{"id":1310,"date":"2019-07-17T05:09:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T05:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2025-09-23T16:11:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T16:11:51","slug":"russian-orthodox-church-considers-ending-blessings-for-nuclear-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1310","title":{"rendered":"??? “Russian Orthodox Church considers ending blessings for nuclear weapons” ???"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To quote a sage I know (Ed Mechmann) “why in the world would they ever have blessed nuclear weapons to begin with?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is from the Catholic Herald (UK) –<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, a committee on ecclesial law met in Moscow and recommended ending the practice of blessing missiles and warheads, and suggested that priests should instead bless only individual soldiers and their personal weapons. According to a report by Religion News Service, Bishop Savva Tutunov of the Moscow Patriarchate said that it would be more appropriate to bless only the warrior who is defending their country, and their own personal weapon\u2013instead of bombs. \u201cOne can talk about the blessing of a warrior on military duty in defense of the fatherland,\u201d said Tutunov. \u201cAt the end of the corresponding ritual, the personal weapon is also blessed \u2014 precisely because it is connected to the individual person who is receiving the blessing. By the same reasoning, weapons of mass destruction should not be sanctified,\u201d he said.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weapons systems, including Topol-class intercontinental ballistic missiles, are frequently blessed by members of the Russian Orthodox clergy during military parades and other events. These blessings are seen as a way of spiritually protecting the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, Russia\u2019s nuclear weapons were consecrated in a service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. In Russian Orthodoxy, the patron saint of Russia\u2019s nuclear weapons is St. Seraphim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tutunov\u2019s view is not universally held in the Orthodox Church. According to  thepiece<\/a> published by Religion News Service, Fr. Vsevolod Chaplain, a former spokesman for the Patriarch of Moscow, said that Russia\u2019s nuclear arsenal is akin to the \u201cguardian angels\u201d of the country and are needed to protect Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnly nuclear weapons protect Russia from enslavement by the West,\u201d Chaplin said to a Russian newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patriarch Kirill is rumored to have been a KGB agent prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. His predecessor, Patriarch Alexy II is also believed to have been a KGB agent. The Moscow Patriarchate denies this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Catholic Church is explicitly opposed to nuclear weapons, and supports countries dismantling their arsenals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pope St. John XXIII called for the banning of nuclear weapons and wrote that \u201ca general agreement must be reached on a suitable disarmament program, with an effective system of mutual control\u201d in his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes acts of war aimed at the indiscriminate destruction of entire cities or large areas as \u201ca crime against God and man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons \u2013 especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons \u2013 to commit such crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November, Pope Francis is expected to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima\u2013cities where the United States deployed two atomic bombs during World War II\u2013on his apostolic visit to Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To quote a sage I know (Ed Mechmann) “why in the world would they ever have blessed nuclear weapons to begin with?” This is from the Catholic Herald (UK) – Last month, a committee on ecclesial law met in Moscow and recommended ending the practice of blessing missiles and warheads, and suggested that priests should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7148,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/7148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}