Re: Priests as freedom fighters

On Mar 2, 2025, Steve Hayes wrote
(Message-ID:<[email protected]>):

> For months, Serbian citizens have been protesting against the
> repressive regime of Aleksandar Vucic and the entire corrupt,
> clientelist system developed or escalated under his rule. The protests
> were initiated by the students of Serbian Universities, but they have
> since evolved into a nationwide popular movement that refuses to align
> with any of the established political parties —for good reason.
>
> The Serbian Orthodox Church, the largest religious community in the
> country, has been divided over these protests from the very beginning.
> While the overwhelming majority of its bishops have chosen to remain
> silent, there have been isolated voices within the episcopate both for
> and against the protests. Students of the Faculty of Theology in
> Belgrade have joined the protests, and individual theologians have
> expressed their support as well. Patriarch Porfirije, the head of the
> Church, has remained ambiguous. He has avoided openly supporting the
> protests, under the pretext that the Church needs to remain above
> societal divisions. However, through internal and informal channels of
> communication, one gets an impression that he supports the students,
> even if he may be too weak to publicly oppose the regime.
>
> One of the few clerics who have openly spoken against the protests is
> Bishop David of Kruševac, a city in central Serbia. In a text dated
> February 9, 2025, using mostly complicated (and empty) phraseology and
> quasi-theological arguments, he linked the protests and “neo-Orthodox”
> theologians, accusing them of promoting “a different Orthodoxy” that
> distorts and corrupts tradition. Before him, Irinej, Bishop of Novi
> Sad (northern Serbia), criticized what he called the “Orthodox
> Trilateral” — an alliance of (unnamed but hinted-at) theological
> institutions from the US and Europe — as a “neo-Orthodox theological
> international” (and nothing good was meant by this).
>
> Despite these and other pressures, the priests of the Kruševac
> Cathedral demonstrated both initiative and courage, both freedom and
> their Christian and human dignity. On February 27, they stepped out of
> the church and, in front of the cathedral, greeted the protesters as
> they marched through the streets of Kruševac. They gave them their
> blessings and arranged for food and drinks to be placed along the
> sidewalks for all participants.
>
> To fully appreciate this act, one must understand how church
> structures function in countries where Orthodoxy has been the dominant
> and traditional faith. The Orthodox Church is organized as an
> “episcopocentric” institution, meaning that local bishops wield
> enormous power over priests in their diocese, with little to no
> external oversight except in extreme cases. In other words, priests
> are often at the mercy of their local bishop: if the bishop is a
> reasonable and good person, priests are in a solid position, but if
> the bishop is authoritarian, egotistical, or even psychotic,
> effectively only God can help them. There are, although very few,
> extraordinary bishops, who are competent, dedicated to the Church, but
> also kind-hearted and hard-working people. These dioceses are known
> among the priests and the laity as “paradise on earth.”
>
> The decision of the priests to support the protesters comes against
> such backdrop. They organized spontaneously, they say “naturally”,
> with initially only a few of them, later joined by others. Although
> they would probably object to the term “self-management” or
> “anarcho-syndicalist” (given that these terms come primarily from the
> political vocabulary, and are mostly linked to atheistic and even
> anti-religious contexts), their spontaneous organization, at their own
> initiative, and against the backdrop of authoritarian ecclesiastical
> context, resembles the self-managerial, or anarcho-syndicalist
> organization (that the students themselves have implemented in their
> own organization from the beginning of the protests).
>
> This anarcho-syndicalist mode of organization is not a novelty in the
> Balkans. One should keep in mind the tradition of Yugoslav socialist
> self-management, but also the even earlier tradition of traditional
> Serbian village cooperatives.
>
> In the context of the Orthodox Church, there are historical reports of
> anarcho-syndicalist organization of monks and priests in Russia, in
> the aftermath of the February Revolution (1917), as a means of
> reclaiming freedom from authoritarian church structures.
> The decision of these priests to express their position—both as
> Orthodox Christians and as citizens—in the situation when the
> political views of their bishop, and his arrogant rhetoric, were
> clearly expressed and known, is a brave act, a demonstration of
> freedom, and a commitment to justice and basic human dignity. This act
> can serve as an example for other priests to stand up in the name of
> human freedom and dignity, to reject repression, hypocrisy and
> corruption, and to challenge, non-violently, the despotic rule of both
> the local political leaders and individual bishops. Practicing such
> Orthodox Christian “anarchism” not only affirms their status as free
> citizens but also upholds their identity as Orthodox Christians—people
> of dignity, committed to freedom, justice, and, above all – love.
>
> Source:
> <https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/priests-as-freedom-fighters/>

Wouldn’t it be wiser to focus on freedom from sin?