ANDREY KURAYEV

March 3, 2002, Moscow, 14.14 AM

Deacon Andrey Kurayev, the ideologist of Russian fundamentalists, recently criticized the Patriarch in "Literaturnaya Gazeta" (Febr. 27, 2002): the Patriarch says that Russian Orthodox Church can feed all Russia with spiritual bread, but (according to Kurayev) Roman Catholic spirituality is not a bread at all, they are heretics, not schismatics, and there "spiritual bread is poisoned."

To my personal taste the main problem is that Vatican and Moscow Patriarchy are not different enough, they are too similar in their bureacratic stagnation, and their bread is equally orthodox and equally stale. Thanks God, there are not only high-rank officials and zealous deacons, but silent Christian majority as well.

March 13, 2001, 23.40 PM, Moscow

Taboo psychology in Russian Orthodoxy

Deacon Andrey Kurayev and Alexander Dvorkin went to Yamal (Siberia) with anti-cultist lectures (they are activists of spreading Christianity through criticism of "wrong" Christians.) They've been invited to participate in the round table, but refused because among participants some protestants also have been mentioned.

Dvorkin said: "We cannot participate in anything on the equal conditions with totalitarian cults ... should we sit together with the totalitarian cult of American origin which is engaged in proselityzing and practicize confessional anonimity this will be understand by society as our approval of this cult her deeds."

Kurayev: "When cultists declare that they behave in consensus with the Russian Orthodox church let people remember that the Church refused even to participate in the round table where these people were present." Source: Radonezh, #110, p. 15, February, 2001.

The "cult" mentioned is neo-Pentecostal movement "Word of Life."

It is interesting to observe how the ancient taboo on contacts with people of other religion has revived in modern Russia with rational (at least formally) pretext.

Yakov Krotov, 12.3.2001.