SO WHO IS “SODOMITE”?

The war of compromises within the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is reaching a new level.

The events of 2014 were a turning point in the history of modern Ukraine. “Maidan”, the falling of the Crimea away and the war in Donbass created a new political reality in the Eastern Europe. The impossibility of winning in an open military confrontation prompted the Ukrainian leaders to seek the asymmetrical forms of struggle with their eastern enemy. In an effort to hurt the Kremlin, the president Petro Poroshenko attempted to open a new front and this time it is a church front. Within several years, Poroshenko has been successively unwinding the harness of an enormous political intrigue in which not only the Ukrainian schismatic churchmen, but even the patriarch of Constantinople, have been implicated finally. As a result of a skillfully executed operation, Poroshenko was able to secure autocephaly for the allied Ukrainian church hierarchs. Perhaps the president thought that by sowing the wind he would reap the votes of the voters, but instead he brought a religious storm to the country.

The very formation process of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was accompanied by splits and scandals that shook Ukraine’s Orthodox community. However, the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not stop raise the devil even after it gained the independence. On the contrary, in the course of the unfolding battle, the opposing parties began to use more and more sophisticated political techniques. The backstabbing became so fierce that its details were repeatedly leaked to the media. Apparently, the participants of the conflict quickly realized that by keeping it contained, they would be able to split with their opponent more quickly. Earlier, sex scandals involving the members of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine had been meticulously hushed up, but now this information weapon was also used.

The first, who made the mistake, was Metropolitan Vladimir Ladik, who signed the document in support of a gay pride parade in Nikolaev in the winter of 2020. https://raskolam.net/ua/28340-%D0%BF%D1%86%D1%83-%D1%82%D0%B0-%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9-%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4-%D1%83-%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%94%D0%B2%D1%96.

This policy change by the Metropolitan, who had just recently stigmatized LGBT, was not ignored by his opponents and the press. The last one has debated the church hierarch for several months. Even the Metropolitan’s official statement that this document was a fake could not prevent this from happening. The situation was made especially acute by the fact that Ladik belonged to the supporters of the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Epiphanius. The accusation of Ladik’s complicity with LGBT also tarnished over Epiphanius himself. This could not go unanswered.

No sooner the gay-parade scandal had subsided than the offended party hurried to strike back. An unknown person gave journalist and politician Anatoly Shariy the correspondence from a hacked phone of Metropolitan Alexander (Drabinko), which indicated that the hierarch is no stranger to the male community. This time the scandal was even bigger. All the more, there were the people close to Metropolitan Epiphanius himself, the formal head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, among the people directly involved in the recording transfer.

We must say that Epiphanius was not limited to an unofficial attack on his opponents. Based on the same scandal with the hacked correspondence, he refused to include Drabinko in “Holy Synod” of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Is it any wonder that this decision caused an explosion of indignation among Epiphanius’ opponents?

However, the situation was not limited to “sodomite” battles. Another member of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, an active political supporter of Petro Poroshenko, Bishop Dedyukhin (prior of St. Michael’s Church in Poltava), widely known in the narrow circles of the Verkhovna Rada as a lobbyist for the legalization of prostitution and sex industry in Ukraine (https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=2256375064680119&story_fbid=2374525142865110) managed to get into a scandal involving the heterosexual pornography. In particular, he almost openly supported the deputy Bohdan Yaremenko, whom the journalists implicated the pornography watching during the sessions of the Verkhovna Rada (https://news.obozrevatel.com/ukr/politics/ne-stav-zadovolnyati-potrebi-svyaschenik-znajshov-plyus-v-seks-skandali-v-radi.htm).

We can assume that the president Poroshenko, by skillfully waving the hetman’s mace, smiling and alternately kissing the battling hierarchs, could hardly stretch them to different corners of the political ring. However, Vladimir Zelensky is too inexperienced and delicate for such a task. This means that “sodomitic carnage” will continue in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The scandal with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has reached the international level, the publications about the sexual predilections of priests of this structure have reached even the Lebanese media http://alwataniyeh.com/2021/04/15/ocu-%d8%aa%d8%af%d8%b9%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ab%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%8a%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%88%d9%83%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a7/.

We can only guess what the representatives of those local churches, that hastened to recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, think about this war of compromise. It is very likely that the leaders of the Greek (Hellenic) Church, the Alexandria Patriarchate and the Cypriot Orthodox Church have already regretted more than once that they got involved in the political games of Petro Poroshenko and his American patrons. But now the other representatives of the Orthodox world will think before official recognizing of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. After all, no one can be sure that during the unfolding “Maidan” within the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, even more unusual dirt will not be brought to light.