The war in Ukraine confronts Russia with the dilemma of its schism from the Church (and therefore from the Christian West to which it was once united – it did not definitively split from Rome until the fourteenth century) in a way it has never experienced in its history.
This schism now runs through the middle of “Russian” society itself; Kiev, which is still considered to be Russian’s original cultural heartland by Russian nationalism, has committed itself to the West forever. The only way of avoiding Russia’s permanent schism from its Kievan origins is that predicted in Fatima’s message: conversion.
Russia at the edge of the abyss
The recent attack by several Russian drones on the Cathedral of the Dormition in Kiev – starting a fire that almost destroyed the building – is one more sign that Moscow does not expect to succeed in its invasion of Ukraine. Attacking one of the most important churches in Eastern rite Christianity (it’s not accurate say “Orthodox” Christianity in this case because the Dormition Cathedral had functioned in unity with
Rome for most of its existence) was a self-mutilation which has shocked Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholics alike. The Russian Orthodox Church has remained silent, testifying once again to its subservience to secular authorities.
One of the reasons for the Russian invasion in 2022 (the main motivation as far as the Russian Orthodox Church is concerned) was to reunite Russia with its Medieval origins in Kiev. Kievan Rus gave birth to three nations, the Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Russians, which all trace their existence back to the baptism of the Kievan prince Vladimir in 988 and the eventual conversion of his people.
Kievan Rus princes were traditionally buried in the Dormition Cathedral. From this point of view, the invasion has been a disaster for Russia. For Moscow to deliberately attack this symbolic centre implies that it does not expect to ever incorporate Kiev and has completely lost the battle for the hearts of Ukrainians, which up to its 2014 occupation of Crimea had been evenly split between pro-Western and pro-Russian
sentiment.
Ukraine drawing nearer
In this time of crisis for Ukraine, the Catholic Church has come into its own as the most respected institution in the country. The general Ukrainian turn towards the West often doesn’t discriminate between what is good and bad in the modern West (and Zelensky is no exemplar of traditional Ukrainian society), but the country remains more socially conservative than any state in the EU all the same.
The number of Uniate Catholics in Ukraine has grown by 50% since the Russian invasion four years ago1 , and they now constitute a fifth of Christians in Ukraine (rising to more than 30% of Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians). In addition, there are almost a million Latin rite Catholics.’
The Orthodox Church is divided into the majority autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and the Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox
Church. These divisions are highly politicised and destabilising, which has led to an enormous increase in the comparative prestige of the Catholic Church, which now directly assists millions of displaced eastern Ukrainians who previously had almost no contact with the Church.
These events are not yet the conversion of Ukraine, let alone that of Russia. But they have changed attitudes in both countries irreversibly in ways that could never have been imagined in 1917 when the promise concerning Russia’s future was made at Fatima.
The Russian Orthodox Church in recent years has suffered an irreparable blow to its credibility by becoming an enabler for a fickle and irreligious ideological system. Russian state ideology places all religions on an equal footing provided they are politically subservient. It officially declares that there is no one religious truth (as Putin asserted in his Valdai speech last year).
The downside for Russia (apart from the cynicism towards religion this attitude produces in its own people) is that it now bases its “civilisational struggle” on alliances with China and Islam, both of which have been radically opposed to Russia throughout history right up to today.
Russian foreign policy is also committed to cultivating factions in the West. These can be patriotic, even Christian-minded people, but also include leftist, even Islamic organisations. Moscow opposes the West (its ideology does not distinguish between the Christian West before the
Reformation and the modern liberal West), it embraces its own external (and internal) Islamic and Chinese enemies, and has cut itself off from its Kievan roots.
For the first time in its history, it is locked in a permanent struggle with people it officially declares to be Russian. But these “Russians” are Westerners by choice, which now becomes a possible choice for Russians too. Not yet, of course, but the possibility is before their eyes every day a few metres away along the 1,000 km frontline. These are only human considerations that help make huge shift like conversion seem less unlikely; such an event remains a work of grace that is
impossible to predict.
Russia now has more agents and supporters in the West, and more people influenced by its irreligious “traditionalism” and other ideologies, than it ever had during the Cold War. The Errors of Russia and the Conversion of Russia; these are considerations that the Christian West can no longer ignore. These are the times we
live in.
By Vinicius. Vinicius is a Melbourne-based historian-researcher focussing on early modernity as the Christian Western alternative to ideological, Enlightenment modernity.
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