Well-known director Alvis Hermanis pointed out in an interview with Latvijas Radio that the media in the West, including Latvia, is dominated by aggressively defamatory attitudes towards the Catholic Church. Why this is happening, and why the Christian tradition is so important in our daily lives, in this conversation with Leons Taivans, a professor at the University of Latvia, expert in Oriental studies and a researcher of various religions.
Here's what Hermanis said: “Look at it any way you want, but we live in a civilization created by the Catholic Church. And we still continue to live in it by inertia, which is already coming to an end, but the beginning is there. My students at the Academy of Culture are definitely being told only some nonsense and rubbish about the Church and religion, I am absolutely sure of that. The context from which our European culture and civilization originated is distorted and wrong today." Are University of Latvia students also being told such nonsense and rubbish about the Church and religion?
What can I say? Basically, they aren't being told anything. That would be more accurate. As a result, there is a historical break in people's consciousness. People don't know what's what. In Soviet times, this was an ideological issue, and all these pages had to be torn out. There was a small renaissance of religion some five years after regaining independence, when the Church was rehabilitated. Theological education resumed, but five years later the matter began to move in some strange direction. If we were once taught scientific atheism, now the Faculty of Theology is the Faculty of Scientific Atheism, because scientific atheism is what is taught there. Such is the evolution.
To some extent, this echoes Hermanis' statement that nonsense and rubbish is being told of the Church.
It could be so. The main problem with the Western Church is that it entered into a dialogue with ideologies that perhaps should not be talked to at all. How should the Church be defined? I work with and tell students a lot about religion comparisons. What is religion from a secular point of view? We have the idea that it is a system of ritual services. That is not the case. Religion is a worldview. It is a definite philosophy. It may or may not include some supernatural concepts. For example, Buddhism does not have any supernatural concepts, but it is still a religion. So religion is a system of beliefs. Catholicism has a transcendental, timeless dimension and seeks to look where a man with his physical eyes and natural powers cannot. Catholicism, however, has tried to do so. It plays a very important role in the development of humanity. Especially in the development of Europe and the so-called Western civilization. How this mechanism works is already a separate issue.
The second important thing is that the Church retains a certain experience of generations. Insights into family, life and death, ethical relationships between people, etc. Every religion accumulates this cultural experience and reduces it to some kind of extract that is sacralized over time and presented to people as a religiously authoritative text. When religion is washed out, when it disappears, then, as Claude Lévi-Strauss once noted in his research, the society in question also disappears. It is absorbed by another, bigger and stronger at that moment, or people degrade to a feral state. Religion is a very important civilizing element.
What's happening in Europe? This religion is dying in Europe. Religions have changed over hundreds and thousands of years, and for some difficult to understand reason they die at about two thousand years of age. This is happening in Europe and Islam, a religion that is 700 years younger, is taking the place of Christianity.
Let us be clear, what did you mean when you said that the Church entered into a dialogue with ideologies that should not be talked to at all?
By that, I meant things like feminism. Let me explain. Christianity has its own logic. Feminism would have no place in the Church. The position of the Orthodox Church is that we do not discuss this issue. No conversations about it. No, and that's it. There is no place for feminism here. The Catholic Church starts discussing it, justifying itself, and further issues begin - gay marriage and everything that follows. Okay, I have nothing against gays, but if the scriptures say that there is no heavenly blessing for such a relationship, then what next? Shall we start revising the Bible? Shall we throw it out? Or do we stick to it, because it holds some meaning and we will look for it? In the West, Protestant churches allow gay marriage, female pastors, female bishops. As far as I have studied this question, it is one great story of sorrow. I have not found a single popular spiritual person, a preacher among women. Why? Because the structure of Christianity is built on other principles. Christianity belongs to the type of religion where women have no place.
Let's go into a little more detail here. Today, in the Western world, women and men have gained almost complete equality and in many areas women have overtaken and even dominated men, such as higher education. The question therefore arises as to why this sex discrimination should be maintained in the Church if it is so far removed from reality.
In our notions, the clergy is a position and women can hold any positions - to be a firefighter, a soldier, an athlete, a boxer, a general, etc. This is not about that. The world of religion is built differently. What is worship or liturgy in the classical sense? It is, so to speak, theater. Let me explain. Scientifically speaking, it would be an actualization of a religious myth. In simple language, a theater in which the role of Jesus Christ is played by a pastor or priest. Auxiliary pastors play the role of angels and represent the people. Now imagine that the role of Jesus Christ is played by a woman. That cannot be the case. This is profanation because this religious story must be lived through in liturgical activity. When such changes are introduced, the story becomes absurd. This story, this religious myth, is of great importance because it has an enormous impact on the whole of the culture. What is the basis of Christian culture? Christianity is inherited from Judaism, which in turn originates from ancient Egyptian mythology. The myth of how people originated has a huge impact on culture.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, man is born of the tears of the creator-god and the demigods - that is, the lower-ranking gods - of the sweat of the creator-god. When a person dies, he enters the kingdom of the god Osiris, and the name Osiris is added to his name. So after death, he is deified. This tradition is converted to Christianity, and in the text of the Old Testament, God creates man in His own face and likeness. So he is like God. Not with his bodily aspects, but with his intellect, spiritual qualities, free will. From here, through religious texts, an idea is formed, which later develops into Christian freedom, later enlightenment and the secular version that began there - in Ancient Egypt.
For comparison, Islam takes over another tradition. The tradition of Mesopotamia. How did man originate in the Mesopotamian tradition? In this tradition, the gods are tired of working. In the council of the gods, they summon the inventor of the gods, Enki, and tell him: make slaves for us. Enki makes two agender beings out of the sand of the seabed, but those beings do not move, they cannot do anything because they need divine blood to start moving. The gods are now thinking about which one to kill to pour blood on those creatures. In the Semitic tradition, human life is in the blood. Therefore, you cannot eat meat with blood. The soul must not be eaten. The gods think about where to get this blood. One of the gods has to die, but no one wants to die. They think and think until finally they decide that it should be the abominable god of chaos Kingu, who wanders around there somewhere. Then the god Anu is instructed to kill Kingu. He kills Kingu, and the blood of the evil god of its chaos is poured into those beings, and they become human beings. Therefore, in this tradition of Mesopotamia, man is inherently evil, disgusting, and chaotic, because he has the blood of this Kingu. He is not like God as in the tradition of Ancient Egypt. These mythical religious precepts gave rise to cultural variations and the two main branches of religion, Islam and Christianity. The central doctrine of Islam states that there is nothing godlike in man. He arises from the human seed, which, as stated in several places in the Quran, is a disgusting substance. This also makes the main difference between these two religions.
When we try to interfere with all this mythological construction, we dismantle something very important there, and as a result, the whole building that has been built over hundreds of years collapses. Therefore, there is no need to reform traditional matters.
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