The ultimate hope

I am now reading one of the most wonderful books I've ever read, The Karamazov Brothers by Dostoevsky and just as I was breathtakingly reading, trapped into the realm of human passion and sorrow and digging into the meaning of the characters' assertions, I remembered a real case, one of the most popular this summer.
It was when I got back from my trip that I found out about a monk priest video recorded while having sexual intercourse with another man . As a punishment he was sent to another monastery and lost his rights as a priest, remaining a simple monk. This decision displeased a number of people stating that he shouldn't have the opportunity to be a monk anywhere anymore. As far as I understood, the guilty monk is really trying to make amends and got himself interned to get a proper treatment.
Now this is what I remembered while reading a polemic discussion between Dostoevsky's characters Abbot Zosima and Ivan Feodorovici. Ivan, an intelligent man of letters stated that in order for Russia to become a prosper country, the Church law should bind with the civil law, so that any crime against the state would become a crime against Church. In his oppinion that would prevent crime, since Russian people are such devoted believers. Abbot Zosima, an old wise monk rejects his opnion while trying to emphasize the true meaning of the Church. Unlike the civil law whose punishments stigmatizes the guilty and deprives them of their rights, the Church offers them the possibility to atone themselves. The guilty know that they have no possibility to be forgivven in the eyes of the state, but they know they are not totally lost, because as long as Church exists and appreciates a criminal's atonement, their feeling sorry is not worthless. But what would happen if those two laws combined? A criminal would have no refugee, no one left to forgive him, not being able to fit in any form of order. This is why Abbot Zosima says that the two laws cannot combine, since the Church accepts everyone and its law remains a hope when the other law ends. The punishment of the Church is not ultimate (one can be forgiven), but sometimes for a criminal the Church is the ultimate hope.
From my point of view, the monk involved in the scandal got the right punishment and shouldn't be forbidden to be a monk anymore, as long as this is what he still wants. The Church gave him the possibility to atone himself and to be forgiven, a possibility which many of the ones who judged this scandal do not give.
That's it for now, but I will probably post something more about this book, The Karamazov Brothers, as there are many things in it which laid a mark on myself.

Lisa Gerrard - Sanvean (I am your shadow)