Dormition, Indeed

To oppose military involvement in Ukraine is to do nothing less than condemn unreservedly the bombing of the Dormition Cathedral in Kiev. It is an illustrious dedication in Orthodoxy. At the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow, Tsars were crowned and Patriarchs were buried. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London also bears the name.

The attack on the one in Kiev, which could not possibly have been a mistake, calls attention to the schism in and over Ukraine, between and around those who adhered to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as constituted in 2019 with the recognition of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and those who continued to sit under the Patriarchate of Moscow. This huge story is mostly ignored in the West.

Now, about the bombing and burning of churches by "our" side in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all parts of the Holy Land, and Narendra Modi's India. About the spitting on priests, and the assault on at least one nun, in Jerusalem and the wider country. The Suffragettes bombed or burned at least 32 churches, damaging the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, narrowly failing to inflict similar damage in Saint Paul's Cathedral, significantly damaging Christ Church Cathedral in Lisburn, and entirely destroying the newly built Saint Catherine's, Hatcham. But all of that paled or pales in comparison to Palestine Action. Of course.