Woe to all of us. Woe to the children of a murdered mother and the killer-priest. Woe to the family. A great mountain. Violence in the family priest. How is that possible? If there is, why? About the terrible tragedy, the murder of a priest of his spouse, talking with a psychologist, rector of the Institute of Christian psychology, Archpriest Andrei Lorgus.
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Archpriest Andrei Lorgus
Firstly, this story should be treated as a huge human tragedy. Killed the family. The woman was lost. Killed the man who became a murderer.
Secondly, it’s a real family tragedy. Although the murders on home soil, as they call it lawyers, a lot, but it is impossible to prevent all in a heap. Each family is a world, a cosmos. And if family was such a terrible threshold, it’s just awful. Third. It is not only a tragedy for the family, but a tragedy of society.
Fourth, killed a Christian family, the family priest, because the killer is a priest. And we should not treat this tragedy otherwise than as a tragedy for our whole Church. It is simply impossible to underestimate what happened. Woe to all of us. Grief to all participants. Woe to the children of a murdered mother and the killer-priest. Woe to the family. A great mountain.
This event certainly attracts attention, is the desire to perform and to understand how, why it happened, typical or not. But while we can’t draw conclusions, though, because not know all the circumstances, perhaps we’ll never know. That is why I should hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened, and what motives moved the man. We know almost nothing.
But for all of us significantly, that fact is recognized, the killer is known. More importantly, the information came from and confirmed by the Patriarchy and we don’t need to guess.
Family violence is not reduced, but we have no information about that in the priestly families, it’s very common. This issue was not studied. To say that violence in such families more arbitrarily. We have no statistics. To say, as some are already trying that there is a definite tendency among Orthodox to violence, even strange. Well no, of course such tendency.
The Orthodox believers there is another tendency, which may be the subject of study and commentary is overvalued the significance of marriage. Marriage for an Orthodox person is a tremendous value. That is why Orthodox spouses are committed, come what may save the marriage.
How can I comment on this case? Again, none of us knows the motives of the crime. We must refrain from commenting, because it is ethical. It will be a Christian. Give your speculation is empty and unnecessary. But I can share personal observations.
Among known to me of the priestly families (and I know a significant number of them not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg but also in other dioceses: Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, two Urals,two Volga region) I have never witnessed any violence. Of course, these are my friends. It is obvious that they differ from someone else. But among my friends such is not present.
However, the fact that violence in the families of priests exists, I am willing to testify as a priest-psychologist. I’m taking advice and talking to me and the wives of priests and their children, and the priests themselves. Violence exists, but we can’t judge more or less violence in the priestly families compared to others.
– You acknowledge the fact, but do you have any understanding why this is happening? All because of the hard life of the priests who carried the burden of their duties or is it an exception it is an example of psychopathy?
– Domestic violence always has at least three sources of reasons. This does not mean that each of them always affects the situation, but can influence.
The first cause is itself a crisis situation, which gets a person or family. If people in resource condition (when there are internal forces to find an adequate way out – ed.), he is not inclined to violence. In a crisis situation, it is much easier and faster it breaks down.
The second source of violence, the crisis of national scope. In Russian society violence thrives. We have a surplus of violence throughout. Violence is used at work, in a social environment, at intersections of roads, in the subway, in buses and in the Church too. Sometimes priests have to separate the members, which is something not shared: a candle, a place right in the dogmas. Think of the wars that are going on close to us territories. Remember the violence in prisons, police violence and Regardie the demonstrators, violence in movies, on television, on the Internet. Everywhere it is generously poured on us.
Violence so much that they become infected with children, women, men.
Social source of violence one of the causes of domestic violence, but more often the cause of domestic violence is the third – the crisis of the family. And the specific case is likely an example of such a crisis.
Photo: intex-press.by
Family crises are natural and irregular (non-normative). They were and always will be. This is not going anywhere. The family crisis is not to blame. It is senseless to blame one and justify the other, because a family crisis is a crisis of the family system. All other reasons are only the conditions of a family crisis, and violence – one of the consequences.
Let’s say on the other. Feature family crime that they are hidden. Participants – victims and perpetrators – are sticking together, do not want and are afraid of publicity, hide the violence from the law, from people, from the Church.
Why? Because all the parties love each other as I can. Love and at the same time cause each other pain.
But the trouble is that if we are silent about the crime, we encourage. We encourage it also, if you do not accept and turn a blind eye to the situation leading to the crime.
Domestic violence in any family, not just the Church – it is a huge social and personal problem. And to help people avoid family violence, need work, need to do wife asked for help, asked her.
We must do everything possible to attend to the prevention, establishment of a system of assistance to people in crisis. Now enough theories, experts, books. We can, can, do, but it is important that this be recognized.
With regard to psychopathic natures, they are and will be. I’m afraid that’s not the cause of the tragedy Ugreshskaya priest. I’m afraid that’s what a family crisis.
– And what about “the wife fear her husband”, “be patient – this is your cross”?
– “Religious” motives used by different people in the Mercantile purposes. It is a fact. In the Church have including fanatics who find justification for their cruelty in the lines of Scripture. People come with aggression and also find an excuse there. Come to Church including fear.
Religion in General for the many convenient stuff that could cover their intentions and fears. But it is not the property of religion. Is its unprotected feature. Often men are turning to Orthodoxy, looking for brides in the Church, to set in their Church family the principles of “Patriarchal despotism”. Yes, a lot of these, but fortunately, it is not a mass phenomenon.
The Church in the last ten years has changed. She looked younger. A new generation of young men and women of the “Domostroy” not dream the form of domestic sentiment, they deeply interesting. They are competent, know what is violence, aggression, what is marriage and family. They create a new Church atmosphere. But the instances of religious manipulation for the implementation of the aggression will be. And so in the pastoral work, we need to be watchful, to detect even a suspicion of domestic violence.
Photo: anothercity.ru
The priest has a charisma and the confidence that spouses ask uncomfortable questions: if everything is in order, and you respect each other? The psychologist has no right to ask it, and the priest has that right! Such tragedies show us that one of the pastoral task is to prevent such cases, to see, to notice, to bisnovat, pray for the families that are experiencing situations of violence. But for this we need the priest to teach. Workshops that my colleagues and I are conducting, for example, with the crisis psychologist Sergei Borzov is only a drop in the sea.
To find the culprits and punish is an attempt to take the easy solution. Prevention and aid is not a judicial punishment, not social care, which itself is a violent method of trying to get into a family and to solve her problem. The problem I see is that the priests not only in preaching, but always talked about the value of life as the Supreme value.
For the Orthodox Christian family is a value, but human life is certainly worth more than a marriage. And if a spouse is a choice, life or marriage, truly spiritual, and truly Christian choice is life. Alas, it is Christian value has lost popularity today.
When we face death, murder, suicide, we understand that people in some circumstances, the terms were brought to such a state that life had ceased to be their value. That’s the tragedy.
Death somehow is now seen as a way out and solution to the situation. But it’s a disaster, a disaster awareness, disaster human relations. It should not be never, under any conditions. Any problem can be solved in life, not in death. When a person attempts to kill another or himself, in this state of the disease, in clouding the minds of his mind he dream of a way out. But this is a terrible mistake. Death is not an exit. The solution to any problem is just life.
Interviewed By Daria Rowena