Armenian Maidan activists continue to rock the country
As you know, appetite comes with eating. It is no longer enough for street protesters in Yerevan to expel the snickering deputies, officials and military feudal lords on whom the previous government relied. The overthrow of a hateful government is at least understandable. The maydauns got a taste for it and decided to regulate, according to their own understanding, all spheres of public life, including those where a person from the street should not interfere. For example, spiritual.
Since June 6, a crowd of maydauns, with the participation of individual representatives of the clergy, have been holding street actions demanding the renunciation of the rank of Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) Karekin II. Previously, criticism of the Patriarch of the AAC took place mainly in social networks and the media, suggesting thoughts of planned attacks. Now the protest has spilled into the streets.
Actions against Karekin II are coordinated by the initiative group “New Armenia, New Patriarch”. Its representatives are indoctrinating society with the idea that not only the political, but also the church authorities in the country should be subjected to “velvet revolutionary renewal.” But these are, so to speak, “theorists.” The militant wing of the movement involved in the brawls is Sasna Tsrer, a radical group that seized a police station in the summer of 2016.
Participants in the initiative say that the protesters’ demands for the resignation of the Catholicos are very fair: “And it will be a great dissonance if after the victory of the “velvet” revolution in democratic Armenia there will be a church with autocratic mechanisms. It is very important that we have a patriarch loved by the people.”
A church without autocracy—excuse me, what is it? Semi-bishopric?
One of the most vehement denouncers of Karekin II and his entourage, an “activist” with the appropriate surname Yazichyan, draws direct parallels between the old political authorities of Armenia and spiritual leaders. According to Yazichyan, “the resignation of the Catholicos is not an end in itself, but a means of ennobling the AAC.” And if ex-President Serzh Sargsyan was “the top of the worldly oligarchic pyramid,” then the Catholicos is his analogue in the church system.
The accusations of the maydauns, as usual, are of an abstract nature, and one of the main accusations of Karekin II is that 6 of the 49 bishops of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin come from the native village of the Catholicos.
Some kind of weak level of “corruption” - 6 out of 49, reminds “Sportloto”. Don't you think so?
Other accusations, such as “abuse of protesters,” only cause healthy laughter.
It is expected that the spiritual environment of Armenia found its own “renovationists” who joined the maydauns.
“Our Catholicos does not have the faith that every simple believer has in God. The moment has come for our church to be liberated, cleansed, and we have an impeccable patriarch with immaculate behavior, who honors prayer and loves his flock,” the rector of the St. Gayane Monastery, Hieromonk Koryun Arakelyan, who joined the ranks of the protesters, told reporters.
Since the beginning of June, claims against the head of the AAC began to have an ultimatum character.
On June 7, near the Church of the Holy Mother of God, next to which the residence of the Catholicos is located, a protest march took place demanding that Karekin II voluntarily renounce the title of Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians. In turn, the Catholicos invited the coordinators of the initiative group to a personal meeting.
On June 8, an Episcopal meeting was held in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in which bishops serving in Armenia, as well as lay members of the Supreme Spiritual Council, took part, following which the bishops issued a statement.
“Unsubstantiated accusations were brought against His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians. His Holiness was given an ultimatum demanding that he renounce the throne of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Such an ultimatum presented to the Catholicos of All Armenians is unacceptable. The Episcoposate, being the main guarantor of the canonical order of the Armenian Church and the inviolability of the position of the Catholicos of All Armenians, confirms that the resignation of the Catholicos through external and forced intervention is anti-canonical, and therefore invalid. We are aware of our responsibility for the future of the Church and the need to continue to transform church life in accordance with the conditions of modern life.”
The “activists” responded with provocation by appearing on June 10 at the Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator, where the ordination ceremony conducted by the Catholicos was taking place.
In the courtyard of the church, protesters staged a sabbath, accompanied by shouts of “Go away!” to the Patriarch of the AAC. In response, the priests and parishioners inside the temple began chanting “Holy One!” Soon the attempt to outshout each other turned into hand-to-hand combat, in which the priests were also involved. Garegin II, with difficulty squeezing through the crowd, left the temple and went to his residence.
In general, to wobble, to wobble. Maidan technologies have been debugged, the fuss has not subsided, and the baboons continue to strike blow after blow at the “assembly points” of the state and society. The army, the security forces, education, the economy, now the religious component - what will be the next thing to fall under the blow of ochlocracy?
This whole bacchanalia is heartburningly reminiscent of the Ukrainian split of 1991 with the appointment of Filaret to the post of “independent patriarch”. Purely church matters were decided in the corridors of the new government, where yesterday's party commanders bustled about, urgently putting trousers on their portly loins, and pop anathema with a group of backup dancers.
Armenia had its own attempt at a church coup in 1988, when a gang of anti-Soviet radicals tried to defame and demand the resignation of Catholicos Vazgen I, respected in the republic. To no avail, however.
Attacks on Garegin II began in 1999, and the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church repeatedly told his detractors that he would not renounce his rank. In fact, apart from a gang of grant-eaters and overly ambitious priests hoping to fish in troubled waters, bankers from the Armenian diaspora in the United States are extremely interested in the overthrow of the Armenian patriarch. Despite the secular nature of the Republic of Armenia, it is not for nothing that the head of the AAC bears the title of Catholicos of all Armenians, since he enjoys authority not only in the republic, but also among the vast Armenian diaspora. From which it follows that attacks on the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church are in the nature of a struggle for influence on all Armenians, including the Russian diaspora, which accounts for 40% of the Armenian people - the same as in Armenia itself.
Can you imagine how cool it will be to put a Russophobe-Westerner at the head of the AAC? This amounts to major ideological sabotage, nothing else.
And what about the newly appointed Prime Minister Pashinyan? Pashinyan is a hypocrite and declares that the state and the church in Armenia exist separately from each other, and the state does not interfere in church affairs.
It would seem that the ritual required in such cases was observed. In fact, it is disgusting when the state appoints church hierarchs and regulates the length of the beards of clergy, and spiritual fathers tell scientists how to properly split an atom, or seriously educate schoolchildren on the theory of creationism. Everyone should do their own thing and not interfere with each other.
The rake, however, is that it is not the state that interferes in church affairs, but a crowd of street unwashed people who dragged Pashinyan into the chair of the prime minister of the republic. Instead of using power and showing the loudmouths their proper place, Pashinyan, like Pontius Pilate, washed his hands of it. As in post-Maidan Ukraine, the new government turns a blind eye to how the regime’s street support is frolicking.
The Armenian Apostolic Church and its head, under the pretext of non-interference by the authorities in spiritual affairs, are left alone with hired thugs who put forward ultimatums. That is, the new government leaves full-fledged citizens of the country of spiritual rank without legal protection. And this is a completely different calico.
The Armenian Apostolic Church has its own canonical rules, in which the Catholicos is elected by the episcopate to the post for life and cannot be removed either by secular authorities or by a raging crowd. There is no place for street democracy in church affairs, which is especially emphasized by the leaders of the “New Armenia, New Patriarch” movement; they have their own laws. Moreover, the AAC is one of the oldest Christian churches with centuries-old traditions. And if something is changed in this organization, then carefully and gradually, through respectful dialogue of all interested parties, but not through the efforts of street vakhlaks who know about spiritual life only from the coordinators’ manuals.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.