Glimpses of a new dawn in Russia

Babette Francis

Contents - Sep 2011 - Buy a copy now 2011 Fighting Fund launched - Peter Westmore Pope appoints Archbishop Chaput to troubled Philadelphia - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Youth: Catholic young adult ministry: Sydney's formula for success - Br Barry Coldrey Cloyne Report exposes Ireland's continuing sex abuse crisis - Michael Gilchrist Glimpses of a new dawn in Russia - Babette Francis Abortion grief: mother love, mercy love and God's compassion - Anne R. Lastman Sacred Art: Catholic church statuary: a craft in danger - Christopher Akehurst Interview: Pope's brother sheds more light on Benedict's early years - Zenit News Agency Letters: Teaching authority - Fr M. Durham Letters: Irish child abuse - Arnold Jago Letters: Where is Jesus? - Michael Apthorp Letters: Book of Genesis - Frank Mobbs Letters: Catholic schools - Maria Plustwik Events: Ignatian Spiritual Exercises for busy people Books: THE COUNCIL IN QUESTION: a Dialogue with Catholic Traditionalism - Fr Glen Tattersall (reviewer) Books: SNOW ON THE HEDGES: The Life of St Cuthbert Mayne, by Helen Whelan - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Donations: Please Support the Fighting Fund! Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: Proper church etiquette: a public witness of faith - Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Have you ever watched a sunrise early in the morning on a cloudy, somewhat rainy day when you have planned a picnic but there are only some tantalising glimpses of the sun? That's what "watching Russia" is like for many Christians.

During the dark days of Soviet communism, Catholics were encouraged to "pray for the Conversion of Russia". Despite its problems, many of which are a legacy of the Soviet era, there are certainly healthy signs in the Russian Orthodox Church, which during Stalin's era seemed silent and powerless to protest against Stalin's murderous policies towards the Soviet people.

Church and State separation

In early July this year, the Russian Orthodox Church declared it was against becoming the state religion: "The Moscow Patriarchate's position on what relations between the state and the Church should be is invariable. We do not want the Church to become part of the state apparatus, state machinery, to assume secular functions," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, said.

He was commenting on a poll conducted by the Sreda Agency along with the Public Opinion foundation, of 1,500 people across 44 Russian regions, 100 towns and villages. According to the poll, 30% of Russians want Orthodoxy to become the state religion, 48% are against it and 23% did not have an opinion.

"The system of church-state relations in Russia has not changed over the past decade, both from the point of view of secular laws and the Church's decisions", the priest said.

"The fact that the Church is growing and becoming more active by no means implies a review in its position on relations between the state and religion," he said, adding that "the Church is not trying to substitute some state function or form some politicised ideology".

Stalin's crimes

Then in late July Archpriest Chaplin declared that "our society state and people" must condemn the crimes that took place during the Communist regimes of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

"Many are trying to tell us that that period should be forgotten together with the great number of victims, [but Russianss] must do their best so that no one and nothing is forgotten," said Chaplin as he recalled the actions of "the criminals - Stalin, Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Moisei Uritsky and Yakov Sverdlo - who organised the Red Terror and Stalin's repressions."

A remembrance service for victims of Soviet-era repressions was held by the Solovetsky Stone on Moscow's Lubyanskaya Square while Archpriest Chaplin said at the ceremony, "The Church, the public, veterans and political repression victims must do their best so that no one and nothing is forgotten.

"Society cannot live a calm life or have a decent future unless it learns the lessons of history, condemns morally, politically and legally the committed crimes and restores the good names of people who were oppressed only because they were clerics, nobles, Cossacks, well-to-do and hardworking farmers, merchants, or belonged to other social groups declared enemies of the people.

"Russia will not have a decent future unless the criminals - Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Uritsky, Sverdlov - are named. We know for sure that the hands of those people were stained with innocent blood and all of their merits, real or imaginary - and there are both real and imaginary merits - do not justify what they did. Our society, state and people must not only know but also declare that."

Archpriest Chaplin called for praying for the killed people "who died of suffering, and for the future of this country, which must admit mistakes and crimes of the past, purify its memory and conscience and become a nation living by the law of truth, peace and love."

A rally organised by the Society of Repression Victims was held before the remembrance service.

Demographic winter

Another hopeful glimmer of light in Russia is its government's growing awareness of the demographic disaster facing the nation and hence its adoption of new pro-life initiatives.

According to Russia's census, the country's population plummeted by more than 12 million between 1992 and 2008, and stands at around 143 million today. Legalised abortion has accounted for a significant part of that drop, with some 1.5 million abortions reported in the country in 2007 - nearly the same as the number of children born in that year. Unofficial estimates indicate that there are nearly four million abortions per year in Russia yet only 1.7 million live births. The UN has predicted that by 2050 the Russian population will have dipped to 116 million. Russia's population will not be able to support its elderly citizens and the nation faces an acute worker shortage.

Against this under-population backdrop, the World Congress of Families (WCF) held the world's first demographic summit: "Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and the Future of Humankind", at the Russian State Social University (RSSU) between 29-30 June. RSSU is one of Russia's largest public universities, with over 100,000 students, and the nation's leading institution for educating social workers.

WCF Managing Director, Larry Jacobs, noted the Summit was coming at a crucial time. "It's not Russia alone that's experiencing demographic winter," Jacobs observed. "Worldwide, birthrates have declined by more than 50% since the late 1960s. By the year 2050, there will be 248 million fewer children under five years of age in the world than there are today. This birth dearth will be one of the greatest challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century," he said. 

Jacobs praised four Russian corporations for their support, financial and in kind, for the Moscow Demographic Summit: "These businesses have shown leadership, vision and commitment to serving the community," Jacobs observed. "They are rightly concerned about Russia's looming demographic crisis ... a birth-rate well below replacement level and a declining population that could decrease by 50 million people in the next 35 years.

"By the year 2050, there will be 248 million fewer children under five-years-old in the world than there are today. If current trends continue, where will the future workers and customers for Russian companies come from? A far-sighted, successful company is concerned about more than this year's balance sheet." (Wouldn't it be wonderful if Australian companies and economic think-tanks like the Institute for Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies supported pro-life policies in Australia! We can only dream �...).

A member of the Duma (Russia's parliament) Viktor Zvagelsky, said ads for abortion had made "young girls believe they won't have any problems interrupting a pregnancy." Another Duma member, Valery Draganov, said the "number of abortions in our country reaches six to eight million a year. Every minute, two abortions are carried out in Russia. Due to botched abortions, 20 percent of families lose the ability to become parents. One in every five pregnant women who dies, dies as a result of abortion. These are catastrophic statistics."

Pro-Life legislation

Russian lawmakers have now passed a bill requiring all abortion advertisements to carry health warnings. Under this law, passed by the the Duma in early July, ten percent of the space used in abortion ads must carry a list of possible negative consequences for women, including infertility. The bill also stipulates that mothers who don't want to keep their babies will be able to leave their newborn children anonymously in special adoption centres.

Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, followed the Duma in approving the measure and President Dmitry Medvedev signed the legislation into law in mid-July.

Russia's Orthodox Church has been solidly behind the efforts to turn the tide on abortion, with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow urging the Ministry of Health and Social Development to make "preservation of pregnancy a priority task for the doctor" and discourage incentives for abortion. He also advocated state support for pro-motherhood media campaigns, and suggested setting up crisis pregnancy centres in every maternity hospital to help "lonely mothers in difficult life situations."

The pro-life movement, while still in its infancy, has gained considerable traction across Russia, borrowing some of the successful strategies used by pro-life groups in America.

Graphic websites, posters and leaflets are supplemented with sweeping references to Russian history. With encouragement from the Russian Orthodox Church, "demonstrators marked International Children's Day by distributing leaflets on the dangers of abortion and released hundreds of balloons over Ulyanovsk, Lenin's birthplace, to support 'Russia without abortions'."

One of Russia's most visible pro-life leaders, is Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev. At a "Sanctity of Motherhood" forum last year Mrs Medvedeva spoke about the "rights of a child to life," and about the "general lack of support" that usually drove women to "artificial termination of pregnancy."

She has taken up the cause of reducing abortions and started a "Give Me Life!" campaign with brochures and a website designed to promote a "week against abortion." One brochure warns that "the consequences of a thoughtless step can ruin one's life" and talked about the increased potential for breast cancer following abortion.

Russian saints

The campaign was tied into the "Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness," a holiday created by Mrs Medvedeva and the Russian Orthodox Church and centred around Pyotr and Fevronia, a couple who ruled the Murom region northeast of Moscow in the late 12th century and were later declared saints. The president and his wife went to Murom to extol family values and encourage childbirth.

Archpriest Chaplin said that attitudes in Russia are changing: "I think that we have all we need so as to change radically society's attitude toward abortion so that abortion would become absolutely morally inadmissible and this would be reflected in politics and law."

In a recent speech, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to raise the nation's birthrate by up to 30% in just three years. Putin's plan calls for spending the equivalent of $53 billion to encourage Russian families to have more children. But Larry Jacobs says that more than cash incentives and government benefits will be needed to raise Russia's well below replacement birth rate. Family & Demography Foundation, which represents the World Congress of Families in Russia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has announced the launch of its latest project: The Life-Family Medical Centers Network. These will be opened in all of the major cities in Russia and the CIS.

The first 30 include centres in Moscow, St Petersburg, Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, Odessa, Kiev and Minsk. In some cities, multiple centres are planned.

The centres will be the first national network of modern, state-of-the-art medical facilities that will provide a complete range of services in obstetrics and post-natal care. The centres - which will never perform abortions as a matter of principle - will also operate as crisis pregnancy centres.

At the moment both Prime Minister Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev are embroiled in intrigue and controversy about whether they will run for the Presidency of Russia in the elections due in March next year. We can only pray that whoever wins, the pro-life, pro-family initiatives will continue to be fostered by them and the oligarchy which controls Russia.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 24 No 8 (September 2011), p. 8