The question of clericalism I think we are all witnessing that the Russian Orthodox Church today is free from state tutelage and interference in the internal affairs of the Church. Alexis II.
What can you say about the movie “I knew no other way”? A banal religious propaganda short. In principle, it would seem, why paint a review in red on a film that tells about a man who has done a lot for the Orthodox Russian Church? However, there is no desire to praise this film, you will not be neutral either. I'll be honest with you.
Movies like this are slowly turning our secular state into a religious one, in which almost every question will be asked the opinion of the church. The process is underway. There would be nothing wrong with a film that unbiasedly tells about the life of Patriarch Alexy II, as well as any other church figure.
In this short film, a voiceover with nauseating pathos tells how terrible the situation was in the USSR, where even children were not allowed to be baptized and brought up in the faith. I want to ask, what’s wrong with that? We are being bullied into how “the atheist state interfered in the lives of believers,” completely silent about the fact that there is no less interference in the lives of non-Orthodox people (and it cannot be said that things were better in 2004). The film is positioned as a brief biography of Alexy II, but here it is not given the first place. Here more attention is paid to religious propaganda, in some places turning into obscurantism. Only the phrases of the voiceover “The Church in the era of creeping persecution survived, as if there were hidden forces in it.” Where were they hiding? Not to mention the ecstatic exclamations of the present era: “The Church has returned to schools, hospitals, military units.” No, ladies and gentlemen. Biographies should be impartial - and in any case, black should not be called white in them.
Clericalism is very negative.