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 ...
With what our adoption agencies in this nation are required to allow, this is definitely the right move by Putin. The endorsement by the Orthodox Church is due to matters of morality and christian values, though I’d never expect the press to say so.
RE: With what our adoption agencies in this nation are required to allow,
Exactly what is it that’s wrong with our adoption agencies?
Despite the spin the Guardian puts on this — Russia is right about this. Oh, and Pussy Riot was rightly convicted of hooliganism.
Right, it's perfectly proper for Communists to blow up Christian Churches.
And this is more evidence that it's Communists that oppose Putin and his policies that strengthen Russia against the Marxist left.
I wonder if it will ever come to a point that Russia will outlaw Communists as Germany has outlawed Nazis.
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This “endorsement” by the Orthodox Church is nothing but a political move and has nothing to do with morality of any kind.
I don’t see Russians running forward to adopt these kids.
It’s disgusting that the good bishop really thinks it’s better to let them languish in the miserable state orphanages, where the treatment is so bad that the children are literally driven mad, than to let them be adopted by Americans.
Sending them to siberian prisons and feedign the vegetarian hooligans meat dishes, gave it a certain poetic point.
In Russia you can pray in school.
All of Russia sees American collapse coming.
Why would any Russian institution, (imperfect as they may be) in its right mind, send children into depravity, knowing American children are largely unappreciated, undereducated, considered no more than an accessory, and certainly devoid of religious training, particularly Christian.
Chaos rules presently. If it brings us back to God, that’s a good thing.
Considering what America now defines as a “Family”, the only real choice that Russia has is to protect the children from this cesspool.
Sadly, they have a point. We have made adoption so hard that its not an option for many Americans. The whole Foster Children thing seems designed to make money (I am sure there are loving people out there but for too long we have heard of the negative “baby farms”). We need to think of the child more—I have seen some adopt as a sort of trophy thing. Not to worry—there are lots of kids in Mexico that need homes—and in Spain and Greece—as well as Romania.
It's worse than that, American children in public school are indoctrinated to be a danger to a free society of individual liberty and used as pawns against their parents. Otherwise they are used to create the entitled non producer consuming class that will constantly vote the socialist ruling elite more power at the expense of human liberty including that of their parents.
Russians have seen this firsthand at home, and the genocide disaster that resulted.
Why would any high information Russian send a child to the US that could be the Russian Einstein or Reagan?
What? You mean white, blonde haired, blue-eyed parents?
Oh, the shame!
Idiot....
Look for the global south Christian community to send missionaries to the west and in a special way, to America. As a matter of fact, it is happening.
Wow. The lack of information here is mind-boggling. These children aren’t going to survive to adulthood with the lack of care in Russia, let alone become the next Einstein.
It’s sad to see that some Americans consider America to be a fate worse than death.
Is America really a fate worse than death?
Please see #14
what a despicable statement by a major Church, to tell little children they are banned from heaven because they were adopted by citizens of another country
ban foreign adoption then, and let this miserable Church of “God” roll up its gilded sleeves and go to work saving souls in those human warehouses called orphanages - where religion is NOT part of the children’s life in any way. And especially save souls in the “imbecile asylums” where Russia’s damaged children are cast at age 5
The Russians have been told, facts show, know that 50% or more of those orphans, PERMANENT SOCIAL OUTCASTS, will end up on the streets, selling themselves for drugs and up to 30% of them will die or commit suicide
Maybe the self-righteous Orthodox Church should start saving souls on the Streets of Leningradsky, just one city of thousands
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Coa69Ndae_U
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