“But what are you talking about? Again I cease to understand,” Miusov interrupted. “Some kind of dream again. Something shapeless, and impossible to understand as well. Excommunication? What excommunication? I suspect you’re simply amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich.”
“But, you know, in reality it is so even now,” the elder suddenly spoke and everyone turned to him at once. “If it were not for Christ’s Church, indeed there would be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing, and no punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a mechanical one such as has just been mentioned, which only chafes the heart in most cases, but a real punishment, the only real, the only frightening and appeasing punishment, which lies in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience.”
“How is that, may I ask?” Miusov inquired with the liveliest curiosity.
“Here is how it is,” the elder began. “All this exile to hard labor, and formerly with floggings, does not reform anyone, and above all does not even frighten almost any criminal, and the number of crimes not only does not diminish but increases all the more. Surely you will admit that. And it turns out that society, thus, is not protected at all, for although the harmful member is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal appears at once to take his place, perhaps even two others. If anything protects society even in our time, and even reforms the criminal himself and transforms him into a different person, again it is Christ’s law alone, which manifests itself in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience. Only if he acknowledges his guilt as a son of Christ’s society—that is, of the Church—will he acknowledge his guilt before society itself—that is, before the Church. Thus, the modern criminal is capable of acknowledging his guilt before the Church alone, and not before the state. If it were so that judgment belonged to society as the Church, then it would know whom to bring back from excommunication and reunite with itself. But now the Church, having no active jurisdiction but merely the possibility of moral condemnation alone, withholds from actively punishing the criminal of its own accord. It does not excommunicate him, but simply does not leave him without paternal guidance. Moreover, it even tries to preserve full Christian communion with the criminal, admitting him to church services, to the holy gifts,[48] giving him alms, and treating him more as a captive than as a wrongdoer. And what would become of the criminal, oh, Lord, if Christian society, too—that is, the Church—rejected him in the same way that civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would become of him if the Church, too, punished him with excommunication each time immediately after the law of the state has punished him? Surely there could be no greater despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Though who knows: perhaps a terrible thing would happen then—the loss of faith, perhaps, would occur in the desperate heart of the criminal, and what then? But the Church, like a mother, tender and loving, withholds from active punishment, for even without her punishment, the wrongdoer is already too painfully punished by the state court, and at least someone should pity him. And it withholds above all because the judgment of the Church is the only judgment that contains the truth, and for that reason it cannot, essentially and morally, be combined with any other judgment, even in a temporary compromise. Here it is not possible to strike any bargains. The foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents, for even the modern theories themselves confirm in him the idea that his crime is not a crime but only a rebellion against an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off from itself quite mechanically by the force that triumphs over him, and accompanies that excommunication with hatred (so, at least, they say about themselves in Europe)—with hatred and complete indifference and forgetfulness of his subsequent fate as their brother. Thus, all of this goes on without the least compassion of the Church, for in many cases there already are no more churches at all, and what remains are just churchmen and splendid church buildings, while the churches themselves have long been striving to pass from the lower species, the Church, to a higher species, the state, in order to disappear into it completely. So it seems to be, at least, in Lutheran lands. And in Rome it is already a thousand years since the state was proclaimed in place of the Church. And therefore the criminal is not conscious of himself as a member of the Church, and, excommunicated, he sits in despair. And if he returns to society, it is not seldom with such hatred that society itself, as it were, now excommunicates him. What will be the end of it, you may judge for yourselves. In many cases, it would appear to be the same with us; but the point is precisely that, besides the established courts, we have, in addition, the Church as well, which never loses communion with the criminal, as a dear and still beloved son, and above that there is preserved, even if only in thought, the judgment of the Church, not active now but still living for the future, if only as a dream, and unquestionably acknowledged by the criminal himself, by the instinct of his soul. What has just been said here is also true, that if, indeed, the judgment of the Church came, and in its full force—that is, if the whole of society turned into the Church alone—then not only would the judgment of the Church influence the reformation of the criminal as it can never influence it now, but perhaps crimes themselves would indeed diminish at an incredible rate. And the Church, too, no doubt, would understand the future criminal and the future crime in many cases quite differently from now, and would be able to bring the excommunicated back, to deter the plotter, to regenerate the fallen. It is true,” the elder smiled, “that now Christian society itself is not yet ready, and stands only on seven righteous men; but as they are never wanting, it abides firmly all the same, awaiting its complete transfiguration from society as still an almost pagan organization, into one universal and sovereign Church. And so be it, so be it, if only at the end of time, for this alone is destined to be fulfilled! And there is no need to trouble oneself with times and seasons, for the mystery of times and seasons is in the wisdom of God, in his foresight, and in his love.[49] And that which by human reckoning may still be rather remote, by divine predestination may already be standing on the eve of its appearance, at the door. And so be that, too! So be it!”
“So be it! So be it!” Father Paissy confirmed with reverence and severity.
“Strange, most strange,” Miusov pronounced, not so much fervently as with, so to speak, a sort of repressed indignation.
“What seems so strange to you?” Father Iosif cautiously inquired.
“But, really, what are you talking about?” Miusov exclaimed, as if suddenly bursting out. “The state is abolished on earth, and the Church is raised to the level of the state! It’s not even Ultramontanism, it’s arch-Ultramontanism! Even Pope Gregory the Seventh never dreamed of such a thing!”[50]
“You have been pleased to understand it in a completely opposite sense,” Father Paissy spoke sternly. “It is not the Church that turns into the state, you see. That is Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil![51] But, on the contrary, the state turns into the Church, it rises up to the Church and becomes the Church over all the earth, which is the complete opposite of Ultramontanism and of Rome, and of your interpretation, and is simply the great destiny of Orthodoxy on earth. This star will show forth from the East.”