Posted on 12/30/2012 12:46:43 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Russian Orthodox church has been attacked for supporting a new law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, at the end of a year that saw it plagued by scandal and accusations of collusion with an increasingly authoritarian Kremlin.
Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a high-ranking priest and a spokesman for the church, said the law was "a search for a social answer to an elementary question: why should we give, and even sell, our children abroad?"
Speaking to Interfax, a state news agency, last week, Chaplin said the path to heaven would be closed to children adopted by foreigners. "They won't get a truly Christian upbringing and that means falling away from the church and from the path to eternal life, in God's kingdom," he said.
Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, signed the controversial ban into law on Friday, in retaliation for a new US law that bans Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from travelling to or having bank accounts in the United States.
The ban, which effectively targets the hundreds of thousands of children condemned to Russia's decrepit orphanage system, has been widely criticised by many Russians, including some of Putin's most loyal ministers. Chaplin later said the law should include exceptions for ill children who required medical treatment abroad.
Critics say the church's support for the law is the latest example of its submission to the Kremlin, in which it acts more like a government ministry than an independent spiritual body.
"Everything is repeating – it's like the 19th century, when the church lay completely under the state," said Valery Otstavnykh, a theologist and Kremlin critic. "Everything was calm and fine until churches started getting blown up in 1917 and they all asked, 'Why?' "
The arrest of Pussy Riot thrust the church into the spotlight this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
[Russian Orthodox Church backs Vladimir Putin’s ban on Americans adopting Russian children]
Well good. SO DO I.
RE: Well good. SO DO I.
Just curious, why are you against Americans adopting Russian children?
RE: Maybe the notion that those who abominate nature should be given children to pervert as well?
Are you implying that many of those adopting children from Russia are gay couples and our adoption agencies actually ENCOURAGE them to do so?
The ENCOURAGE them to do so by ALLOWING them do to so.
NO SALE.
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