What Will Happen To Lukashenka After Anathema Was Imposed On Him?

This is the last resort used by the church.

At the end of November, Head of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Archbishop Sviataslau Login from Toronto, during a divine service announced the excommunication of Aliaksandr Lukashenka from the church, and imposed an anathema on him. Doctor of Theology Iryna Dubianetskaya in an interview with Radio Svaboda tells what this means.

Why is anathema popularly associated with a curse?

- Iryna, why is an anathema - the act of excommunicating a person from the church - popularly called and considered a curse? It is known that the Church does not curse anyone, and the curse itself is considered a sin among believers.

- To tell you the truth, an anathema and a curse are not so distant concepts. An anathema functions through the centuries as an excommunication - it is a complete, total excommunication from the church community. The very Greek word means donation, offering. In the Hebrew Bible and in the Greek translation, it is used in two directions: as an offering dedicated to God, and as something separate, forbidden. For example, in the book of Leviticus, this is a prohibition to apply what is dedicated to God.

And among the people, anathema is associated with a curse precisely because complete excommunication from a society meant just a fall, a falling out of human society. According to practice, this means that a person ceases to be a person equal to others.

In the New Testament we encounter anathema several times in Paul's letters. One example is the first letter to the Corinthians, when Paul says that no one can anathema Jesus or no one can call him Lord except the Holy Spirit.

The meaning of anathema as excommunication from human society gradually gained its significance, but already in the early Church it functions in this way.

And in the Middle Ages, an anathema was fully a curse.

This is the last resort used by the church.

Head of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Login, today, during a service at the Cathedral of St. Cyril Turau in Toronto, anathematized Aliaksandr Lukashenka, and excommunicated him from the church.

There is a small communication and a large, total one. An example from the 11th century can be mentioned, when an anathema was imposed on the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Henry IV because of a conflict with Pope Gregory VII. Then at once all the German princes were ready to overthrow him from the emperors and choose another. He had to walk barefoot for three days across the Alps and wait for the Pope to return him to church. The pope did return him, and he again became the emperor, since he could not be under an anathema.

The meaning of an anathema for someone who does not belong to the church

- From what you said, it follows that the people, understanding an anathema as a curse, are not very far from the truth. But does an anathema matter if it is handed down to a person who formally belongs to another church or does not belong to any church at all?

- In fact, it does not make sense, since anathema is all the same excommunication, excommunication from the church community. It is impossible to disconnect from the community a person who does not belong to it.

So Lukashenka's anathema from the head of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church is more of a symbolic gesture, more likely in the popular sense.

An anathema is always a last resort. There are always conversations prior to it, attempts not to bring to the last step.

Corrosion or schism can be the cause of anathema. A person's bad behavior cannot be the reason for excommunication from the church community. There are other measures by which they try to return the sinner to the community, for example, the prohibition of the sacrament, etc.

Orthodox churches today can officially impose an anathema. In the Catholic Church, the anathema was used for a long time, but today Catholics have no anathema. There is communication. Anathema is also excommunication, but today for Catholics it is a prohibition of the sacrament for a certain time or a small excommunication. And Catholics no longer have much excommunication, the latest edition of canon law does not provide for this.

So here's how to summarize. It is impossible to separate a person from the church community if he does not belong to it. Therefore, when the fact of an anathema regarding such a person happens, then we are dealing with the second, popular meaning of anathema - as a designation of the most bad deeds that this person did.

- The letter that I received from Canada with the text of the anathema also contained the proposal of Archbishop Sviataslau Login to the Minsk protesters the next Sunday after Lukashenka was anathematized not to hold a march, but everyone should come to churches without banners and flags and shout out three times in chorus: “Anathema, anathema , anathema.” How would you comment on this proposal, which, as you know, was not voiced publicly and did not become a fact?

- In any case, this is a new idea in the two thousand year history of anathemas. Believers can never anathematize anyone, the highest church hierarchs do this. Believers can react to anathema, realizing that this person does not belong to them now, he is an outcast. This is how it was in history. Therefore, it is very important for the anathematized person to return to the community.

So the head of the BAOC can anathematize the believers of this church. And in relation to the believers of another church community, he can do this only symbolically.

So his proposal is not canonical, not ecclesiastical, but social.

What will happen to the person who was excommunicated

- If we talk about the intangible, unearthly meaning of anathemas. In your opinion, does such an act have a meaning and some kind of supernatural, mystical or transcendental meaning? In other words, what will happen to the person who has been excommunicated? Let it happen on another continent.

- I think it depends on the person. Let's remember the gospel: if you go to sacrifice and you know that your brother has something against you, then lay down your sacrifice, go make peace with your brother and only then make the sacrifice. This means that a person should strive to ensure that there are the least of those who negatively treat him.

How important this is in public life and politics depends on the people themselves.

Another old, early meaning of anathema is that which is nasty in the eyes of God, unacceptable to him. In early texts such a meaning can be found. In later texts, no one takes the responsibility to say what is vexatious to God and what is not. But the last conversion is still made between man and God, the last judgment is still the judgment of God, not people. Therefore, they stopped using anathema in this sense.

But in the popular understanding it is so. In many different languages, an unacceptable thing is called anathema - not as a declaration of an anathema, but as this thing or act itself. Here is the phrase: “the idea of an alien institution of man is an anathema to modern science.” In other words, a thing unacceptable for science. The word “anathema” is widely used in modern English in such a common, rather than ecclesiological, sense.

Therefore, a person with an anathema imposed on him decides for himself how to live further.

There is God’s vengeance

- You said that God's judgment is the last. Priests urge people not to take revenge. But among the people there is a thought that there is God's vengeance. Therefore, the question is for you not only as a theologian, but also as a person close to the church. People very often tell stories about sinners who committed serious crimes, and who, even during their lifetime, were somehow punished. People are convinced that this is the punishment of heaven, which sometimes falls on the descendants of sinners. And here's the question. Do sinners pay for their sins while still in their mortal life?

- We cannot know that. People want to think that this is so. The principle of man's relationship to man is well known - judge not and you will no be judged. Nobody canceled it.

In public life, there are other mechanisms for dealing with unacceptable phenomena, including in a moral sense. This is also public disobedience, which testifies to the unacceptability of what the authorities are doing. The community regulates this in its own way.

In Islam, if a fatwa is imposed on a person, then every Muslim, if he meets this person, has the obligation to kill him. There is no such thing in Christianity. God loves everyone, you can hate sin, but you cannot hate the sinner. The task is to stop, to make harmful actions impossible, and not the one who does them. After all, the one who makes them still has his own relationship with God.

Hence, the relationship between man and God is critical.

The relationship between a person and a community is a relationship of a different order, they are always inconclusive. Society has its own mechanisms of influence, but it has no right to say that it knows what God wants.