Patriarch Kirill Can Go To Hell

Photo by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

You either die young, like only the good do, or you live long enough to see plenary indulgences for crusaders become a thing again.

Sometimes you type something and just sit and stare at it for a while not believing you had to. That right there was such a time.

US News & World Report:

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said that Russian soldiers who die in the war against Ukraine will be cleansed of all their sins, days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s first mobilisation since World War Two.

Patriarch Kirill is a key Putin ally and backer of the invasion. He has previously criticised those who oppose the war and called on Russians to rally round the Kremlin.

“Many are dying on the fields of internecine warfare,” Kirill, 75, said in his first Sunday address since the mobilisation order. “The Church prays that this battle will end as soon as possible, so that as few brothers as possible will kill each other in this fratricidal war.”

“But at the same time, the Church realises that if somebody, driven by a sense of duty and the need to fulfil their oath … goes to do what their duty calls of them, and if a person dies in the performance of this duty, then they have undoubtedly committed an act equivalent to sacrifice. They will have sacrificed themselves for others. And therefore, we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed.”

“You see, this is why I prefer Catholicism,” quipped Ed Morrissey before unloading on this desperate perversion of all things holy. “All we need is confession.”

Unlike Ed, I’m not Catholic. Being a Baptist has the advantages of eternal security, all the casserole you can eat, and no funny hats. What I am, though, is someone who has spent a lifetime working on anger issues, my temper, and various other things to try and better control my thoughts, feelings, and actions. All three of those have meant a whole lot of asking forgiveness for sins of omission and commission of both heaven and those here on earth who have to put up with me.

But raging at charlatans is one of those things that I let through my disdain filters. Bootlicking, madman enabling, theological terrorists like Patriarch Kirill deserve all the unfiltered invective mortal man can direct at a person.

The historical abuses of untold millions at the joint hands of religion and warfare always come through a human conduit. A conduit often cloaked in vestments and spouting out religiosity wrapped in buzzwords like “duty” and “sacrifice,” which supposedly will gain you heaven, to the nodding approval of the earthly tyrant the charlatan really serves. History usually records well the wickedness of the tyrant, but far too often does not equally remember the enablers who warped faith and belief into a weapon for that same tyrant to wage war on others while oppressing the very faithful the scheme is forced upon.

You wouldn’t expect to be dealing with crusade-era promises of forgiveness of sins as long as you go off and kill the right kind of others for your liege in the Year of Our Lord 2022. But the same wickedness that dwelled in the hearts of rulers who falsely promised forgiven sins endures in the sucking chest wound where the heart and soul should be in men like Putin and Kirill. Their sins against all of humanity are glaringly clear, and Kirill’s vestments and duplicitous talk of forgiving sins can’t cover his role in the blood on Putin’s hands.

Charlatans like Kirill always prefer to hide behind their titles and pageantry, and be off to the side of the leader standing in the front to take all the blame and any consequences that might come. We should mark such men well though, who use God as an excuse for mankind’s worst behavior toward their fellow humans. We should ignore the tainted religiosity that comes out of his unclean mouth, see clearly the blatant worship of earthly power he truly serves, and respond to him with the soundest of moral and theological arguments:

Go to hell, Patriarch Kirill, and as the old timers used to say, may none of the righteous be anywhere near you when you yourself are judged.