Moscow Patriarch blames Haiti earthquake on crime, drugs, and corruption

Vivificat - from contemplation to action ^ | 31 January 2010 | TDJ

[Teófilo]

Robertson redux?

Folks, this according to the Moscow Times:

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill said crime, drugs and corruption caused last week's massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Haiti.

Kirill, speaking during a weekend visit to Kazakhstan, said the Haitian people bore responsibility for the calamity because they had turned away from God, the Ferghana.ru news agency reported late Monday.

"Haiti is a country of poverty and crime, famine, drugs and corruption, where people have lost their moral face," Kirill was quoted as saying.

He compared Haiti with the Dominican Republic, which are located on the same Caribbean island.

"I've visited the island divided between two countries, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. One of them is developing, while the other is affected by crimes, economic recession and political unrest. That part of the island was shattered by the earthquake," he said.

The patriarch also compared Haiti with Kazakhstan, noting that Kazakhstan has not experienced any earthquakes recently despite its seismological position, the news report said.

Asked to clarify Kirill's comments, a church spokesman said Tuesday that the news report had "misinterpreted" the patriarch's words and "taken them out of context." The spokesman, Alexander Volkov, could not immediately clarify, saying only that a transcript of the speech would appear "later" on the Moscow Patriarchate's web site.

A church scholar said Kirill's comments had astonished his foreign listeners in Almaty, but they were quite ordinary to the Orthodox faithful.

"For those who often listen to Patriarch Kirill, such statements seem quite ordinary, but I know that some people in Almaty were amazed," said the scholar, Alexander Soldatov, editor of the religious web site Portal-Credo.ru.

Kirill is known for his statements about large-scale disasters. Last year, he blamed the global financial crisis on the spiritual degradation of the world and called it a trial.

On Friday, the patriarch expressed his condolences to the Haitian president in a statement published on the Moscow Patriarchate's web site.

Kirill isn't the first religious leader to raise eyebrows over remarks about the magnitute-7 earthquake that destroyed the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, last Tuesday.

U.S. television evangelist Pat Robertson said last week that Haiti has been "cursed" because of what he called a "pact with the devil" in its history.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which is overseeing massive relief efforts in Haiti, denounced Robertson's statement. "It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Repeated calls to the Kremlin's press office for comment about Kirill's comments went unanswered Tuesday.

President Dmitry Medvedev has sent a rescue team and humanitarian supplies on four cargo jets to Haiti.

Commentary. Folks, let’s talk theodicy.

I buy His All-Holiness Patriarch Kirill’s argument when he blamed the global financial crisis “on the spiritual degradation of the world”. I have no quarrel with that, I have said so myself. Man-made disasters are almost always due to moral turpitude of one kind or another. However, as in Robertson’s comments, I fail to see a direct cause-and-effect relationship between earthquakes or other natural disasters and moral turpitude.

Look, Robertson and His All-Holiness are not alone in making these connections. After Katrina, I remember a Larry King Show in CNN in which he interviewed the Dalai Lama and a Christian preacher, I don’t remember who. But I remember the words of the Dalai Lama distinctly: he launched into a lecture of on the nature and meaning of karma and basically stated that the effects of hurricane Katrina were a consequence of New Orleans' accumulated. aggregate, collective karma. The hurricane and its accompanying disaster was simply nature’s blind, inexorable way to even the moral scale.

The Dalai Lama got away with this because he’s a media darling, he’s “one of them” and his words hardly created any waves, although he basically meant that New Orleans had it coming.

Then we had Pat Robertson and the media frenzy he caused after Haiti. He’s the media whipping boy anyway, so the reaction shouldn’t have surprise us. And now, we get the head of the world’s largest national Orthodox Church pretty much saying the same thing but this time geopolitical considerations may mute any reaction except from angry atheists who are always angry anyway, so they can be easily dismissed.

The issue for the Christian is one of theodicy, of God’s execution of his judgment in the world. I question any notion that God would smite down entire populations by means of natural disasters in order to prove his character, vent his anger. and demand abject obedience. I mean, if God were interested in killing entire populations in order to prove His point – whatever that is – He has more efficient ways at his disposal: He can reduce, in an instant, any miscreant, from the devil onward, to nonbeing, without going around the game table of destruction, mayhem, suffering, and death even once, as if he were some sort of sadist delighting in what He was wrought.

This view of God is not Christian.

God allows evil so that good may emerge from it: he has endowed His creation with freedom to proceed according to its own natural laws and plate tectonics is just such a dynamic manifold of interdependent geophysical processes that frequently results in earthquakes. God then intervenes through us, through our rendering of assistance, and healing; through the renaissance of the Haitian people’s determination to survive, persist, and move forth, and  heal their culture and to contribute to the world. In the measure that we fail to assist, heal, and minister, God “fails” through us.

One more thing: God assumed the punishment of our sins by taking them on himself, in the Person of His Son. God knows what is to struggle to survive under the heavy weight of a wooden beam, despite preceding grievous bodily trauma. He’s being there, He’s done that. God has already suffered for the sins of the Haitian people and to say this earthquake is further punishment for their sins makes a mockery of the Cross.

What happened in Haiti is giving us an opportunity to become God’s hands to others. Let’s concentrate upon doing that and stop presuming that we know how, when, and whom God punishes. This presumption serves one’s ego and feeds the passions, but communicates no real religious knowledge. Those who entertain them will have to answer to Him, whether they are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or even Tibetan Buddhists.

- Hat tip to Get Religion for the heads up.

[Teófilo]

Typos. Blunders. Mine.

[Teófilo]

PING!

[pnh102]

My guess is that most of the people who criticize both Pat Robertson and Patriarch Kirill are those who don’t help in Haiti as much as their respective organizations do.

[lump in the melting pot]

If crime, drugs and corruption bring about natural catastrophes, look for Moscow to be swallowed by a passing black hole in the near future.

Glass houses, etc...

[GonzoII]

You lost me somewhere maybe T, God doesn't chastise for sin?

Lk:13:4: Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? Lk:13:5: I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

God does chastise and He has his reasons:

Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence - In the natural incidents in our daily lives/In calamities

Natural Calamities Divine Threats ... (Why God Chastises - Repost)

At any rate I commend Pat Robertson and the Patriarch for bringing the Supernatural into the equasion of natural disasters, it is not unbiblical thinking not uncatholic.

[ricks_place]

The Haiti earthquake was not caused by any human action...

...unlike the earthquake aftermath. A nation, a people erected on crime, drugs and corruption cannot succeed. Rule of law, control of corruption, intolerance of crime, and a free economy are the key elements. Haitian economic development is a disaster and as a consequence medical services are by handout; emergency planning was nonexistent. Infrastructure was corruptly built, even the Presidential Palace collapsed. No Food stocks. No security. No clean water. The Haitian Catholic Cathedral was looted not for food but for furniture. Yet Haitian immigrants come to the USA and find success.

The earthquake was not retribution from god but the aftermath of human endeavor.

[silverleaf]

“This view of God is not Christian.”

“God allows evil ..”

erm, contradiction in terms, isn’t it?
If God “allows”, then is not God in control?

Those who presume to feed God’s flock on earth have become ever so skittish about being “judgemental”. Or about God being “judgemental”. As if there is something wrong with the act of judging. Except for judging people who still believe in judging.

So let’s all just sing kumbaya and shovel up the mess in Haiti. Move along folks. No divine intervention past or future, involved here. Anyone who says so is a nutty misguided zealot ... not that we’re judging them.

[Tzfat]

The issue for the Christian is one of theodicy, of God’s execution of his judgment in the world. I question any notion that God would smite down entire populations by means of natural disasters in order to prove his character, vent his anger. and demand abject obedience. I mean, if God were interested in killing entire populations in order to prove His point – whatever that is – He has more efficient ways at his disposal: He can reduce, in an instant, any miscreant, from the devil onward, to nonbeing, without going around the game table of destruction, mayhem, suffering, and death even once, as if he were some sort of sadist delighting in what He was wrought.

This view of God is not Christian.

Read the book of Jonah recently? This and numerous other passages cause me to wornder if you are using a theological interpretation, rather than actual Scripture to make such a broad and demonstrably false statement.

Or, are you, like Marcion et al, saying that the "deity of the Old Testament" is different from the "deity of the New Testament"?

[silverleaf]

the human part was that Haiti was quite literally built on houses of sand, that crumbed and fell and became tombs for hundreds of thousands. Who built those house/hotels/schools and by what building standards and with what materials and at what cost? With donated money? Inferior contruction inferior materials, and pockets of the greedy lined with lucre and the indifferent exposed.

As did the buildings fall in China, especially public buildings like thousands of schools, built with sand instead of cement because of human greed and graft in the contruction trade. Sharon Stone was slammed as “stupid” by the nonjudgement crowd, and censured by the Communist govt of China for referring to the mandate of heaven in that disaster. But the people know, in their hearts

[silverleaf]

Perzackly. The book of Job is about God “allowing” Satan to use various acts of nature to torture his faithful servant Job, to prove a point- to Satan. Or to God?

Pretty callous contest for those were not not consulted, like Job’s 10 children and their families destroyed in the whirlwind. But (even if not for all) .... a happy ending. Job got a new outlook on the nature and power and reasoning of God, he got a new family and God got the satisfaction of saying “neener neener” to Satan.

Pardon my snark ...bad morning.

[GonzoII]

"He’s being there, He’s done that. God has already suffered for the sins of the Haitian people and to say this earthquake is further punishment for their sins makes a mockery of the Cross."

You're sounding like Protestant T, it follows from the above statement that voluntary penance is useless, in order to do our part in removing the temporal punishment for forgiven sin.

[RegulatorCountry]

I question any notion that God would smite down entire populations by means of natural disasters in order to prove his character, vent his anger. and demand abject obedience.

Maybe the author should try reading the Bible, to resolve the question.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

You and the crazy Cong. Grayson would agree then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MT9U7SL-Sk

[reg45]

Crime, drugs, and corruption did not cause the earthquake - that was a random result of plate tectonics. However, they magnified the effect of the earthquake on the infrastructure of that benighted country.

[ricks_place]

Yes

[aruanan]

And didn't God wipe out the entire population of the world, minus eight, by means of a flood? And wipe out the entire population of Ai by means of the Israelites? And whack thousands of Israelites fresh out of Egypt for idolatry and sexual immorality? And weren't we told that he did this as examples for us, upon whom the ends of the world are come, so we won't think that, having been delivered from our spiritual Egypt, we're free to party down (I Cor 10)?

[silverleaf]

Revelations

and on that final day, the trumpet shall sound.

Maybe it will sound like a 10.5 earthquake.

[RegulatorCountry]

Doesn’t sound like any “Protestant” in my acquaintance.

[GonzoII]

"Doesn’t sound like any “Protestant” in my acquaintance."

How about it sounds like "Protestant doctrine"?...Not to start a debate on penance....

[Paradox]

If God was really into causing all this catastrophe, then why does San Fransisco, Berkley, and Rio still stand?