright and Panagiotis Makris, "The Heresy of Patriarch Kirill." It is also available in Russian translation.

The hero and the authors

"The Heresy of Patriarch Kirill" is one of those books that would be a thankless task to retell. With astonishing meticulousness, the authors have compiled all available evidence of the incompatibility of Patriarch Kirill's teachings with Orthodoxy and Christianity in general, using the official resources of the Russian Orthodox Church itself. And as a response, they use the Bible, the canons, the sayings of saints, and other authorities on the subject.

Mr. Gundyaev's ideology has been subjected to theological and philosophical criticism before, but perhaps no one has yet taken the trouble to bring all his ideas together and present them as a system of views. And, it must be said, the resulting picture is both compelling and frightening. After reading the book, Patriarch Kirill's admission that we live in apocalyptic times and that he himself is a herald of the Apocalypse becomes more serious.

Kirill lacks any formal education; in 1970, he earned a diploma from the Leningrad Theological Academy almost automatically, thanks to the patronage of his mentor, Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov). However, history decreed that Kirill would become the chief prophet of the religion that plunged Russia into the abyss of militarism, xenophobia, chauvinism, and mass psychosis. While daily calling for an escalation of military conflict with the Orthodox Ukrainian people and the entire "satanic" West, Kirill continues to lead the world's largest Orthodox Church, uniting millions of believers, tens of thousands of clergy and parishes, proclaiming its monopoly on truth, and backed by the full might of the repressive apparatus of Putin's dictatorship.

The book's authors, Silouan Wright and Panagiotis Makris, are not professional theologians, which only enhances the value of their research. Their perspective is sincere and direct, devoid of the professional cynicism of specialists who have experienced the contradictions of Christian history. Wright, 38, comes from an African-American family and lives in a small town in Missouri. He converted to Orthodoxy seven years ago, cherishes Russian saints, and corresponds with Russian political prisoners.

Silouan Wright was the driving force behind the book's creation: he quit his day job for six months to write it, spending 70 hours a week researching the material. His co-author, 32-year-old Panagiotis Makris, was born into a traditional Orthodox family and remains a parishioner of the Greek Church, critical of its leadership's compromising stance. The authors saw their goal as presenting the reader with a contrast between the "patristic consensus"—traditional Orthodoxy—and the new teaching constructed by Kirill to satisfy the Kremlin's demands. "We made absolutely no profit from this; we offer this book as a burnt offering to our God," Silouan and Panagiotis admit.

History of the Heresy

In the first weeks of full-scale military action in Ukraine, on March 13, 2022, more than 500 Orthodox theologians from various countries (including seven from Russia!) signed a declaration criticizing the false teachings used by the Russian Orthodox Church leadership to justify the war. They believed these false teachings stem from a single root: "a totalitarian variety of Orthodox ethnophyletic religious fundamentalism known as the ' Russian World.'" The theologians characterized it as a heresy that replaces "the Kingdom of God, seen by the prophets, proclaimed and revealed to us by Christ, preached by the apostles... with a kingdom of this world," called "Holy Russia."

“We resolutely reject,” the theologians wrote, “all forms of government that deify the state… replacing obedience to the crucified and risen Lord with submission to any leader vested with authority.”

The heresies of the Russian Orthodox Church and Kirill have also been discussed at a higher Orthodox level —for example, by the heads of local Orthodox churches, including the "first in honor" Ecumenical Patriarch (of Constantinople), Bartholomew. Speaking at an international conference in December 2022, he suggested that Putin would not have attacked Ukraine if Kirill had not presented him with a ready-made doctrine of the "holy war of the 'Russian world.'"

One of the most erudite Russian theologians, Deacon Andrei Kuraev, exiled from the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia and accepted into the Patriarchate of Constantinople, has argued for many years that the religious views expounded by Kirill in his sermons are not Christian. They are a mixture of elements of late Soviet occultism (the theory of bioenergetics), atheism, and nationalistic paganism. Gundyaev secured the transfer of valuable icons from the Tretyakov Gallery collection to the Russian Orthodox Church because he believed that such icons accumulated enormous energy, which should be used as a weapon against the enemies of the Russian Federation. Kirill views worship, sacraments, and the church exclusively from a "bioenergetic," magical perspective: "The more people there are, the greater the likelihood that at every moment an energetic spiritual flow emanates from the church." He also perceives icons in an occult, materialistic way: “This ordinary physical substance, wood covered with paint, absorbs this energy and then gives it to people... A real flow of human energy towards God.”

Mr. Gundyaev also magically equates his own person with an icon: when people pray with the patriarch, he asserts, "an energetic message coming from the outside, like the most sensitive radar, picks up the signaling system." He knows of no spiritual life that doesn't fit into material manifestations: "Biochemical processes, as scientists say, the body performs certain functions of spiritual life." Kirill hopes that, in time, scientists will explain to us what prayer and grace are—apparently, the explanations given in the Bible or church tradition are unknown or uninteresting to him. From Kirill's perspective, a nation is also a bioenergetic unity that forms in the energy field of a church: "In holy places, the spiritual power of a people is concentrated. In our churches, people prayed to God, they transmitted their energy to Heaven. There is a certain energy here." Refuting the key Christian dogma of the Trinity, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church taught: “The Holy Spirit is a spiritual energetic force that encompasses the entire universe.”

Kuraev interprets Gundyaev's views as "one of the most enduring pagan beliefs: religion and ritual circulate the same energy... Maintaining order in the world, keeping the 'cosmos' from disintegrating into 'chaos,' requires considerable effort from the pagan gods. The gods' powers, however, are not limitless... The gods, exhausted by the labor of preserving the cosmos from disintegration, must be supported by humans." Kuraev considers another of Kirill's doctrines—on concentrating the energy of meditation in a material object—to be Buddhist and occultist, quoting St. Augustine: "To bind invisible spirits to visible things by some art means to create gods."

Father Andrei admits that, having become patriarch, Kirill tried to appear more respectable, “but the language of Juna, with whom Kirill was friends in the 1970s and 1980s, still ingrained him. And it is impossible to separate language from worldview... No one except Father Kirill preaches in this jargon.” Kuraev recalls an elementary Christian truth: “An icon does not work miracles. None. God works miracles.” The worship of a material substance that accumulates material energy (which Kirill preaches) was anathematized by the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). You don’t have to be a high-brow theologian to see through the “heresy of Kirill.” Ordinary listeners to his sermons quip:

"At the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the Patriarch was guarded by National Guard soldiers with Kalashnikovs at the ready and extra ammunition in a pouch on their belts... The Patriarch talked about an 'invisible energy field,' but he himself remained unconnected to it?"

A popular Orthodox blogger from Vienna, Nun Vassa (Larina), draws attention to Kirill's heresies, directly related to the "SVO": "The Patriarch calls the aggressive war, the shelling and bombing of civilians, a 'Holy War'; he promises those who kill in this war that all their sins will be washed away if they themselves are killed, and he does this publicly... If I had children, I would do everything I could to protect them from contact with anyone or anyone who proclaims such lies from the church pulpit, from a holy place," writes Vassa. "This is 'an abomination of desolation in a holy place' (Matthew 24:15), from which the Lord commanded us to 'flee to the mountains.'" The nun draws attention to the replacement of the dogmas of the Christian faith in the Russian Orthodox Church with pagan imperial-chauvinistic teachings: the Holy Trinity is a prototype of the "trinity" of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples, and the meaning of life is not God, but "Russian tradition, the shrines of Russian civilization, and great Russian culture."

Russian Orthodox Church of the State

Wright and Makris begin their book with the traditional critique leveled at the Moscow Patriarchate by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Orthodox underground in the USSR. Its key point is known as the "heresy of Sergianism," named after the first leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, recreated in 1943 by Stalin's order, Metropolitan (or, according to the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch) Sergius (Stragorodsky). In 1927, Sergius signed a "declaration of loyalty to Soviet power," completely subordinating his administration to the "church department" of the OGPU. In 1930, he gave an interview published in Izvestia, in which he denied religious persecution in the USSR, claimed that churches were being closed at the request of believers, and called his arrested compatriots political criminals. Under wartime conditions, the Stalinist regime reevaluated the functions of the puppet church, particularly in the spheres of foreign policy and propaganda. Sergius's ideology—preserving the remnants of the church organization at the cost of its complete subordination to external (Chekist) control—was not supported by the vast majority of the hierarchs of his time, including the nominal primate, the imprisoned patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky). Nevertheless, Sergius continued his line, proudly declaring, "I am saving the Church." The book cites numerous statements by holy new martyrs, including those canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church itself, who condemned Sergius and his policies.

Sergius' actions became the prototype of modern practices of the Russian Orthodox Church.

During World War II, he issued decrees condemning hierarchs and clergy serving in German-occupied territories. These clergy were repressed. The current Moscow Patriarchate publicly distanced itself from anti-war clergy, after which they were subjected to government repression (as was the case, for example, with Hieromonk John (Kurmoyarov), declared a "schismatic" and imprisoned for "discrediting the Russian Armed Forces").

Patriarch Kirill emphasizes his ideological connection with the Stalinist patriarch, calling him a “confessor” who “worthy walked his way of the cross.”

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church consecrated a monument to Sergius in his birthplace, Arzamas, and called criticism of "Sergianism" by saints martyred by the NKVD "false slanders."

Kirill claimed that Sergius' critics were "in a state of personal security," while they were imprisoned and exiled and ended their lives as martyrs. But this is not the path of today's Russian Orthodox Church.

While Patriarch Tikhon and the All-Russian Local Council anathematized the Soviet regime in early 1918, Sergius and his successors (including Kirill) sacralized it, regardless of its crimes. The book's authors argue that the relevance of "Sergianism" is evidenced by Kirill's many years of service in the KGB under the pseudonym "Mikhailov" (as reported in Swiss media), his veneration of Soviet symbols (primarily the "eternal flame"), his sympathy for totalitarian regimes (for example, Cuba, China, and North Korea), and his unconditional acceptance of the power and authority of Putin, who is never wrong about anything.

For 20 years before his appointment as patriarch (since 1989), Kirill headed the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (DECR MP), created at the suggestion of Lavrenty Beria in 1946. According to many former employees, the department was staffed 100% by KGB agents, primarily from the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence). "The employees of my department were KGB agents, including me," said Father Andrei Rybin, now serving in one of the "alternative" Orthodox churches, at a press conference in Moscow in February 1992. "I was recruited while still a seminarian. It was impossible to find work in this department in any other way" (Orthodox Life, vol. 42, no. 3). The specific nature of the DECR MP is noted in the KGB USSR document of July 28, 1970, “On the use by KGB bodies of the capabilities of the Russian Orthodox Church in counterintelligence activities within the country and abroad.”

In general, the absolute majority of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era were recruited: according to the deputy chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Anatoly Oleynikov, only 15-20% of ordinary clergy managed to avoid cooperation,

But the leading church positions were occupied exclusively by secret service agents (Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Basic Books, 1999, p. 490). This fact was confirmed by a commission of the Supreme Soviet of Russia, headed by Lev Ponomarev and Father Gleb Yakunin, which worked in the KGB archives in early September 1991: thanks to them, the agent nicknames of the current hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, including Patriarch Alexy II (agent "Drozdov"), became known. The late Archbishop Chrysostom (Martishkin), the only hierarch to publicly repent of collaborating with the KGB (agent “Restorator”), described his brother, Metropolitan Methodius (Nemtsov) (agent “Pavel”), who now occupies the Perm diocese, as follows: “A KGB agent, an atheist, a depraved man” (Russkaya Mysl, April 24, 1992).

The Russian Orthodox Church's missions, monasteries, and churches abroad remain important intelligence centers for Russian intelligence agencies, as Novaya Evropa has reported. Wright and Makris cite the example of Priest Pavel Makarenko, rector of a newly built Russian Orthodox church in Västerås, Sweden. In November 2023, he was officially awarded the SVR medal "For Interaction" (No. 4023-PN), which was presented to him by the current head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Anthony (Sevryuk). At the same time, Archimandrite Vassian (Zmeyev) was expelled from Bulgaria "for activities incompatible with the status of a clergyman," and Archpriest Nikolai Lishchenyuk from the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky stated that the Russian Orthodox Church "is part of the Kremlin's repressive apparatus, involved in Russian influence operations."

The fruit of the poisonous tree

The "SVO theology" is the apotheosis of "Sergianism." The Russian Orthodox Church and Kirill personally had long been approaching a theological fusion of the army and the church; all that was missing, in the patriarch's parlance, was a powerful blow sufficient to erase the boundary between them. This blow was the attack on Ukraine, declared a "holy war," opening the way to paradise for all who enlist in the Russian Armed Forces and give their lives for Putin's "denazification." Last year, in a sermon at the "main church of the Russian Armed Forces" in Patriot Park near Moscow, Kirill proclaimed the Russian Orthodox Church and the army "a single, unified organism," pointing to the liturgical commemoration of the "host" at every service. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church theologically bases Russia's military actions on the territory of other states on the doctrine of the "restraining force" (in Greek, "katechon"). Apostle Paul uses this term in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (chapter 2, verses 6–7), warning that our world will not be destroyed as long as "the one who restrains" remains in it. Although the Russian Federation and the Russian people did not exist in Apostle Paul's time, Kirill boldly applies the prophecy about the "restrainer" to them.

The starting point of the patriarch's argument is Putin's statement that there is no need for a world without Russia. "The patriarch's formulations," the book's authors note, "verbatim repeat the president's political manifesto; the source of the doctrine becomes obvious: the Kremlin." The Russian Orthodox Church "has sacralized the state to such an extent that political dissent has become a religious crime. The logical conclusion is the deification of the national leader," who is perceived as a new messiah. Congratulating Putin on his latest "accession to the throne" on May 7, 2024, Kirill, citing his patriarchal charisma, predicted his reign "until the end of the century" in the biblical sense, reducing the formula "There is no need for a world without Russia" to "There will be no world without Putin."

The authors cite a large body of patristic quotations refuting another of Kirill's dogmas, that death in the "SVO" automatically "washes away all sins," that is, makes a deceased prisoner or Wagnerite a saint. The 13th Canon of St. Basil the Great, part of the canon law of the Orthodox Church, imposes a three-year excommunication from communion on those returning from war (note, defensive, not aggressive). According to St. Nicholas of Serbia, "pagans exterminated each other with pride and arrogance, while Christians go into battle with shame." Comparing himself to St. Sergius of Radonezh, Kirill asks in one of his sermons: should the saint have blessed the soldiers for the battle with the Mongol-Tatars on Kulikovo Field? If he should have, then "I bless you all today for your selfless service." But then it was a question of a defensive war against foreign enslavers, and now, as Wright and Makris emphasize, it is about an “aggressive war against Orthodox Christians.”

Remaining in the Russian Orthodox Church is "technically" impossible for an Orthodox Christian who wishes to fulfill the commandments of the Gospel: "The state, acting through the submissive church authorities, demands your participation in prayers blessing the aggressive war against your fellow Orthodox Christians. If you remain silent and participate, you become an accomplice. If you object, you risk being branded a traitor to both the state and the Church"—with all the legal consequences, as Kirill puts it.

The book refutes another "clue" used by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin to "spiritually" justify the "SVO": supposedly, the canonical children of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine are being persecuted and must be protected. "If Russia invaded to supposedly protect the UOC, why did the UOC completely condemn the invasion?" Wright and Macris ask. "Why did they immediately stop commemorating Patriarch Kirill? Why did they declare independence from Moscow on May 27, 2022? Patriarch Kirill's supporters have no quality answers to these questions, other than ad hominem and accusations of 'anti-Russianness,' Russophobia, and Western espionage."

If we accept the logic of the Russian Orthodox Church, then “any Orthodox country could invade any other where the Orthodox are experiencing difficulties,” Orthodoxy would turn into an eternal war of all against all, worse than any jihadism.

Incidentally, the authors cite numerous examples showing that Kirill is close to Islam in a number of ways, including in its radical interpretations.

"He betrayed us."

While Patriarch Kirill's press service was preparing a response to the American Orthodox study, as if to confirm their arguments, a damning voice emerged from within the very church that the Russian Armed Forces allegedly intend to "defend." Evlogy (Gutchenko), Metropolitan of Sumy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which the Moscow Patriarchate considers part of itself), gave an interview about the heresies of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He recalled that the concept of "holy war" does not exist in the Orthodox tradition, since "the Church of Christ has never known or accepted the idea of ​​sacralizing armed violence." In the Sumy Diocese, where active military action continues today, several dozen churches have been destroyed, and Evlogy is perplexed: "Is Patriarch Kirill really so cruel?" He deliberately "sided with our murderers... He believed that Ukraine was his canonical territory. After all, it is his flock that is being killed!" The Sumy Metropolitan sees the reason for this un-Christian choice in the fact that Kirill "is not a clergyman, he is a politician. He betrayed us, he renounced us."

At the very beginning of the "SVO," Patriarch Kirill promised Metropolitan Evlogy punishment "not only in the next century, but also in this one." Now these threats have been renewed by the patriarch's faithful disciple, Kirill Frolov, head of the Association of Orthodox Experts: "The liberation of Sumy is coming soon. So, we'll meet, and he'll receive his punishment according to the canons."

"Can anyone imagine an apostle being a KGB agent? The Holy Spirit does not dwell in those who became apostles on the recommendation of the KGB. The New Martyrs of Russia rejected this institution, which we today call the Church (ROC), and therefore this institution rejected the martyrs," Orthodox publicist Zoya Krakhmalnikova, who served five years in prison for her faith, emphasized in the early 1990s.

Perhaps the word "heresy" sounds too academic and, if you like, neutral to describe what the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church preaches. His views can be analyzed theologically, compared with the teachings of the Bible and the saints, as the authors of the book "The Heresy of Patriarch Kirill" meticulously do. But the living human heart, hearing the characteristic metallic voice of Kirill, calling for endless war, hatred, and bloodshed, reflexively flees from it, as described in the Gospel parable of the Good Shepherd (John 10:5). The religion of the "SVO" is based solely on fear and coercion.

 

English translator unknown.

Russian source: https://novayagazeta.eu/.../05/24/polnoe-sobranie-eresei