The tradition of Christian priests blessing troops about to go to war, or into battle is a long one ....
 |
| Blessing Satan |
..... and I suppose that some weapons have also been blessed through the ages, but I suspect that in the West, this would be rather on an adhoc basis, when an individual priest might bless an aircraft, or possibly a ship.
However in the Eastern Orthodox tradition things have developed differently, especially in the newly restored Russian Orthodox Church, where the Church and the State have resumed their close relationship with hardly a blip, after the collapse of the communist state.
So much so, that in recent years, the church is becoming ever closer to the military (much like the time of the Tsars), and priests had taken to sprinkling holy water on, and blessing missiles, tanks and other large weapons. In 2015 the Head of the Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kyrill had defended this practise, after a nuclear missile named 'Satan' had allegedly been blessed.
Now however there has reportedly been a change of policy, after an Orthodox Church commission in 2020 recommended that blessings be restricted to servicemen and their weapons rather than large weapons .... however, with events in the Ukraine, its possible that the practice has resumed.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.
Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.
Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.
Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.
Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.