Russian Priest Bombs a City with Holy Water to Cure it of Drunkenness and Casual Sex

Source – Priests in an aircraft have “love-bombed” the Russian city of Tver with holy water, in an effort to purge its citizens of drunkenness and casual sex.

Father Alexander Goryachev has boarded a plane every September since 2006 to mark the Russian Orthodox Church’s Day of Sobriety, and flown over Tver armed with icons in the hope of tutoring his flock in the waves of righteousness, the Tver News site reports.

But this year he and the local Bishop Savva decided extra measures were needed, and poured 70 litres of specially-sanctified water over the city from their creaky light aircraft …

“A man saw our plane flying over head, and told his wife there and then that he would give up the drink – and he did,” he told viewers.

You’ve got to hand it to these guys. Where I come from, in the Roman Catholic Church, holy water is just used in blessings, cleansing babies of Original Sin and vampire hunting. Now this Moscow Patriarchate crowd is using it to stop everyone from having a good time, Russian style. They’re making it rain sobriety and monogamy. Dropping it like a Weapon of Mass Buzzkill.

What else can you do but wish them the best of luck? Though it seems like kind of a waste of perfectly good H20, Holy Spirit and diesel fuel. Father Goryachev and Bishop Savva might think it’s working, but I’m going to have to beg to differ. At the risk of stereotyping, the Russians I know wouldn’t stop getting drunk and banging each other if you dropped a nuke on them. I bet HBO could do a TV-17 “Chernobyl” spinoff series just about young, attractive urbanites getting hammered and sleeping around once they thought they were all going to die from the fallout. If months of German saturation bombing in Operation Barbarossa didn’t stop the flow of vodka and semen at all, I don’t see how saturating rooftops with 70-liters of specially-sanctified anything is going to do the trick.

If this works, the priest at my parish better not get any bright ideas. But we pretty much don’t discourage drunkenness as long as you show up to Mass Sunday morning and fill the collection plate. Like the Bible says, the Lord works in mysterious ways. It just seems like He’s a little more mysterious in some churches than He is in others. Happy flying, Father.