So the Pope met with Putin. And the media (corporate and free) is full of all sorts of opinions, analyses, interpretations, etc. Frankly, I have no interest in commenting either on the visit (though I have an opinion about it, of course) or, even less, on the mostly sophomoric and ill-informed about it. What I propose to do is to expose you to a dramatically different point of you to the one you are typically exposed to. So let’s go on that trip into the “far elsewhere”:
Today’s so-called “Christian world” includes several “branches” or “denominations” of Christianity who differ from each other in dogma, rite, traditions, culture, history etc. Contrary to what a lot of people like to declare, these differences are far from trivial, especially the dogmatic ones. In fact, they are huge. To the point that the that the only politically correct meaning of the word “Christian” is “anybody who claims to believe in Christ, whatever that means“. Kinda vague, no?
That ambiguity or opacity is quite deliberate. The ideology en vogue now demands that we all nod our heads in agreement when we here the cliché about “irrelevant and obscure points of fine theology”. Fine. Though I totally disagree with that, I won’t argue about this today (maybe some other day). Today I want to look into something different: the collective/corporate memory of some, but not all, Orthodox Churches.
Most modern Christian Churches have a very short collective memory, a century or so, max. Even the Latin Christians who claim to be “The Church” usually have no idea about Vatican I, nevermind the Middle-Ages or Antiquity. Most Orthodox Christians, who also claim to be “The Church”, don’t fare much better. Most Russians will have some pretty good notions about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, most Greeks about Greek Orthodoxy, most Serbs about Serbian saints, etc. In fact, the sad reality is that most so-called “Orthodox” Churches are no less cut-off from the roots of Christianity than their Protestant or Latin counterparts. To make things worse, most “mainstream” or “official” Orthodox Churches participate in the so-called “Ecumenical dialog of love” with the other Christians, and sometimes even non-Christian, denominations/religions out there. As a result, if you just walk or drive to the nearest putatively “Orthodox” church nearby you are most likely to find a parish very similar to any Latin or Protestant parish, with a “Father Bob” in charge, and maybe some exotic singing or rituals, but very little difference in ethos. The folks attending that church will be just like their non-Orthodox counterparts: trying to live by Christians ethics, generally respectful of what they think are “Orthodox traditions” (which in some case are less than a century old!) and often very focused on their national/ethnic identity. One term to describe this kind of “Orthodoxy” is “world Orthodoxy”. This designation fits not only because this kind of “Orthodoxy is very worldly”, but also because it is accepted, endorsed and even protected by secular world powers which have correctly identified that this kind of “Orthodoxy” presents no threat to their rule.
But there is another Orthodoxy still out there. Much smaller, much poorer, recognized by nobody (at least in this world), completely marginalized and often ostracized. I call it “Traditional Orthodoxy” or “Patristic Orthodoxy”.
This is the Orthodoxy whose cultural and historical roots go directly into the first centuries, whose idea of what is Christian and what is not, is the same one as the one of the Church Fathers of the first 10 centuries of Christian history and whose daily life (the ortho-praxis) tries as hard a possible to emulate the one of the early Christians. There are numerous differences between this “Traditional Orthodoxy” and “World Orthodoxy” of “Father Bob”, and I won’t go into them right now. But one such difference is the collective/corporate memory of these ancient Christians. Today I want to share with you one such aspect: the understanding and interpretation of the so-called “Schism of 1054” by traditional Orthodox Christians.
Since the Pope and Putin have met, there will be a lot of (totally vapid) discussion of the Schism, of how to “reconcile” “East and West” and all that kind of nonsense. So I think that it is important for you, my readers, to know why this is all rubbish and how genuine Orthodox Christians view this topic.
First, I want to share with you a video produced by the Greek Orthodox Christian Youtube Channel, a channel organized by members of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians in America, which is a part of the Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece. This Church is one of the four traditionalist Orthodox Churches who united most, but not all, traditionalist Orthodox Christians worldwide (the other three are the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Romania, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria).
This is a series of nine short videos entitled “Franks and Romans“. To make the viewing easier, I have collated all these short videos into one which I am now posting below.
The panel discussion, lead by Father Christodulos, centers on the book “Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine” by Fr. John Romanides. I have made this book – along with another of this books, “Introduction to Romanity, Romania, Roumeli” – available for download here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NvJMqDM9JKRNibJ1xd6yDyEDwKqnaozP
This is one zipped file which contains both of these books by Father John in three formats: PDF, DOCX, ODT and FB2 along with several videos on the topic of “sickness of religion”.
Here is the video itself:
You might think that reading a book (or two) and watching a 80min long video is too much work, but that this really the minimum to give you even a first indication of how different the worldview and collective memory of “Traditional Orthodox Christians” is from the mainstream “Christianity” you see everyday, including from the representatives of “World Orthodoxy”. In fact, if you go to your local “official” parish Orthodox parish and ask “Father Bob” what he thinks of the views presented here, he will either denounce them as “zealotry” or, most likely, he will tell you that never have heard of them. And yet, things are not quite as simple.
Above I said that Traditional Orthodoxy forms a small subset of the much bigger Orthodox world out there. This is true, and it is also not true. The reality is that inside the “official” Orthodox Churches you will find a lot of people who are spiritually much closer to their traditionalist brothers than to their modernist clergy. Not only that, but even inside the clergy of the “official” Orthodox Churches you will sometimes encounter clergymen who have remained personally very close to ancient Orthodoxy. The best example is Father John Romanides who not only was part of the (very “wordily”) Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the (“official”) Church of Greece. He was even a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. Hardly the typical bio of a traditionalist, to say the least!
The reality is that the border between “world” and “traditional” Orthodoxy can be very porous and that while the “visible” traditionalists are a small minority in the Orthodox world, there are a lot of traditionalists inside the “official” Orthodox Churches too. Not only that, but the presence of a highly educated and motivated traditionalist minority forces the (often modernist) majority clergymen to “look over their shoulder” and be very careful of what they say or do lest they be accused of apostasy.
Which brings me (finally!) to Putin and the Pope.
Putin and the Pope can meet as much as they want, and the Pope can also meet with Patriarch Kirill, the current head of the “official” Russian Orthodox Church. This is nothing new, similar meetings have happened many times in the past, and not only with Russians, but also with Greek and other Orthodox bishops and Patriarchs. In 1993 some Latin and Orthodox clergymen signed what can only be considered a “union”, the so-called “Balamand Declaration“. Heck, in the 15th century, Latin or Orthodox bishops even signed an official union between the two Churches, this was the so-called “False Union of Florence“. Only one Orthodox delegate, Saint Mark of Ephesus, refused to sign. And yet even this project rapidly collapsed. Why?
Because the reality is that in matters of faith, Orthodox bishops do not have the exclusive responsibility of maintaining the “which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian” (St. Athanasius). This is the personal responsibility of each Orthodox Christian, including laypeople, women and even children! To use an image borrowed from Iran, each Orthodox Christian is a “guardian of the faith”. And on many occasions in the history of the Church it was a small minority, or even one single person (like Saint Mark of Ephesus or Saint Maximos the Confessor) who upheld the truth.
Sure, there will be apostate and lapsed bishop (the history of the Church if full of them), and the big leaders will be corrupted and bought. From that point of view, the situation in Orthodoxy is very similar to the one in Islam, where a lot of so-called “leaders” are corrupt and have been long paid for, but where the masses, the flock, remains incorruptible even when the “elites” are. So it is possible that most (or even all) of the “official” Orthodox Churches will one day sign some kind of “surrender” document in which they will basically trade their Roman heritage for a neo-Frankish one, but even that is rather unlikely. Usually, as soon as the modernists try to pull off some ugly deed behind the back (or over the head – pick your metaphor) of their flock, it ends up with a revolt of the “base” against the rulers, which is exactly what happened in 1923 when some Orthodox Churches decided to switch to the Papal Calendar (aka “Gregorian Calendar”). I very much doubt that the current “official” Russian Orthodox Church (the “Moscow Patriarchate”) would accept any kind of union with Rome, but if that happens I can absolutely guarantee that a huge backlash from many, and even maybe most, of the bishops, priests and laymen. So it is really simple: since the people will never accept a union with Rome what their “leaders” do matters very little. And if the Russians don’t go there, then it is most unlikely that he others will dare to go at it alone.
In the case of Putin, I have no doubt that his meeting with the Pope has nothing to do with any plans for a “union”, but since that “union” is discussed every time a senior Russian politician or clergymen meets the Pope, I figured I might as well explain here why it ain’t happening.
If you take the time to watch the video above or, better, read Romanides’ books, you will immediately see why all this empty talk about “reconciliation” is not only devoid of any substance, as it totally misses the point of what really separates today’s East and West and which was yesterday’s North and South:
The “West”, the so-called “Western civilization” has absolutely nothing to do, no connection whatsoever with ancient Rome or, even less so, ancient Greece. “Our” modern civilization does in no way originate in ancient Greece. Modern Europe, the “West” is a product of the Frankish civilization and modern Western Europe it was built on the ruins and blood of the Roman civilization. It took the Franks centuries to fully root-out the (Orthodox) Roman civilizations of southern Europe and to substitute themselves as the “new Romans”. In contrast, Russia is still today the direct heir to the Roman civilization and while Orthodoxy is weak in Russia, especially traditional Orthodoxy, it is already powerful enough to make any attempts at submitting Russia to the neo-Frankish world absolutely futile. So all these Latin dreams about “dedicating Russian to the Virgin Mary” and all the other ways to subjugating Russia to the Pope (which is, of course, the real objective here) have absolutely zero chance to succeed, at least long as a sufficient part of the Russian Orthodox people (not just clergy!) keep their traditional “collective/corporate” memory about the true history of the Church of Christ and the roots of Russian Orthodoxy.
In conclusion, I want to tell you that I have no intention of entering into any polemics with those who will be outraged by what I wrote above. I realize that what I wrote is in direct contradiction with what most of us have been told since our childhood. That is why I said that today I wanted to take you to a trip into the “far elsewhere”. That “far elsewhere” is, quite literally, “not of this world” and this is why Saint Paul wrote that “worldly wisdom is foolishness to God“. My sole purpose it to share with you what was handed down to me because I strongly believe that it is highly relevant for a true understanding of modern Russia. While I am offering to share with you a point of view admittedly very different from the one of the mainstream, I am not trying to make converts or sell anything. I want to give you the tools which I believe are crucial to the understanding why this constant talk about some kind of “reconciliation” is nonsensical, but if you prefer the mainstream version, by all means – ignore every word I wrote about. I hope that for the rest of you this post will be helpful.
Kind regards,
The Saker
UPDATE: I took a look at some of the comments this post has elicited and I have decided to introduce a merciless trashing of ignorant and stupid comments. I don’t know how much the mods will send to trash, but I want to you know that this time around I will do some of the garbage collection myself :-P
Seems that the file is gone…
” I have made this book – along with another of this books, “Introduction to Romanity, Romania, Roumeli” – available for download here:
http://www.megafileupload.com/25Gc/Romanides.zip”
Thank God for the Staker! Nobody more than I wants a union between these 2 churches, since I am the only Orthodox Christian in a family of cradle Roman Catholics. However, it cannot be. I remember as a young Roman Catholic boy hearing something about how there were bishops who were generals, but it was never really discussed in details.
The Franks and Romans video that the Staker posted had a profound effect on me (I had repeatedly watched it before reading this blog). There is one more episode on this topic. I think it is called by a different title, “Is Orthodoxy a Religion?” I would like to see the Staker post that video as an update.
Thane
as italian, I am disgusted by these bunch of bullshits, since the recent genetic studies have shown that bones in roman graves found in Italy, present the same genetical clusters of modern italians and frenches… mostly haplogroups R1b cluster U 152 also called S 28 ( like my father has, stating by his DNA test )
you can check by yourself maing a fast research in internet, R1b U 152/S 28 is called by modern geneticists ‘ roman cluster’, and it is very common in Southern Europe
Franks, is a word for ‘ Franci’,in latin ‘ delivered slaves’, ‘freed slaves’ and they were mostly celtic or germanic… the rest- that there is no old Roman people or old Roman civilization, is full bullshit… plus, romans WERE and ARE latins ( faliscan italics)… you write in latin letters, dude, and in Japan latin letters are called ‘ Romaji’, or ‘ alphabeth of Rome’.
I haven’t read the book, but find it hard to believe that france’s culture became latin after Frank’s conquests, being previously predominantly greek. This doesn’t make sense at all to me. The franks conquered bits by bits Gaul which was gallo-roman culture, where latin was the norm. As far as I know from Gregoire de Tour’s book (history of franks), the greek influence was nil in France at that time (before and around Clovis).
Is the zip file containing the books still available anywhere?
I understand that VV Putin, upon meeting the Pope, said that he, the Pope, was “not a Christian”.
Just about says it all, really.
Thank you for elucidating the “doctrine of the third Rome.”
Thank you for the book of Romanides. I am italian filled with the vatican teacher. I want to know for sure who use the vatican as a big show. Perhaps such books will give some indication. You are right all western live in a big fantasy and they also believe in it. Their time is approaching very fast. A great hello from one who live on the landscape where the spiritual babylonia breath…..
Heavy homework for the weekend!!
The Pope also met Jimmy Savile and Epstein.
I have found out that there is a traditionalist orthodox church here in Stockholm and I will go there for sermon this sunday. I see It as a home coming. Sweden was orthodox until the scism 1054. Our king Olof Skötkonung did a lot to convert the Swedes to orthodoxy and his doughter become a saint by the name Saint Anna of Novgorod. I would like to thank the Saker for the texts about christianity. They have been verry helpful.
Thank you.
Catholic “Crusades” to the East (Drang nach Osten), or Violence “in the name of God” /
The diabolical role of the Roman Catholic Church in the history of mankind
The history of the Roman Catholic Church is inextricably linked not only with the Inquisition, the “Witch Hunt”, but also with the so-called “Crusades” – world military aggression and the annexation of resources, accompanied by racism, genocide, slave trade … sodomy.
The real reason for the Cross Passages was the desire of the Vatican, secular and spiritual feudal lords to increase their wealth by seizing lands and property, peoples (slaves).
In 1095, Pope Urban II blessed and began to equip the first ever “crusade” to the East – Drang nach Osten. It took place the very next year after the call.
The first “Crusade” of the earthly God of Catholicism was followed by others. The penultimate, eighth, ended in 1270. The last one was in 1945.
First Crusade to the Middle East (1096-1099)
Crusade to the East against the northern Slavs (1147-1160)
Second Crusade to the Middle East (1147-1149)
Third Crusade to the Middle East (1189-1192)
Livonian crusade against Russia (1193-1230)
Fourth Crusade to the Middle East (1202-1204)
Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229)
Children’s Crusade to the Middle East (1212)
Fifth Crusade to the Middle East (1217-1221)
Danish crusade against Russia (1219-1220)
Sixth Crusade to the Middle East (1228-1229)
Crusade to Russia (1232-1240)
Livonian campaign against Russia (1240-1242)
Second Swedish crusade against Russia (1240-1250)
Seventh Crusade to the Middle East (1248-1254)
First campaign of shepherds (1251)
Crusade against the Horde against the Tatar-Mongol horde (1253-1261)
Declared in 1253 by Pope Innocent IV, did not take place. Because the Russian “pagans” refused to accept Catholicism and fight the Horde alone. Knowing full well that after their death, the Vatican will take everything. Ancient Russia fought alone with the Horde for two centuries.
Eighth Crusade to the Middle East (1270)
Ninth Crusade to the Middle East (1271-1272)
Second Campaign of the Shepherds (1320)
Crusade to the Middle East – to Smyrna (1343-1348)
Crusade to Africa (1390-1391)
Crusades to the East – to Bohemia (Czech Republic) (1420-1434)
Crusade against Varna (1443-1444)
In 1439, the Vatican concluded the Union of Florence, objectively beneficial to the papal curia, since it placed the Eastern Orthodox Church (Second Rome – Byzantium) in a subordinate position in relation to the Western Catholic sect.
The successor of Byzantium was the Russian state, which proclaimed itself the successor of Byzantium as the Third Rome (in spiritual terms), where in 1589 an independent Moscow Patriarchate was formed.
The last crusade to the East Drang nach Osten for Lebensraum took place in 1931-1945. And it ended with the crushing defeat of the “Russians” of the USSR by the crusaders – “the national fascists of Europe
PS Drang nach Osten
The Roman Catholic Church supported and blessed the New “Crusade” to the East – Drang nach Osten under the command of Inquisitor Adolf Hitler. Moreover, the hierarchs of the Protestant churches reacted to the coming to power of the Nazis much more enthusiastically than the Catholics.
The Vatican consecrated Nazism.
Hitler was a religious Catholic.
The Catholic Church chose the path of cooperation with Nazism. The first diplomatic agreement was concluded in 1933, immediately after the Nazis came to power. [In exchange for absolute control over the education of Catholic children in Germany, an end to the propaganda against pedophilia that took place in Catholic schools and orphanages, the Vatican instructed the Catholic parties to dissolve themselves and ordered the Catholics to refrain from any political activity. Hitler announced that these agreements “will play a key role in the struggle against international Jewry.”]
Thus, the Vatican recruited Hitler 23 million Catholics living in the Third Reich. From that moment on, the records of Catholic churches were used by the Nazis to determine the racial purity of people according to the Nuremberg racial laws.
Following the Vatican, the German Protestant churches also made an alliance with Hitler. But it must be admitted that the Protestant hierarchy never officially ordered that Hitler’s birthday be celebrated in churches, as the Catholics did.
With the advent of the pro-Nazi Pope Pius Twelve (Eugenio Patselli) in 1939, the Vatican finally became a fanatical supporter of Hitlerism.
Crosses, crosses, crosses… Wehrmacht of the Third Reich.
«Человеческие зверинцы» в католической Европе существовали вплоть до Второй мировой войны католика Гитлера.
Последнего африканца выпустили из клетки зоопарка в Европе лишь в 1936 году. До этого “белые люди” охотно ходили смотреть на черных, красных, желтых в неволе.
Первых негров и индейцев в Европу стали завозить в эпоху колониальных открытий, в XVI веке.
Западные европейцы никогда не считали коренных жителей (аборигенов) Африки, Америки, Азии, Австралии … за полноценных людей. Они были «язычники», «недочеловеки без души», как определил им их земной бог Папа римский.
Отсюда и такое отношение колонизаторов к жителям европейских колоний: массовый геноцид, превращение в рабов («говорящих орудий»). Маниакально жестоко относились к коренному населению колоний представители различных протестантских церквей (англичане, голландцы и т. д.).
Примерно в 1880-е годы в Европе повсеместно появляются зоопарки. Их стали заполнять экзотическими животными из колоний и… неграми, которых тогдашняя евгеника тоже причисляла к представителям простейшей фауны.
«Человеческие зоопарки» были нужны не только для забавы. Школы водили учеников в зоопарки, чтобы показать, чем одна раса отличается от другой, показать их различия. Там работали ученые: ставили эксперименты, наблюдали. Лингвисты и этнографы пополняли свои знания. Так, пигмеев во время их пребывания в Америке исследовали учёные, сравнивавшие «варварские расы» с интеллектуально отсталыми европейцами по тестам на умственное развитие, по реакции на боль и тому подобное. Антропометристы и психометристы пришли к заключению, что по тестам на интеллект пигмеев можно сравнить с «умственно отсталыми людьми, которые затрачивают на тест огромное количество времени и допускают множество глупых ошибок». Многие дарвинисты отнесли уровень развития пигмеев «непосредственно к периоду палеолита».
Так что напрасно Адольфа Гитлера считают главным пропагандистом расизма в Западной Европе. Немецкие идеологи расизма основывались на трудах целых поколений европейских и американских ученых о социал-дарвинизме, евгенике и расизме.
А Британская империя фактически создала кастовую, расовую империю и именно она была для Гитлера главным примером.
Схожая система существовала и в США. До 1940 года лишь 5% негров юга США имели право голоса. На флоте цветных брали только в обслуживающий персонал. Во время Второй мировой войны Генеральное управление ВМС США представило Рузвельту доклад, в котором прямым текстом говорилось, что белый человек никогда не допустит того, чтобы им командовал цветной. В докладе американских ВМС говорилось: «Белые — представители высшей расы, поэтому никогда не будут относиться к цветным как к равным».
Формально сегрегацию в США поставили вне закона в 1964 году. Но до 1967 года на юге были запрещены межрасовые браки.
В зоопарках тех времён кроме негров содержались представители других примитивных народов — полинезийцы и канадские инуиты, коренные жители Суринама (знаменитая выставка в голландском Амстердаме в 1883 году), индейцы Патагонии (в Дрездене). В Германии были популярны также вольеры с жителями островов Самоа. А Восточной Пруссии и в 1920-е в неволе в «этнографической деревне» содержались жители Прибалтики, которые должны были изображать «древних пруссов» и исполнять их ритуалы перед зрителями. Из других европейских жителей в зверинцах выставляли саамы-лопари (финно-угорский коренной народ Северной Европы).
Таким образом, предки современных европейских либералов и сторонников мультикультурного мира охотно зарабатывали деньги, демонстрируя «представителей простейшей фауны».
Так, последний негр исчез из европейского зоопарка только в 1935 году в Базеле и в 1936 году в Турине. Однако последняя «временная экспозиция» с неграми была в 1958 году в Брюсселе на выставке Экспо, где бельгийцы представили «конголезскую деревню вместе с жителями». Бельгийцы были в ту эпоху одними из самых жестоких колонизаторов. В Конго, главной колонии Бельгии, условия труда на каучуковых плантациях были настолько адские, что население страны сократилось вдвое.
К началу ХХ века негры содержались в зоопарках Базеля и Берлина, Антверпена, Лондона, Варшавы …. В 1907 году в Париже состоялась грандиозная выставка достижений колониального хозяйства. В качестве экспонатов были привезены и помещены в зоопарк негры. Французские власти выставили до 300 цветных.
Негров держали и в зоопарках Соединенных Штатов. Правда, с учётом того, что негры не были для США «экзотикой», в неволю помещали пигмеев, которых американские учёные считали полуобезьянами, стоящими на более низкой ступени развития, чем «обычные» чёрные. При этом это явление оправдывалось дарвинизмом. К примеру, американские учёные Брэнфорд и Блюм писали тогда: «Естественный отбор, если не чинить ему препятствий, завершил бы процесс вымирания. Считалось, что если бы не институт рабства, поддерживавший и оберегавший чернокожих, им пришлось бы конкурировать с белыми в борьбе за выживание. Большая приспособленность белых в этом состязании была несомненной. Исчезновение чернокожих как расы стало бы лишь вопросом времени».
«Человеческие зверинцы» в Западной Европы и США исчезли из-за экономического кризиса конца 1920-х — начала 1930-х гг..
Наиболее долго «Человеческие зверинцы» просуществовали в Швейцарии.
Catholicism – Nazism – Colonialism – Globalism
Existential opposition of antagonists – Orthodox Russia and the Catholic West
Excerpts from part 5 “Middle Ages”
Abstract: The role of the Catholic sect of Christianity in the process of colonial conquests, robbery, genocide of natives, the slave trade for the prosperity of Catholic Europe in the period from the 15th to the beginning of the 21st centuries.
Key words: Catholicism, colonialism, genocide, racism, social Darwinism, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, Inquisition, religious missions, papacy, social doctrine of the Catholic Church, development… Euro-Catholic national fascism.
The history of Catholic Europe consists of bloody inhuman violence and inhuman cruelty. Among them are colonial, political, economic and spiritual seizures, robberies and oppression of the countries of America, Asia and Africa.
Medieval Catholic Europe sent military forces for foreign wealth, and Christian missionaries sanctified forced conversion to Christianity, obvious robbery, enslavement and extermination of the native population as evangelization of pagans for their spiritual and physical good.
The secular colonial authorities supported missionary activities, which brought them significant benefits.
The Catholic Church sanctified aggression and genocide – the colonial expansion of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, and the Protestant Churches of Germany, England and Holland blessed the privileges that the colonial system granted them.
In the New World, the spread of the Gospel was carried out by Catholic monastic orders: first the Franciscans, then the Dominicans, the Augustinians, and from the second half of the 16th century, they joined them. and the Jesuits. The first contacts of the Franciscans with the Indians date back to 1493. It was in Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) after the second trip of Christopher Columbus, and here the six Indians whom Columbus brought to Spain after the first trip, where they were baptized and taught Spanish, were of great help.
The Indians of Spanish America were completely repressed. The enslaved Indians were subjected to corporal punishment – lashes and rods, as well as sophisticated torture, they were cut off their noses, ears, hands, feet, sent to hard labor in monasteries or galleys. Brazilian Catholic Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga noted that more than 4 million Indians were killed in Spanish America over the past five centuries.
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In April 1982, speaking at UNESCO, Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal, one of the leaders of liberation theology, and a minister of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, said that in many countries of Latin America, Indians are not only deprived of culture and language, but also killed: “hunted in the field as if they were game, they are sent gifts of sugar with arsenic, clothing contaminated with the cholera virus.
When converting natives to Christianity, Catholic missionaries used not pastoral teaching, but violent coercion, starting with the formal reading of the official “Requeremiento” (requirements) in Spanish incomprehensible to the Indians.
In addition to pastoral duties, priests performed many civil and fiscal functions, as well as the role of intermediaries between the center and the periphery. Monks and priests participated in the colonial form of serfdom – the exploitation and robbery of the local population by seizing land and forcing Indians to work on plantations, factories, mines and mines belonging to monasteries and temples for a meager pay or completely free of charge, taking away their women and children. Children were forced to work from the age of five, in addition, boys from the age of seven were sent to missionary schools. Special schools were for the sons of caciques. The churchmen tried to “tame” the local rulers, giving them some privileges at the expense of the same unpaid labor of the Indians.
Appeared in the thirties and fifties of the XVI century. the philosophical and theological development of the justification of colonialism did not have a single source. The works of the Spanish Dominican theologian Francisco de Vittoria (1480-1546) are evaluated differently by religious scholars and historians. According to some, de Vittoria is a recognized ecclesiastical theorist of colonialism, who considered the Indians inferior “barbarians, hardened in paganism, careless, lazy, incapable, vicious, backward, savage and superstitious.” They believe that, by providing ideological support and practical assistance to the colonialists, de Vittoria justified the crimes committed by the right to land and material wealth of those who would be able to derive the maximum benefit from all this.
The Nazi Saint John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla, 1978-2005), recognizing that de Vittoria justified the intervention of the Spaniards in America, emphasized that this theologian considered the Indians as reasonable and free owners of their own property, which they should not have been deprived of due to their lack of them culture and education.
In 1576, the Spanish Catholic priest José d’Acosta recommended the following methods for converting to Christianity:
in China, East India and Japan, it is allowed rock the use of armed force if it is not possible to convert the “barbarians” to Christ in another way;
in Mexico, Peru, and Chile, he offered not to dispossess those who accepted the gospel;
the inhabitants of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay and the Pacific Islands, this priest declared “lawless savages, like animals”, who should be driven by force into cities and taught to be people ..
Individual churchmen retained the racist “white man’s superiority” complex linking them to the colonialists. In particular, in the History of Colonialism and Religion 51, 1555, the Catholic Church Council in Mexico forbade the admission to monastic orders and ordain Indians, Negroes and mestizos as priests.
The conquistadors found established cultures and local beliefs in Central and South America: more developed religious systems of the Incas, Aztecs and Maya, hundreds of tribal cults and less developed forms of religious consciousness. Missionaries, together with the conquerors, destroyed Indian temples, sculptures of local deities and religious objects, destroyed ancient cities and villages, and also burned manuscripts, depriving the natives of centuries of history. The Indians were forced to live in European-style houses alien to them, wear unusual clothes, adopt unusual customs and incomprehensible Spanish, and replace personal names and familiar geographical names. Together with most of the Catholic monks who accompanied them, the colonialists treated the natives with contempt, as stupid and ignorant idolaters without honor and conscience.
After the discovery of the New World, Spanish theologians argued for ten years whether the Indians could be considered people and whether they had a soul, and, in the end, they declared them “lower beings” and decided to consider them as inferior – unreasonable babies in need of care white people from the metropolis. The “White Man” (Catholic Europioid) of the racist superiority complex was credited with incomparable wisdom and a special mission of world domination.
The free slave labor of the Indians was used to build monasteries and temples, care for them and serve the clergy. The Indians paid church tithes, even when it was officially abolished, and also paid other church taxes – they paid for christenings, weddings, funerals, holding church holidays, sermons, candles and incense, as well as their own forced participation in religious processions. Fines were imposed for non-compliance with church rites. Every two years, the population was forced to buy bulls to finance crusades that had not been practiced for a long time, not only for themselves, but also for all family members, including children from seven years old, and for all servants. These bulls differed from ordinary indulgences only in name. The parish priest used to live with an Indian concubine who made other Indian women and girls spin or weave, and the old women to take care of the hens and supply the eggs and chickens. The Indians were forced to eat extremely meagerly – wild herbs and cereals from the tiny plots left to them, on which they could work only in fits and starts, spending most of their time working for their exploiters. Chickens, chickens, guinea pigs, llamas were raised exclusively for the clergy, who took away all cash from the Indians. On Sundays, women and children brought eggs, herbs for pack animals, and firewood to the monastery or temple. Monasteries and churches had profitable houses in cities, were engaged in usury, wholesale and retail trade, including wine. The royal power provided them with land plots; they received by will or gift from pious wealthy settlers and their descendants a share in the plantations and significant monetary donations for memorial services, as well as for the construction and decoration of monasteries and temples.
About half of all the wealth of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other regions of Spanish America by the end of the colonial period belonged to the ministers of the Catholic Church. Local churchmen became the largest usurers and bankers, they supplied tea, sugar, cotton, tobacco, wax, grain and other products to European markets.
Since 1521, the Inquisition began to operate in the New World.
At first, the role of inquisitors was performed by the monks who accompanied the conquistadors, then by the bishops associated with monastic orders.
In 1522 the rights of inquisitors were granted to all local monastic orders.
Beginning in 1569, special tribunals appeared there, headed by inquisitors, who were appointed by the crown and church authorities. The Inquisition persecuted “apostates from the Christian faith” – Jews and Protestants who tried to hide in the New World from persecution in Spain, as well as Indians and mestizos suspected of idolatry, and even more so of active or passive resistance to the exploiters. The inquisitors could also accuse objectionable clergymen. Of particular interest was the financial situation of those accused of heresy, because their property was confiscated in favor of the inquisitors.
In the XVIII century. persecution inquisitionala of the followers of the French encyclopedists who opposed colonialism. The most monstrous tortures were widely used; a hundred lashes and a link to the galleys were considered a manifestation of mercy; but those who fell into the dungeons of the Inquisition were most often burned at the stake after torture. The revelry of the inquisitors led to an additional reduction in the income-generating almost free local labor force, which was in critical condition, and in 1575, by decree of King Philip II, the Inquisition was deprived of the right to engage in apostasy of the Indians from the Christian faith. They were entrusted to watch over them by the vicars general of the bishops (pharmacists), who imposed “spiritual punishment” on the apostates, not related to mutilation or death. During the entire colonial period, inquisitors, pharmacists and bishops fought for the exclusive right to judge the Indians, but only in 1766 the Supreme Council for the Indies allowed the Inquisition to examine the cases of Indians who were accused of bigamy or polygamy, but left all other cases to pharmacists.
And from 1562, black Africans began to be brought to the New World, hypocritically asserting their desire to save these souls as well. The slave trade continued for almost three centuries. Gregory XVI (Bartolomeo Alberto Capellari, 1831-1846), condemning slavery, in 1837 allowed the existence of this shameful institution when the slave owner showed kindness towards his slave.
The Jesuits appeared in 1549 in Brazil, which the Portuguese mastered later than the Spaniards other colonial possessions. In clashes with the Portuguese settlers, the missionaries of this order fought for “guardianship” of the Indians, seeking to enslave the latter for their own benefit. The decree of the King of Portugal in 1655 conditioned the conversion of the Indians into slavery by the consent of the missionaries, who were obliged to provide white settlers with Indians from their missions for six months. The Portuguese law of 1680, which forbade slavery, required one-third of the Indians from the Catholic missions to be handed over to the planters.
Churchmen of the New World actively participated in the slave trade. They sold the Indians along with the land, and after the Africans they equipped slave ships, in which very many Africans died in inhuman conditions of transportation. Inhabitants of various parts of Africa, belonging to different nationalities, who professed their own religions, including Islam, were captured, hastily baptized, collecting a tax for baptism, and sent to America.
Catholic monks and priests bought and sold black slaves, exchanged or rented them, considering them not people, but “Indian objects”. Slaves were brutally exploited, branded, tortured, mutilated, raped and killed.
Missionaries from the 16th to the second half of the 19th centuries justified slavery by the need to spread the gospel and preached the idea of the divine origin of racial inequality and colonial oppression. They used the Bible – Noah’s curse on his son Ham and grandson Canaan (Genesis 9:24-27).
Some theologians of that time believed that it was impossible to convert Negroes to Christianity if they were not made slaves; others tried to prove that, as idolaters, Africans have no right to be free [23].
Many Catholic Church Fathers supported slavery. St. Augustine considered it a just punishment for sins, pleasing to God, St. Ambrose called it “God’s gift”, and St. Thomas Aquinas – “natural right” [24].
The emergence of Christianity in Africa dates back to the beginning of our era, but it spread slowly and declined after significant successes during the Reconquista and the colonial expansion of the 15th-16th centuries. In the XIV and XV centuries. Spanish monks appeared in the Canaries, and Portuguese – in the Azores.
In 1462 the Franciscans landed on the coast of Guinea, and in 1468 the Dominicans came to Lagos [25]. During the early Middle Ages, Islam spread widely in Africa, which had to make room in the last quarter of the 19th century [26].
The bull of Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentuchelli, 1447-1455) “Romanus pontifex” (1454) declared the eternal right of the Portuguese king and his heirs to seize all lands, ports, seas, valuables, goods and people in Africa for the sake of saving souls, spreading Christianity and conquering it opponents.
In 1481, Sixtus IV (Francesco dela Rovere, 1481-1484) confirmed the right of Portugal to convert African peoples to Christianity and trade with them.
In 1493, Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borgia, 1492-1503) divided the spheres of influence in Africa, giving Spain its eastern part, and Portugal its western part. In the same year, Pope Borgia granted the kings of Spain and their descendants the lands of the New World under the pretext of converting the peoples living there to Christianity.
Soon the same right was given to the kings of Portugal. In 1497 and 1499 Pope Borgia granted Portugal all those African lands that she had managed to seize by this time.
In 1622, created by Gregory XV (Alessandro Ludovisi, 1621-1623) as a single center management of the missionary activities of the Catholic Church, a commission of 13 cardinals and two prelates turned out to be quite viable and was transformed into the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which was entrusted with coordinating work in the countries of Spanish America, Asia and Africa, as well as eliminating competition between Catholic missionaries who arrived from different European metropolises, , and later by missionaries from the Protestant Churches.
In 1627, the Urban VIII College was formed under this Congregation, preparing missionaries for work in Asia and Africa.
In the XVI – XVIII centuries. The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith sent missionaries to India, China, Japan, the Philippines, and a number of African countries [29]. In 1633, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith forbade the missions to engage in trade, and later it was forced to announce a ban on churchmen wearing luxurious secular clothes and weapons, as well as attending bullfights and masquerades [30].
The attitude towards slavery of the Protestant Churches did not differ from the general position of the Catholic Church.
In Africa, the Portuguese colonialists brutally exploited, tortured and killed the local population, not sparing the elderly, women and children, destroyed crops and burned villages that were inhabited by those who tried to resist. Blessed Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli, 1939-1958) and the highest Catholic hierarchy of his reign did not condemn the war of the French colonialists in Algeria; The Holy See opposed the anti-colonial movement in the Belgian Congo and other African colonies.
At the end of 1961, during the suppression of the uprising of the desperate inhabitants of Angola, the Portuguese punishers, who were accompanied by the Catholic chaplain Antonio Martinis, killed over 50 thousand Angolese, including even local Catholic black priests. An employee of the State Secretariat of the Vatican, Bishop Paulo Tovares, in this regard, said that the actions of Portugal in Angola are a commendable spread of civilization and faith [33].
When the English missionary A. Hastings in December 1972 reported the murder of more than 400 civilians in the village of Wiriyama (Mozambique), the Portuguese priests remained silent [34].
The countries of Asia began to turn into Western colonies as early as the 16th century. There the missionaries met with states of ancient culture and idiosyncratic beliefs, which they declared barbaric, pagan and heretical. They tried to destroy other people’s temples, destroy the Holy Books and expel non-Christian clergy. The missionaries prepared the local population for submission, and the capture of the Belgian, French, Italian, German and English colonies was carried out with the direct participation of the missionaries.
In Oceania, Christian missionaries enslaved the natives long before the advent of colonial administration there. Using local chiefs, they acted as planters, merchants, and entrepreneurs: they seized land, created their own codes of laws, appointed judges, policemen, and grassroots administrators, and introduced forced labor and corporal punishment. Eight missionary kingdoms were formed: six Protestant (Tahiti, Hawaii, Tongo, Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand) and two Catholic (Mangareva and Ueva). The inhuman attitude of missionaries and colonizers towards the local population led them to mass destruction. In particular, about 50 thousand Chamorros lived in the Mariana Islands before the arrival of Catholic missionaries, by the end of the 17th century. there were already less than 5 thousand of them, and at the beginning of the 19th century. there were almost none there. In Tahiti, the local population simply died out [36]. Gradually, more far-sighted Catholic missionaries began to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to use local customs and beliefs.
The missionaries studied the languages of the natives and taught them Spanish. Taking children away from their Indian parents, the monks baptized them and taught the boys prayers, reading, writing, arithmetic and singing, and trained them as artisans – gardeners, blacksmiths, carpenters, roofers, bridge builders. The mestizo women taught the girls to wash, iron, knit and weave.
In Spanish America, the monks were usually missionaries, and the priests were at the head of the colonial church organizations.
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The Second Vatican Council in the constitution “Gaudium et spes”, based on the theory of rich and poor countries, spoke in favor of reforms that could increase the incomes of the population of developing countries, provide full employment, improve working conditions and support personal initiatives of the natives.
What reforms, other than agrarian, were meant, the document did not specify.
Another conciliar constitution, De Ecclesia, affirmed the right of all peoples to enjoy the benefits of civilization.
At the same time, it was emphasized that third world countries should primarily rely on their own strengths, resources and traditions, and not on foreign aid.
CONCLUSION
Despite the pitiful and false justifications of their sins by the earthly gods of Catholicism – the Roman pontiffs, the pontiffs, Christian missionaries forever stained themselves with the globalist national-fascist policy of social Darwinzma colonizers and direct participation in the enslavement, exploitation and even death of many autochthons and their historical heritage.
By converting to Christianity, the missionaries tried to reformat the peoples into obedient slaves, to replace local culture, customs, traditions and, of course, beliefs, with familiar European ones.
PS
The honorary president of the Iter Press Service news agency, Robert Savio, finds ten reasons for the “bloody chaos in the modern world” in the fact that in its current form, our world “was formed thanks to the policy of the colonial powers, which divided it among themselves, drawing the borders of states without regard to the existing ethnic , religious and cultural realities.
First of all, this concerns Africa and the Arab world, where the concept of the state was forcibly imposed on tribal and clan systems. None of the existing Arab states existed before the era of colonialism.
A few things:
1. Regarding the term “West”, In the past, this term designated one of the two empires (pars occidentalis) born out of the dismemberment of the Roman Empire.
Gradually it came to refer to the general division between the occidental and the oriental part of the european continent – a division not only geographical but in multiple levels, such as religions, politics, language and culture.
Subsequently, the term “West” became synonymous of the “Western civilization.” (Frankish, and Western Europe until relatively recent in history).
Today, like many other terms, it has taken on an economic aura as Western countries are primarily designed as “developed” countries, and also these countries are “Protestant” or predominantly “protestant-compliant”.
So, there are three different things regarding this term and its change of meaning over time. We cannot disregard the Protestant element, which has produced the decisive defining content of this term in contemporary times.
2. The above article states that
The “West”, the so-called “Western civilization” has absolutely nothing to do, no connection whatsoever with ancient Rome or, even less so, ancient Greece.
This is so. Up to here all well.
“Russia is still today the direct heir to the Roman civilization and while Orthodoxy is weak in Russia, especially traditional Orthodoxy ”
The eastern Roman empire of Byzantium was predominantly a continuation of the Greeks. Another branch of those Greeks had been living in the Middle east (Anatolia and Syria mainly), especially after the closures of the Platonic academies around 600 AD. Some of these scholars had relocated in Persia, in the court of the then King Chosroes.
Both orthodox christianity as well as some branches of Islam (variants within the shiite, sufi, dervish formations) contained the earlier foundation of ancient greek religion, platonic philosophy etc. However since antiquity also the ancient religions of this vast region: mainland Greece, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, Euxeinus Pontus shared a common foundation and principles, a more or less permanent intercommunication and strong links.
Russia is not an heir to the eastern Roman / Byzantium civilization. It is the heir to Russia.
The Russia that begun to be formed a millenium ago, with all its history and course in time. And that includes all, the beginning, the Tatar problematic period, the Tsarist Russia – even most of the Soviet Union history, and into today.
Same goes for Greece, or Egypt, or Syria, or Iran, or Yemen (Euosmos Arabia, the “sweet-scented Arabia” as it was called in antiquity) etc. There is a long historical course, and a distinctive and unique line that runs through each civilization.
So, this is basically the extended family. And yes, Russia is also a part of this large family.
Saker,
My sincere thanks for your updating this article and posting it at this time. From just watching the videos I sense a shift and beginning of a deeper understanding of Orthodox faith. The concept of church as hospital as opposed to church as authority is new and profound for me. I see why ‘reconciliation’ isn’t possible.
Your other links and Fr. Romanides books will be welcome Lenten reading. I appreciate this opportunity to learn and grow.
I’m a catholic, i dessagree with the part that Bergoglio want convert the ortodox, Bergoglio don’t want to convert anyone, for him all religions are good, all religions save, he calls the attempt to convert people of proselitism in a pejorative way.