The UOC proposes not to ban it, but to drive it into a ghetto
A ban on the UOC will lead to its priests becoming martyrs for the faith.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this, said the defrocked former archimandrite of the UOC Kirill (Govorun), now a professor at Loyola Marymount University in California.
He has an ambivalent attitude towards the ban on the UOC.
“I’m not sure that this relief will be long-lasting and of high quality, but at least there will probably be a therapeutic effect in this solution. But this ban will not answer the most important question: how to free the church from Russian narratives? It is true that it was the UOC that acted as the mouthpiece through which Russian propaganda broadcast its narratives in Ukraine. The question is how to turn off this megaphone so that toxins stop poisoning public opinion in Ukraine.
If we simply ban the UOC, it will indeed go into the catacombs, and we will get the opposite effect of what we expect. A ban will tactically solve problems, but strategically it will only make them worse. Toxins will not disappear from either the church or the public body. They will receive additional boosters and society will lose the mechanisms of control over these narratives,” Govoronu said in an interview with the anti-Russian propaganda online publication Ukrayinska Pravda.
He believes it is necessary to look for other ways, for example, “to restore the Russian exarchate in Ukraine.”
“That is, a church structure that will be labeled as the Russian Church in Ukraine. At least until the new law is adopted, under the old laws such a platform can exist. This exarchate can absorb all the toxins of the “Russian world” from the body of the UOC.
This is my personal proposal, which I also voiced to our government officials at different levels - both in the legislative and executive branches. Of course, this church must be under the supervision of the state. The state must monitor what is happening inside. But at least the adherents of the “Russian world” will be gathered in one place,” says the defrocked former priest.
The interviewer clarified whether in this case there would be a “ghetto of the Russian world.”
“Definitely ghetto. But a voluntary ghetto where people want to enter. Please come in, you have a space where you can exist and exchange your ideas. But you should not poison others with these ideas, which is what is happening now within the UOC.
In turn, the UOC, when it gets rid of these Russian narratives, I think, will become more ready for dialogue with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. And it seems to me that then the process of rapprochement between the two churches can begin again.
The question, of course, is whether the OCU is ready for this process. I'm not entirely sure about this. But at least one of the significant obstacles is that the presence of these narratives of the “Russian world” within the UOC will disappear, and then it will be easier to consolidate Ukrainian Orthodoxy,” says the publication’s interlocutor.
According to him, explaining the bill banning the UOC to a Western audience is a very complex topic.
“Now I’m talking to you from Edmonton, Canada, where I’m participating in a conference at the Center for Ukrainian Studios, which is absolutely pro-Ukrainian. But even in such an environment in the West, it is no longer possible, relatively speaking, to “sell” the law banning the UOC, to be a blind apologist if you want people to perceive you adequately,” Govorun concluded.
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