Numerous polls show that the church is the most trusted social institution these days. This is explained primarily by the fact that people hold the religious moral dictates in great esteem. There are other reasons. Andriy Yurash, Ph.D. in political science, of Lviv, correctly notes that believers and agnostics blame everything and everybody for their current hardships except the church. In other words, the church appears to be the only thing these people can trust.
The prestige and numerical strength of the Orthodox Church make it an influential political force. This has led numerous politicians to seek alliances with the clergy, entering clergymen on their party rosters, setting up Christian parties, becoming active parishioners (contrary to their inculcated atheistic persuasions). On the other hand, during election campaigns quite a few clergymen have not hesitated to abuse the authority of the church, campaigning in their congregations for the benefit of candidates who promised to support the church in one way or another. Regrettably, such is the current earthly role of an institution supposed to have a somewhat higher calling.
And there is one more interesting, albeit disheartening, social phenomenon relating to the church and ruthlessly exposed by statistics. Alongside the high degree of overall confidence in the church, there is a markedly low degree of confidence in clergymen at all levels; a mere 1- 4% of adherents trust their archimandrites and bishops (the turnout strongly reminds one of our recent sacral confidence in communist ideas, invariably combined with complete distrust of Party functionaries). The low esteem in which the Orthodox clergy is held has been further evidenced by numerous letters received by The Day. Quite a few readers refer the current clergy to the “new Ukrainians” with expensive limousines, mobile phones, active involvement in business, shady partners, and plush dachas — and all this right before the very eyes of theirs impoverished flock. Anyone can see that this is really so by simply visiting several parishes and taking a look at the pastors’ mansions. How can such a lifestyle correspond to the role attributed by Orthodoxy to Christian virtues, including indifference to, even contempt for worldly riches, while upholding such traditions as fasting, asceticism, and schema [strictest monastic rule in Orthodox Church]?
In fact, readers send letters describing even worse things. Of course, we realize that many complaints and accusations stem from the interdenominational friction dividing this society into several hostile camps. Yet this animosity also makes believers especially watchful; they watch each other and never let the “enemy” out of sight. As a result, there can be nothing secret in Orthodox life that will not media. It is only because the judiciary shows such respect for the church (perhaps undeservedly so) that the amount of wrongdoing by clergymen is by far larger than that of criminal cases. And from the letters it is obvious that clergymen are guilty of all conceivable transgressions, including incitement to acts of violence against “hostile” religious communities, no respect for other peoples’ property, appropriation of parish funds, participation in election campaigns, dirty politics, negligence toward their flock, discrimination against parishioners, depending on their property status, indifference to the poor, humiliation of monks, simony, nepotism, and other sins that defy description, thing like those that might perhaps be found in chronicles on Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borja, so brilliantly described along with his illegitimate offspring by Machiavelli — Ed.).
The Editors do not have adequate means to verify such accusations, especially in terms of clergymen’s private lifestyle, and this is not the point. The point is that the prestige of the Orthodox Church is at stake, the church which so many consider perhaps the only bulwark of the Ukraine people’s ideals, spirituality, and morality. Also, the importance of combining sometimes the lofty notion of spirituality with certain supposedly spiritual people. Finally, the point in question is the silence of the religious leadership and its noticeable concern over keeping its dirty linen from being washed in public. How can one otherwise explain, for example, the fact that the Pechersk Lavra Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv, this most sacred relic of Ukraine, is currently headed by a bishop subject to more gossip and rumors than a rock and roll idol? Even if all such rumors were engineered by his numerous enemies, I think the church should replace a clergyman occupying such a high post, precisely because the very presence of such gossip is discrediting. The ancient Romans insisted that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, and with reason.
