The Telegraph reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cast Russia as the moral arbiter of the world” last week during his annual state of the nation address.
“In his 70-minute televised speech from an ornate Kremlin hall, Mr Putin said traditional family values where a bulwark against ‘so-called tolerance – genderless and infertile.’”
Putin’s words come as the culmination of several noteworthy moves in the last year. Last February, Putin called for the Russian Orthodox Church to have more influence in Russia. He has led Russia in resisting the advance of the gay agenda: gay pride parades and the distribution of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" to minors have been banned. And just this last November Putin met with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Pictures from the historic meeting show both Putin and Francis kissing an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
As the caption to a meme based on the meeting put it:
But not everyone is taking seriously Putin’s newfound moral leadership.
“Putin will do or say anything to promote his nation and his own power,” says Anthony Esolen, who teaches literature at Providence College. “Russia is not the moral compass of Russia, let alone the world.”
Author John Zmirak is similarly skeptical. “We must be suspicious of Putin using the Russian church to support his deeply imperfect regime, which rests on crony capitalism and semi-authoritarian tactics. Still, the Putin regime's policies are much more closely aligned to the natural law than those promoted by the Obama administration. Given that both men were trained as Marxists, Putin has come much closer to the vision of the good that animated the American founders than has our beloved president.”
Associate Professor of Theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville John Bergsma sees some good things coming from Putin’s Russia but says major problems remain. “On the positive side, Russia has suddenly become an ally of pro-family NGO's at the UN, in particular being one of the few developed nations to speak or take action against the ‘sexual left’, the international pro-homosexual movement that seeks to glamorize homosexual activity and enshrine it as a human right. On the other hand, the Russian government still suffers from corruption at multiple levels, protection of human rights and adequate policing are lacking in various parts of Russia, and the Russian family structure has not recovered from decades of enforced atheist materialism.”
“Abortion is readily available, abortion and divorce rates are still far above those of the U.S., marriages are uncommon and short-lived. Ironically, Putin himself just divorced his wife earlier this year. So while the Russian ruling party is realizing the need for a return to laws that protect and promote the traditional family, the nation has a long way to go before it becomes an ideal society.”
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But what about the U.S.? Can it still claim the moral high ground?
“Not in any way given abortion, pornagraphy, and the destruction of marriage,” says Church historian Fr. C. John McCloskey.
Esolen agrees. “[W]e in America sure are not the ‘moral compass of the world,’ since we have abjured the very notion of a moral law binding all people, in all ages. We are instead the amoral confuser of the world's compass; our money and power, and the immense gravitational pull of our degraded mass entertainment, overpower any feeble attempts by other peoples to orient themselves toward the truth. We are the sorts of people that our great-grandparents would not have wanted our grandparents to associate with.”
Zmirak stands by America’s founding principles but thinks they have been largely lost. “In political terms, the United States was a magnificent experiment in liberty. I fear that the liberty our ancestors treasured is slipping away, as more citizens seek the stifling security of a European-style welfare state, which imposes its secular values on every citizen by controlling ever larger swathes of the economy. (Soon there may be no more Catholic hospitals. How long will we be permitted Catholic schools?) Russia emerged from a hellish totalitarian system, and has made many strides in the right direction, even as we slide down the path to stagnation and bureaucratic tyranny.”
“Have the two countries met in the middle yet? I'll say this: Thanks to the HHS mandate, Russia is a freer country for Christians than the U.S. is. Appalling as that sounds, I'm afraid it's true. God help us.”
Is there a moral leader left in the world?
“Pope Francis has emerged as the world's conscience and moral compass,” says Bergsma. “Time magazine's designation of him as ‘Person of the Year’ is effectively a recognition of that fact.”
The following Aleteia Experts contributed to this article:
John Bergsma is Associate Professor of Theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He specializes in Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Anthony Esolen teaches Renaissance English Literature and the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College. A senior editor for Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, he writes regularly for Touchstone, First Things, Catholic World Report, Magnificat, This Rock, and Latin Mass.
Fr. C. John McCloskey is a Church historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC. His personal website is www.frmccloskey.com.
John Zmirak is the author, most recently, of The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism. His columns are archived at The Bad Catholic’s Bingo Hall.
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