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DRIVE MERCHANTS OUT OF THE TEMPLE! BAN ABORTIONS! CALLS PATRIARCH ALEXIS
MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - Commerce is not to penetrate the Church, stressed Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, while addressing a diocesan conference of the Moscow clergy today.
The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church came down on such priests as succumb to the secular world’s pressure, reports the conference press service.
"The Orthodox Christian mind is secularizing. The ecclesiastical spirit is receding. Spiritual blindness is coming in. Commerce is getting ever stronger in many aspects of parochial life as an alarming token of all those evils. Material interests come into the foreground ever more often to oust and strangle everything living and sublime.
“Nothing frightens the flock off religion worse than the clergy’s cupidity. It is not for nothing greed for money is known as an abominable deathly passion, an infernal sin-betrayal of the Lord on a par with the sin of Judas,” said the Patriarch.
He strongly warned against clerical fees for administering sacraments, especially baptism.
“We are in duty bound, and we are able to explain to the flock that churches are property of the entire people of God, so it is Christian duty to donate what each can afford to church maintenance. Yet our explanations are by no means to turn into begging donations, or forcing one into them. This must be a kind, fatherly explanation and encouragement.”
Russia is getting through a demographic crisis, its population dwindling apace. There is an appalling number of abortions. Spiritual values are thrown overboard. That is the principal cause of those disastrous evils, the Patriarch went on. A majority of marriages end in divorce. The number of babies coming into the world lags desperately behind the number of babies killed in mother’s womb. Ever more men and women turn to drugs and heavy drinking. Ever more commit suicide. That is what comes of “godless life, forgetfulness of the good, and ignorance of moral duty”.
“We are doomed to live in a horrible time when our nation is extinguishing. We have every reason to say that its extinction has moral roots,” the Patriarch went on.
“To kill a baby in mother’s womb is the most heinous of deadly sins. That precept has always been part and parcel of the Church doctrine. Meanwhile, the number of abortions in Russia defies imagination year in, year out. The nation is dying out, and that is nothing surprising. Does this nation deserve to survive at all, we wonder.”
en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5214391&startrow=1&date=2004-12-15&do_alert=0
or tinyurl.com/47fdn
MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - Commerce is not to penetrate the Church, stressed Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, while addressing a diocesan conference of the Moscow clergy today.
The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church came down on such priests as succumb to the secular world’s pressure, reports the conference press service.
"The Orthodox Christian mind is secularizing. The ecclesiastical spirit is receding. Spiritual blindness is coming in. Commerce is getting ever stronger in many aspects of parochial life as an alarming token of all those evils. Material interests come into the foreground ever more often to oust and strangle everything living and sublime.
“Nothing frightens the flock off religion worse than the clergy’s cupidity. It is not for nothing greed for money is known as an abominable deathly passion, an infernal sin-betrayal of the Lord on a par with the sin of Judas,” said the Patriarch.
He strongly warned against clerical fees for administering sacraments, especially baptism.
“We are in duty bound, and we are able to explain to the flock that churches are property of the entire people of God, so it is Christian duty to donate what each can afford to church maintenance. Yet our explanations are by no means to turn into begging donations, or forcing one into them. This must be a kind, fatherly explanation and encouragement.”
Russia is getting through a demographic crisis, its population dwindling apace. There is an appalling number of abortions. Spiritual values are thrown overboard. That is the principal cause of those disastrous evils, the Patriarch went on. A majority of marriages end in divorce. The number of babies coming into the world lags desperately behind the number of babies killed in mother’s womb. Ever more men and women turn to drugs and heavy drinking. Ever more commit suicide. That is what comes of “godless life, forgetfulness of the good, and ignorance of moral duty”.
“We are doomed to live in a horrible time when our nation is extinguishing. We have every reason to say that its extinction has moral roots,” the Patriarch went on.
“To kill a baby in mother’s womb is the most heinous of deadly sins. That precept has always been part and parcel of the Church doctrine. Meanwhile, the number of abortions in Russia defies imagination year in, year out. The nation is dying out, and that is nothing surprising. Does this nation deserve to survive at all, we wonder.”
en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5214391&startrow=1&date=2004-12-15&do_alert=0
or tinyurl.com/47fdn
