For the past few years,
Russia under President Vladimir Putin has been worried about Chinese
demographic and economic pressure pushing into poor and under-populated but
resource-rich Siberia. Thus Russia allegedly supported a balancing action to
extend Russian influence in China. The Chinese northeast had far more people
and was developing much better than Siberia, but it had a weak spot: it was
“spiritually poor,” with no religious belief to hang on to, and some people
were harking back to their old pre-communist faith in Russian Orthodoxy.
Maoism
had erased traditional beliefs and since the fall of Maoism, which had become a
semi-religious creed, with the ultra-materialistic approach to economic growth
and development, China has been a spiritual semi-desert. Most people held
semi-superstitious ideas drawn from Buddhism and Taoism, some were drawn for a
while to new religions like the Falun Gong, and there was an explosion of
half-forgotten faiths, like Christianity in its different stripes and shapes
and Islam.
In this
atmosphere, Russia trained Chinese and Russian missionaries in seminaries and
sent them to northwest China to help the revival of Russian Orthodoxy. Moreover
Putin pressed the Chinese government to get a distinct official recognition for
the Russian Orthodox Church in China. At the moment, the Orthodox Church is
under the umbrella of the Christian Patriotic Association, which covers mostly
Protestants. In China, these associations were established after the Communist
Party took over the country to organize and keep an eye on the main religions
in China. The officially recognized religions are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam,
Catholicism, and “other Christians” all listed under the Office of Religious
Affairs. That is, all of the associations actually cover different schools and
separate religions. For instance, Lamaist and Zen Buddhists are bundled
together in one group (Buddhism); Sufi and Wahhabi Islam, too; Evangelicals and
Mormons are under one umbrella (Christians). Only the Catholics have a coherent
association of their own. In the late 1990s, the Falun Gong, initially
registered as a sport association, insisted on being listed under the Office of
Religious Affairs, separate from the Buddhist or Taoist umbrella, but their
request was denied before the eventual official crackdown in 1999.
If
Chinese home-grown religions are denied new separate associations, for the
Russian Orthodox it is even more difficult, thus Beijing resisted all pressures
from Moscow in this sense. Yet in a significant gesture, Chinese President Xi
Jinping agreed to meet Russian Patriarch Kirill in May 2015.
There are
other implications in this story. If the Russian Orthodox Church is allowed to
have its own association, other tiny minorities following Greek Orthodoxy in
China would fall under its “leadership”. This could have international
implications, as China could confirm an old Russian ambition to have its own
version of Orthodoxy become the leader of all orthodoxies. In recent months,
the Russian Church, comprising about half of the Orthodoxy worldwide, decided
not to take part in the Pan-Orthodox Council in June in Crete. The council was
also advocated for by Catholic Church in Rome. The Russian Church, whose
Patriarch Kirill had met the pope for the first time ever in February in Cuba,
had in principle agreed to the council at an earlier date.
A massive
split runs through the Orthodoxy. One “factions” is making efforts to rebuild
ties with Rome, as proven by the recent ground-breaking agreement on primacy
and synodality some Orthodox churches signed in Rome in late September. Another
part finds some of its national identity in its Orthodox Church. Here the
borders between religion and politics become more blurred. The fight in Ukraine
between Ukrainians and Russians runs also through a religious divide: the
Catholic Ukrainians and the Russian Orthodox Russians. The same is true in
Georgia, a country that feels threatened by Moscow. Georgian Orthodoxy is part
of the national glue against Moscow and its version of Orthodoxy.
Here the
Pope’s efforts to reach out across the wide Christian spectrum de facto
collides with the many different political agendas in which leaders use the
local religion for their specific political goals. Papal appeals to Christians
to overcome theological differences, incomprehensible to most believers, clash
with the reality of political-religions. Religions are being used now, as
always, to cover up for political aims, and this can be legitimate.
Here
there is an objective issue that may trouble Putin. The Pope reaches out to
Protestants, Orthodox of every stripe and color, Muslims, and even to
non-monotheistic Chinese in an objective political effort to put religion at
the service of peace. Yet as we saw with China, religion is an important tool
of Putin’s efforts to balance a growing neighbor. In Russia, without the ideological
bond of communism, Orthodox religion has become an even stronger national tie.
It has become part of its new national identity, and it may be used against
enemies, including the Muslim rebels in Chechnya or the Orthodox Georgians.
Then the papal appeals to unity of Christians and religions can de facto help
to pre-empt the political use of religion for a specific cause.
Moreover,
political leaders who used to think of religion in hard-nosed political terms
may wonder whether the Pope’s political goal for peace is an end to itself or
is an instrument at the service of other, subtler political aims. The Catholic
Church has kept out of the religious wars that some Muslim extremists want to
wage against the rest of Islam and Christianity. But some fanatics among the
Orthodox and radical Evangelicals are eager to wage war on Islam as such. As
the voice of the Pope reaches out to the heart of common Orthodox believers
wishing for peace, so the voice of Orthodox fanatics reaches out to fringes of
the Catholic Church blaming the Pope for giving up Christianity as a cultural
identity.
The new
super soft power of the church comes from a general situation in which America
has not been able to become the total almighty superpower but is still
the only superpower (see http://www.atimes.com/the-kiss-in-havana-pope-francis-rolls-out-his-mission-impossible-on-the-world-stage-sisci/).
But it also has this Pope’s ability to surf over the many conflicting political
agendas of states and parties in the world to reach out for peace.
This, one
might say, was always the Vatican agenda, For centuries, however, Popes were
encumbered in this task by the presence of their Pontiff state. Presently this
effort is different. It is stronger than in the past because it does not
conflict with the state interests of the pontiff state, but it is weaker
because it is not supported by any real state or economic power.
Yet this
new higher profile brings Rome to the centre of the world, as in the time of
the conspiracies of the Renaissance. Are the Catholic conservatives enamored of
Putin also actively supported by Putin? Or are the Russians right that behind
the appointment of the American Greg Burke as spokesman of the Vatican there is
the influence of the US conservatives? Is history repeating itself, almost like
in the Renaissance? When Spain was strong, they had the Borgia pope; when
Florence had clout, they promoted a Medici to the Holy See. But this logic is
faulty, because the logic of the church prevails over the interest of every
single nationality—this is how the church was founded and maintained for
centuries. But growing media attention shows the risk of seeing in the
nationality of each individual at the Vatican a different political agenda.
Here
again the situation is very delicate. As the church is no monolith and the Pope
doesn’t preside over 1.2 billion loyal subjects, many moves by the church are
bound to be pushed and pulled in all directions for political goals by the
single believers and the powers that directly or indirectly influence them.
Unlike in the Renaissance, there is now freedom of speech and the pope wants
more people to join the Catholic Church, not to split it further. That is, the
pope seems to use the difference of opinion even about him to draw more people
to the church rather than being upset about it and cutting people off from the
church.
Furthermore,
hard geopolitics is an old part of the Catholic game and evidence of the new
soft superpower of the church. Of course the Vatican has suffered in the past
many times because of pressures from different superpowers and the company of
Jesus, from which this pope comes, was suppressed in 1773, almost on the eve of
the French Revolution, because of political pressures. Then France was the
major power defending the church at a time when other Catholic states were
declining (Spain and Austria) and non-Catholic states (England, Prussia,
Russia) were growing. France was extremely wary of the power and influence of
the Jesuits and for years pressed for its disbandment. Because of this, the
famously successful mission in China was withdrawn, but perhaps even more
importantly, the Jesuit inroads in non-Catholic Europe were cut short.
By
translating Chinese culture for Europe, the Jesuits reached out to countries
that had broken out from Catholicism after the Protestant Reformation.
Protestant England adopted a civil service model based on the experience of
Chinese Mandarins as reported by the Jesuits; Gottfried Leibnitz, court
philosopher of Prussia, changed modern science and thinking by studying the Yi
Jing, brought again by the Jesuits. That is, the Jesuits used Chinese culture
to bridge the gap in Christianity of the time.
But this
actually encroached on the pivotal role France had acquired for itself in
Europe as protector of the church. The Jesuits with their action were almost
saying, we do not need the protection of one state because our diplomacy can
expand the reach of the Holy See without being hooked to any single state. In
this the Jesuits were reaching back to a time when Rome emerged through
centuries as a centre of faith by constantly refusing the protection of the
Byzantine emperor, who presided over Orthodox faith almost like President Putin
looks over “his” Orthodox Church. Now almost in the same fashion, the pope is
apparently striving to keep out of power politics, navigate over them, and thus
establish a renewed role for the church that pushes for peace not power and in
doing so goes beyond its traditional borders in Europe and America.
Some of
the Catholic believers who oppose the Pope now perhaps fail to see this grand
design and are willingly or unwillingly bending to the legitimate interests of
single states. All of this is legitimate, but it is not the drive of the
Vatican.
Written
with Father Francesco Strazzari
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