23 quotes found
"Russians should realize that they are Orthodox in the first place; Russians in the second place; and only in the third place, people."
"Many Russian and Western scholars have studied Soviet efforts to destroy organized religion and spread atheism in the Soviet population, but far fewer have focused on the steps Soviet officials took to wipe out shamanism, the traditional faith of many peoples in Siberia and the Russian Far East. But Moscow’s efforts in that regard are instructive both to the extent that they paralleled what the communists did to more conventionally structured faiths and even more to the extent they failed because the Soviets did not understand what they were up against and could not deal with a religious practice lacking the kind of organization they could take over and subvert."
", a Finno-Ugric nation in the Middle Volga most of whose members are followers animism, are now engaged in the establishment of new structures that will help them ensure the survival not only of their religion but their nationality and democratic traditions as well."
"[The Putin regime] is serving notice to the world that not only the practice[s] of religious liberty, but even the possibility of discussing about freedom of religion or belief have been abrogated in the [Russian Federation]."
"The [Falun Gong] movement poses no threats to Russia, and for years it has been depicted with benevolence by most Russian media, which even praised its Qigong practices as beneficial for the practitioners’ health. Even after, under Chinese [Communist Party] pressure, key texts were declared “extremist” in 2008, activities in Russia continued. In 2020, seven Falun-Gong-related organizations were declared “undesirable” in Russia, but until the 2022 war in Ukraine the label “undesirable,” unlike “extremist,” did not totally prevent organizations from operating in the country."
"On May 22, the Parish of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary was “liquidated” by the Regional Court of Omsk. But this may not be the end [of] the crackdown on [the] Greek Catholics in Russia.The FSB Directorate for the Omsk Region told the media that “further investigations will have to resolve the question of on whose initiative the priest acted. It is possible that the fate of the Uniate [i.e., Greek Catholic] Church in Russia will depend on the answer to this question.”"
"You know, as I already mentioned, in 988 Prince Vladimir himself was baptized following the example of his grandmother, Princess Olga, and then he baptized his retinue, and then gradually, over the course of several years, he baptized all Rus. It was a lengthy process – from pagans to Christians, it took many years. But in the end, this Orthodoxy, Eastern Christianity, deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of the Russian people. When Russia expanded and absorbed other nations who profess Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, Russia has always been very loyal to those people who profess other religions. This is its strength. This is absolutely clear. And the fact is that the main postulates, main values are very similar, not to say the same, in all world religions I’ve just mentioned and which are the traditional religions of the Russian Federation, Russia. By the way, Russian authorities were always very careful about the culture and religion of those peoples who came to join the Russian Empire. This, in my opinion, forms the basis of both security and stability of the Russian statehood – all the peoples inhabiting Russia basically consider it their Motherland."
"The American historian James Westfall Thompson wrote in 1916 on the conversion of the Baltic Slavs by the German Church. He believed the treatment meted out to the Slavs by the Germans had a parallel in how Spanish America treated Peru in “the spoliation of a weaker people by an avaricious priest class backed up by the sword of a powerful government.” Thompson added: “[The Slavs] accepted Christianity as they accepted German domination, superficially and morosely.” There were many revolts by the Slavs against the tyranny of the Germans. But although the Church eventually triumphed, the faith as practised remained deeply mystical, and quite different from the dogma of the Church."
"The historian George Richards wrote in 1918:12 “[T]he religion of Russia is broader and deeper than the creed, polity, cultus, and precepts of the Church of Russia. The life of the spirit defies definition… It consists, not of temples and sacraments, priests and monks, dogmas and canons, but of moods and motives… and ideals— all welling up from the soul’s depth.” He added: “Her literature, art, music, philosophy, religion, theater, and dancing are something intrinsically Russian. Her dominant spirit is not the product of Byzantine Christianity. It is rooted in the Slavic nature… and in oriental mysticism. The remote past with its passions, dreams, fears, and hopes throbs in the living present.”"
"Svetlana Koltovskaia, has this to say about shamans in the federal Russian Republic of Sakha: Sakha (Yakut) people do not use the word “shaman” in their language. We have both female and male shamans. Male shaman is called oyuun (ойуун) and female shaman is called udagan (удаган). The word’s etymology is still not known. Some researchers believe that it comes from the word “oy” which means “jump”, for Sakha shamans jump during their ritual which symbolizes their leaving the “middle” world to go to the spirit world. In Sakha, white shamans are called aiyy oyuuna (айыы ойууна). They do not have to wear a special outfit to do their ritual, and they only deal with good spirits. They are sort of regular people, and they have their own community and practice their thing to these days. Dark shamans are called abaahy ayuuna (абааhы ойууна). They serve as mediators between people and evil spirits. There are many types of dark shamans with different status."
"The scholar Sergei Filatov has stated: “Shamanism was the basic form of religiosity among Yakuts before 1917… According to ancient beliefs, the first Yakuts Sakha Saaryn Toon and Saby Vaai Khotun— were gods who had come down to Earth from the Highest Heaven with the great mission to create the Sakha nation. The Yakuts also had several beliefs which contemporary neopagans have interpreted as monotheism, including the belief in a supreme god, the Sun (fire), Aiyy (Tengri), which has its roots in Pan-Turkic religious myth. However, in everyday religious practice little attention was paid to this supreme god.”"
"In both countries, Taiwan and Poland, the newly established democratic systems resulted in the development of associations and other civic initiatives, but also in the emergence of new religious and spiritual groups. In both countries religious liberty was officially proclaimed in late 1980s. Yet, in Poland, the initial thaw and ease of registering new religious communities significantly slowed down over the years, and currently—for various reasons—registering a new group is more challenging than three decades ago. Previously, the political climate made similar activities difficult, various groups operated unregistered, and everything was monitored by the secret security services."
"It is therefore impossible without Christ to understand the history of the Polish nation—this great thousand-year-old community—that is so profoundly decisive for me and each one of us. If we reject this key to understanding our nation, we lay ourselves open to a substantial misunderstanding. We no longer understand ourselves. It is impossible without Christ to understand this nation with its past so full of splendour and also of terrible difficulties."
"Yet organized religion was full of paradoxes. Many of these were personified in Karol Wojtyla, who on 16 October 1978 became the 263rd Roman pontiff, with the title of Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian to be elected pope since 1522, the youngest since 1846, the first from the Slavic East. Wojtyla had been Cardinal-Archbishop of Cracow. The choice was now highly appropriate for Poland had become the heartland of Catholicism. First Hitler, then Stalin and his successors had done everything in their power to destroy the Polish Church. Hitler had closed its schools, universities and seminaries, and murdered a third of its clergy. When the Red Army imposed the Lublin government in 1945, they were confident that the Church would disappear within a generation. Yet pre-war Poland, where the Church enjoyed special status, proved a less favourable environment for Catholicism than the postwar People’s Republic, where it was actively persecuted. The new frontiers turned Poland into one of the most homogeneous states on earth: more than 95 per cent of the population were now ethnic Poles, virtually all of them baptized Catholics. Catholicism became the focus of resistance to the alien Communist regime. By the 1960s, the Catholic priesthood was back to its pre-war strength of 18,000. The number of religious – i.e. priests, nuns and monks – 22,000 in 1939, had grown to 36,500. There were 50 per cent more monastic foundations, priories and convents than before the war. Some 92–95 per cent of children received Holy Communion after instruction at 18,000 catechetical centres. Over 90 per cent of Poles were buried according to Catholic rites. The movement of peasants into the towns re-evangelized the urban population. Up to three-quarters of town-dwellers were married in church. Sunday Mass attendance was over 50 per cent even in the cities. These figures could not be matched anywhere in the world. Moreover, Catholicism was the driving force behind the new Polish independent trade union, baptized Solidarity, which began to function in the Gdansk shipyard in June 1980, achieved reluctant legal recognition from the regime two months later, and, under its fervent Catholic leader, Lech Walesa, gradually undermined the regime during the decade."
"Romania had reaped a handsome territorial dividend from her wartime sufferings, acquiring Bessarabia (from Russia), Bukovina (from Austria), southern Dobruja (from Bulgaria) and Transylvania (from Hungary). But the effect was that nearly one in three inhabitants of the country was not Romanian at all: 8 per cent were Hungarians, 4 per cent Germans, 3 per cent Ukrainians - in all there were eighteen ethnic minorities recorded in the 1930 census. The preponderance of non-Romanians was especially pronounced in urban areas. Even the Romanians themselves were divided along religious lines, between the Uniate Christians of Transylvania and the Orthodox Christians of the Romanian heartland, the Regat."
"[Mădălina Dumitru in her book "The Broken Flight"] raises the difficult question of why [the Movement of Spiritual Integration into the Absolute] was subject to such extraordinary persecution in Romania. She identifies two reasons. One is the Communist legacy. Alternative spirituality and its leaders, including [MISA's founder Gregorian] Bivolaru, started being persecuted during the Ceaușescu regime, and several police officers and prosecutors of Communist times kept their positions in democratic Romania. The second is the attempt of corrupted politicians, including social-democrat Prime Minister , who ended up in jail, to divert the public’s attention from political scandals by having the media focusing on “cults” in general and the juicy sex-connected story of MISA in particular. Politicians were also accused of tolerating very real human trafficking of minors forced into prostitution, and prosecuting MISA for its non-existing human trafficking gave the impression they were “doing something” about the issue."
"The Ghent decision, defining as illegal the practice by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to teach that current members (with the exception of cohabiting relatives) should shun or ostracize those who have been disfellowshipped or have left their organization, is the culminating point of a process that, if left unchecked, will destroy religious liberty and the very notion of freedom as we know it. Basically, the Ghent judges affirmed the principle that the freedom of an organization to self-regulate itself as it deems fit is a lesser right when compared to the freedom of the individual within the organization. They also imply that a person should enjoy the same freedoms within the organization that s/he would enjoy in the society in general. It is not an exaggeration to argue that this deeply subverts concepts about freedom that democratic societies have accepted for centuries. Many have argued that the basic question of Western political philosophy is why we accept to surrender a part of our liberty to join an organization. Wouldn’t it be better to remain free?"
"The [Belgian Court of] Cassation acknowledges that it would be forbidden to “harass, threaten, or bully ex-members,” but states that this is by no means part of the shunning policy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is true that shunning may lead “to social isolation towards other members of the faith community,” but this should not be confused with a “generalized social isolation.” The Belgian Jehovah’s Witnesses are a “small faith community of about 26,000 members across Belgium,” and those shunned remain free to associate with all the other people living in the country."
"As it is, the decision [concerning Veer Dusauchoit, a woman who wanted to become a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church] is a legal monstrosity. Churches and other religious organizations have the right to organize trainings and courses restricted to certain categories of persons (a man cannot train to become a nun either). The religious liberty of individual devotees such as Dusauchoit is protected by their possibility to leave the Roman Catholic Church and join one among many other Christian churches that ordain women as deacons and even as priests. Nobody compels Dusauchoit to remain in the Roman Catholic Church. But as long as she stays there, she should respect its rules—which should be left to the Holy See and the bishops, not to secular Belgian courts."
"On September 17, 2024, with the decision “Pindo Mulla v. Spain,” the Grand Chamber of the (ECHR) awarded to the Jehovah’s Witnesses another resounding legal victory, this time about the often-discussed issue of blood transfusions. It was a rare substantially unanimous judgement of all the Grand Chamber’s [seventeen (17)] judges ([eight] expressed a partially dissenting opinion not on the substance of the matter but only on the issue of non-pecuniary damage)."
"I remember having Jewish classmates in my school who did not celebrate Christian feasts when most of the class did. I grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s in Italy, where there was a strong Communist presence, and children from Communist families would not celebrate certain civil and religious feasts either. There were also Protestant children who did not share in the joyful celebrations of the feasts of the Virgin Mary, a typical feature of Italian culture. And so on. If the law should compel the Jehovah’s Witness children to celebrate birthdays and Christmas, it should also compel children from Jewish [families and] atheist families to celebrate the birth of Jesus, which would be a serious violation of their freedom of religion or belief. A more reasonable solution is to teach [the] minors that a pluralistic society includes women, men, and children of different beliefs and cultures, and all should be respected."
"On June 3, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, President of the Italian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, criticized a modification to Article 47 of Law 22/85, which governs Italy’s financial support for religions. Zuppi stated his “disappointment at the government’s unilateral decision to alter the purposes and allocation methods of the eight per thousand tax revenue. This change undermines the original agreement between the Church and the government and effectively distorts its intended logic and functioning, resulting in inequalities that harm both the Catholic Church and other religious bodies with agreements with the state.”"
"The trial of the Famille Missionnaire de Notre-Dame (FMND), which concluded its hearings in Privas on January 22 and now awaits a verdict on March 24, has become a significant moment in the development of French criminal law. What started as a disagreement between five former sisters and a traditional Catholic community has turned into a demonstration of how far the ideas of “abuse of weakness” (abus de faiblesse) and “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires) can be stretched. It shows how easily they can be used to regulate religious life. Bitter Winter [has] previously presented the case and warned that these legal concepts amount to a rebranding of the old discredited “brainwashing” theories, which were rejected by courts in the United States and most democratic countries. The FMND case proves that these concerns are not just theoretical."