From George Weigel (in two venues):
A last, and singularly sinister, element in Putin’s refinement of Leninist political methodology has involved his efforts to buy, through various fronts, as much as he can of the Western pro-life and pro-family movements. This is another genuine novum. Stupid businessmen and financiers are as old as Lenin’s famous observation, almost a century ago, that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which he would hang them. Historically ill-informed and ideologically blinded politicians are a lot older than that. But the idea that Western social activists committed to the defense of the traditional family, and to the right to life from conception until natural death, should claim to find an ally in a blood-soaked Chekist like Vladimir Putin — well, that is something different, and something ominous. That it has to do with Putin’s cronies’ spreading Russian gold among cash-strapped Western non-governmental organizations is not to be doubted. Those who fall into this trap were once known as “useful idiots.” Their utility may be marginal, in the larger scheme of things; the idiocy ought not to be in question.
(source: Lenin Meets Corleone)
In sum: The notion that Putin’s Russia can be a genuine partner in international pro-life and pro-family work is a snare and a delusion, given the murderous character of Putin’s regime. There can be no serious ecumenical dialogue with clerical agents of Russian state power.
(source: Ukraine: Disinformation and Confusion | George Weigel | First Things)
The mere fact that the following related piece could find an epigraph from Texe Marrs should tell you something has gone wonky in the universe (this guy is still heard from? ever? anywhere? what an insult to humanity):
Vladimir Putin Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize: Putin took over as President of Russia in 2000 when the country was in an economic mess. Putin has brought economic prosperity…. Putin put the crooked Jewish billionaires in prison and supported the Christian churches against the gays. He kept America out of war in Syria and Iran. Putin is aggressively combating the financial shenanigans of the New World Order. — Texe Marrs, author, founder of Power of Prophecy Ministry
(source: Putin: Defender of Christian Faith and Morality?)
All of which leads me to think that, although I do wish well for Russia, I am going to have to take anything I see cited from Steve Mosher with rather more sodium than “cum grano salis” usually suggests:
The cumulative effect of all of the pro-life, pro-natal policies taken to date is far more significant. While there are still, according to the Russian Health Ministry, 1.7 abortions for every live birth in the country, that ratio is shrinking as the birth rate climbs and abortion becomes gradually less common.
As a result of the adoption of enlightened policies to protect the sanctity of human life, Russia’s population decline has been virtually halted, and the country has been put on a more stable demographic course.
(source: Russia Considers Banning Abortions as Abortion Decimates Its Population | LifeNews.com)
It’s all so redolent of classic Kremlinology that one is inclined to an actually sickening form of nostalgia. But don’t doubt that there’s a serious text, here.
But we need to take seriously the enforced-secularism-as-civic-religion incoherence and power-is-the-bottom-line nonsense that makes our messianic politics and mass-media managed social life so vulnerable to Big Lie geopolitics (and Big Lie domestic politics):
Putin, who is “either a sincere Orthodox or he has devoted serious study to looking and acting like one,” embodies an ideological “spiritual security” that fuses Russia’s intelligence services with traditional Russian piety. In some ways, Putin has offered his regime as a Christian alternative to Western secularism, observing in 2013 that “many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization,” embracing same-sex partnerships, equating belief in God with the belief in Satan, tolerating pedophilia, diminishing religious affiliations and holidays, while exporting this model globally, opening a “direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.”
(source: Putin’s Orthodox Autocracy & American Christianity – Juicy Ecumenism)
Remember to grapple carefully with an age of strong delusion.