New Russian Cathedral Highlights Stalin, Putin

This is among the world's tallest Russian Orthodox churches.

According to the UK's Guardian, the new Russian Cathedral dedicated May 9 features mosaics celebrating the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany as well as the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Included are images of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin and numerous other Russian military and political figures.

Named the Resurrection of Christ Cathedral, it is a massive monument to Russian armed might located in the military's Patriot Park just outside of Moscow.

One cannot help wondering what happens to the integrity of the Christian faith when the official patriarchs of that faith bless and elevate politicians and generals associated with bloody military campaigns. And when the resurrection of Christ is conflated with the conquest of Crimea, an act that Ukraine and many its allies around the world consider a war crime. Or when icons of revered saints are portrayed alongside with some of the most ruthless politicians and generals imaginable.

A 2019 Founders Day Parade in front of the Cadet Chapel.

In our country, the Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado is an example of a similar blending of religious piety with military might. It consists of 17 spires 150 feet high and was built at a cost of $3.5 million. Many other costly furnishings were provided by members of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist organizations, each of which have a separate meeting area on one of three stories of the cathedral.

The largest (upper level) sanctuary is for Protestants, seats 1200 people and, ironically, displays a 49 foot aluminum cross. The ends of its walnut and mahogany pews are sculpted to resemble early World War I propellers, and the backs of the pews are capped by a strip of aluminum like that of the edge of the wing of a fighter jet aircraft.

In some respect the Air Force may appear to be the more polished and least brutal of our military branches, less associated with images of hand to hand, grenade and artillery  fighting in bloody trenches. But in reality, the terror wrought by highly sophisticated drones and fighter jets has raised the level of military brutality to entirely new levels.

The first major arial bombing of civilians was in Guernica, a town in northern Spain, in its 1936-1939 Civil War. The world responded with moral outrage when Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian planes, at the request of the Spanish Nationalists, dropped artillery on its largely unarmed population. Pablo Picasso's 1937 portrayal of the first indiscriminate attack of this kind featured flames, screaming women and dismembered and mutilated animals and humans in the most powerful anti-war painting of all time.

Little did anyone dream then that less than a decade later Allied planes would be engaging in saturation bombing of whole cities and use nuclear bombs to incinerate civilians wholesale in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sadly, neither the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Cathedral nor Russia's Resurrection of Christ Cathedral will include any mosaic decrying that kind of genocide.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica.