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06 April 2007, 18:19U.S. experts biased about church-state relations in Russia - Moscow Patriarchate
Moscow, April 6, Interfax - Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Departmenr for External Church Relations Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has criticized the depiction of the situation in Russia in a 2006 report issued by the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom.
"In its report U.S. experts are superficial and biased when judging the Orthodox Church's approach to the understanding of human rights, to the problems of Church-State relations... The report for its authors is not an opinion, which we want to respect, but a sort of verdict on religious freedom in Russia," Metropolitan Kirill said in an interview with the Rossijskaya Gazeta newspaper published on Friday.
On March 20, the Metropolitan, in comments on the report sent to U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, confirmed, among other things, the Russian Orthodox Church's concern about "the radical-liberal interpretation of human rights" and its desire to ban any abuses of human rights that "humiliate human dignity and undermine conventional ethical principles."
In his interview the Metropolitan recalled that democracy as a "political mechanism" makes it possible for various systems of values to co-exist and is not identical to "the ideology developed in the West without other civilizations and cultures taken into account."
"This is why it is surprising when some see themselves as ultimate holders of the truth," the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church said.
The support of same-sex "marriages", drug addiction, prostitution, death by lethal injection in the West should not be made "the criterion of democracy in society and should not make everyone believe they are useful, right and ethically acceptable." |
