KURSK, September 23 (RIA Novosti) - The head of the Russian Orthodox Church on Wednesday led a procession through the city of Kursk, 300 miles south of Moscow, to celebrate the arrival of a miracle-working icon from the United States.Amazing. Over 70 yrs of Communist dedication to the destruction of Christianity and look how the people still remember their historic icons. It's like they're welcoming back a real human being, a long-lost family member -- icons as "hypostatic representations" of living saints. It's enough to make you forget it's 2009.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia carried the icon, called the Kursk Root Icon of Our Lady of the Sign, through the streets, where it was welcomed by over 30,000 people - almost 10% of the city's population.
Orthodoxy's making a strong comeback because former Soviet bloc peoples have actual memory and knowledge of the reality of secularist atheism. So they're tired of mucking around with anti-Christian nonsense. We in the West haven't a clue, so our secular atheists get away with calling Christianity a joke and we Christians just pretty much play along slackjawed for lack of a better idea.
The eastern bloc peoples at least have had a full-bodied Orthodoxy to fall back on after Communism collapsed. What will we in the West have after our secular atheism collapses? Protestantized milquetoast Christianity that can barely remember anything older than the last census.
Do we Catholics have a national bishop like Kirill venerating with great dignity an old miracle-working icon (of all things in this technocentric world) with his people? No, instead, the closest we got is McCarrick venerating the dead ass of a virulently pro-choice Catholic aristocrat (RIP, Teddy), musing effeminately with the language and tone of Oprah and Obama about love, compassion, forgiveness, and social justice. Or Mahony venerating his corporate lawyers, his precious bodily fluids (aka, archdiocesan assets), and his demotic immigration hobbyhorse.
I really don't get triumphalistic Catholics. How can one have eyes wide open and not see that the future of Christianity belongs to the Orthodox and possibly a Catholic Church that has repented of its own abandonment of the Patristic sensus fidelium? It's up to Orthodox to bring it back home for us Western Christians.
HT: ROCOR United
