@Monkey:
Another fun fact about Orthodox Christianity that you are papering over with a Catholic frame of reference, is they don't give all that much of a crap about divorce.
Because they're not. Patriarchs are like much much more powerful bishops in a sense. They have their jurisdiction and flock, but they're part of something larger than that at the same time.
The Eastern Orthodox church is not a category of churches, it is one church. Just much much less centralized than the Catholic church.
All Eastern Orthodox churches are in communion with one another, with Constantinople/Istanbul as the mutually recognized center.
Basically this.1. I am talking historically, in most modern Orthodox countries the governments aren't doing that sort of thing. Because most of those governments are no longer authoritarian.
In the cases of Russia (and Belarus) obviously we have a different story.2. But the main difference is you were making some sort of bizarre simultaneous theological attack on the Eastern Orthodox church while also rightly attacking the agenda of those in charge secular wise and individually. As if the state of the Russian Orthodox church at current is some sort of inherent all time sin it bears. Really the confusion arises from your confused original premise. Because you weren't separating them.
The problem and maybe the miscommunication is that instead of attacking the crusted over conservative assholes in charge of the Russian Orthodox church, secular and otherwise, it sounded like you were plain out attacking the church period.
Which let's be honest you have a history of doing.I mean I get that you're a hardcore Euro style secularist, but the legacy that has from Catholic history just doesn't apply so well here.
The church is just another bludgeon and puppet of nasty states whose agendas are the usual authoritarian shit. Not the nasty authoritarian club itself as in old school Catholicism.
Interesting stuff about the orthodoxy, the graph was particularly informative. I also kind of see the distinction you make between modern "independent churches" and sects ( while I'm not versed enough in theology to neccessarly fully see the difference between the concepts)…
And if you put my post in the context of other of my past posts I kind of get why you could have construded my post as an attack on the religion as a whole (while I was talking about the russian church on which your opinion doesn't seem to be very positive either).
As a whole, yeah, I think religion is nocive. But that doesn't mean I don't believe in freedom of thought. Only that I believe that religion should be criticized... strongly. Because else, things will never change...