Holy Week has begun, and Christians around the world are proceeding through the commemoration of solemnity and suffering to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
The prayers of the Catholic faithful in Poland, the Orthodox in Georgia, the Charismatics in Ukraine — of all believers across the former U.S.S.R. — must be particularly urgent this year, as last week the president of the United States whispered an assurance of “flexibility” to their ancient foe.
The whole exchange between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is undergoing an airbrushing in the U.S., like those the KGB used to apply to when some inconvenient face had to be erased from a photograph. So before all trace of the remarkably troubling and remarkably revealing back-and forth is edited out of the digital vaults of the Manhattan-Beltway media elite, review it with the churches of Eastern Europe in mind:
Obama: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space.”
Medvedev: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you …”
Obama: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility,” the president adds.
Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
What little attention the mainstream media gave this incident focused on the specific illustration President Obama offered up — “particularly missile defense” — but not to his general introduction: “On all these issues…”
Conservative media pondered whether President Obama was signaling that his earlier trial balloons on drastic cuts to America’s remaining nuclear deterrent would be a done deal upon his re-election, but few commentators in the States have considered the whispered exchange from the perspective of worshipers, whose freedom to gather in remembrance of the institution of Holy Communion, pray the Stations of the Cross or keep the Easter Vigil is not even a quarter-of-a-century-old.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has a new e-book out, available for Kindle and iPad: “A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness and the Next America.” It begins with a reflection on American media, its “new orthodoxy,” its “rigorously intolerant” indifference to opinions not widely shared within its elites, and its lack of “self-knowledge or self-criticism.”
How completely on-target this criticism is as the White House spins the story of the Obama-Medvedev tete-a-tete. The spin is blindly swallowed by the president’s admirers with editorial authority, and shelved far down in the lower cabinets, not remotely as accessible as the files marked “Etch a Sketch” and “car elevator.”
There is real trembling this week among Russia’s neighbors, who were only recently slave states. Their most recent Russia crisis ended in August 2008 with Georgia invaded by Russian troops and bombed by Russian airplanes and part of the country essentially reabsorbed into the old empire.
It would be an interesting story to see how Holy Week services are being conducted in both parts of Georgia this week, and to ask Christian clergy and faithful throughout the former Soviet Union what they think of last week’s intimacies between the two presidents.
The Christian worldview knows that suffering is part of every life and all redemption. But the faithful of the East might be forgiven their hope to have been free of fear a little bit longer than two dozen years. Hopefully their prayers for that freedom, and for Western resolve on behalf of it, will be seconded in American churches of all varieties this week, and indeed across all faiths that value their right to worship.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
