The 2020–2021 pandemic provoked a fairly broad discussion about possible ways to minimize the risks of coronavirus infection in Orthodox churches. The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church has proposed a number of sanitary and restrictive measures, including disinfection of liars during the sacrament of the Eucharist. The controversy about the possibility or impossibility of contracting the COVID-19 virus in the church in general or through communion in particular unfolded among the faithful, and the reaction of the Orthodox society to the preventive measures introduced exposed a range of broad problems that exist in the Church. One of them is the unspoken division into “orthodox” and “liberal” believers. Many representatives of the clergy (including His Holiness the Patriarch) broadcast ideas about the adoption of forced sanitary and restrictive measures in churches, including the disinfection of liars for communion. Adherents of the Orthodox view consider the disinfection of liars to be a manifestation of lack of faith, blasphemy and renovationism, while giving arguments about many years of service, during which there was not a single case of infection with any diseases after consuming the Gifts (priests or deacons use the Holy Gifts from the Chalice after hundreds of people have received communion from it). The disobedience of the сlergy by some dioceses and monasteries, the intensification of the activities of radical Orthodox groups, adherents of the ideas of Covid-dissidence are symptoms of the brewing intra-church crisis that manifested itself as a result of the pandemic of 2020–2021.
Keywords: pandemic, COVID-19, Orthodoxy, faith, сhurch, Covid-dissidence, the Eucharist, sacrament
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2022_1_61
About the author
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Tamara V. Tsareva – Candidate of Historical Sciences, Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of RAS; |