Barbara Larin: Church’s Fasting Cycle Is “Bigoted,” Contrary to “Multiculturalism”
Defrocked nun Barbara Larin denounced Orthodox fasting traditions as rooted in bigotry and identity politics, arguing they demean other religious practices and clash with modern multicultural and ecumenical ideals.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA — Barbara Larin, the defrocked ROCOR nun formerly known as Sister Vassa, published a Facebook post criticizing the Orthodox Church's fasting cycle as "super not PC," based on "bigoted rationale," and contrary to multiculturalism.
She notes the common view that avoiding the fast after the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee humbles believers, preventing them from boasting like the Pharisee who fasted twice a week (Lk 18:9-14).
However, Larin points to the Slavonic Typikon, which states the reason is "because there are heterodox or 'other-minded people' who fast this week. . . . So, we don't fast, 'disrupting their commandment of such a heresy'." She identifies this as the three-day Fast of the Ninevites, observed by some Oriental Orthodox traditions three weeks before Great Lent.
In her view, this non-fasting serves as "an identity-building sort of exercise. 'We' affirm, by keeping a different fasting-schedule from 'them,' that 'we' are not 'them.' One might feel, in our age of embracing multiculturalism and in light of ecumenical dialog with Oriental Orthodox churches, that fasting or not fasting as a demonstration of being different from 'them' or even demeaning 'their' traditions (as the Typikon explicitly does) is, to say the least, distasteful. To say more, it might make us like the Pharisee, who boasted, 'I am not like other people.'"
Larin also argues that the Wednesday and Friday fasts exclude Jewish practices, citing the late-first-century Didache: "let not your fasts be with the hypocrites . . . for they fast on Monday and Thursday."
She refers throughout to "the bigoted rationale of the Typikon and Didache as quoted above."
Previously, the UOJ reported that the ROCOR Synod stripped Larin of the monastic tonsure.
