+Alexis II: MP Does Not Seek To Be State Church

[Kollyvas]

(Athough I agree that a return to the pre-revolutionary model is NOT acceptible, I feel that the MP should be an independent YET SUPPORTED State Church of Russia.--R)

http://directionstoorthodoxy.org/mod/ne ... le_id=6650

Alexy II: Russian Orthodox Church doesn't seek official status
Moscow, December 30, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia refuted reproaches that the Russian Orthodox church seeks official status.

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Moscow, December 30, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia refuted reproaches that the Russian Orthodox church seeks official status.

‘We do not seek it, as we have underdone the pre-revolutionary period, when the Church was official and actually turned into a state department,’ the patriarch said at his meeting with journalists in Moscow on Friday.

He underscored that the Church should be separated from the state, as it has to fulfil the tasks of its own.

‘We are firm and consistent in our position not to interfere into political life’, Alexy II said.

He noted that church and state had many common tasks including preservation of peace and accord, maintenance of architectural monuments and overcoming of ‘the abnormalities of the century’, such as drug addiction and alcoholism.

The patriarch evaluated church-state relations as having changed. ‘The artificial partition walls between the authorities and society in the Soviet times, when the Church lived in a kind of ghetto and its activity was limited by church buildings have crushed’.

[Kollyvas]

http://directionstoorthodoxy.org/mod/ne ... le_id=6723

Russian clergyman doesn't fear state control over religious colleges
Moscow, January 11, Interfax - Government accreditation of religious educational institutions in Russia will not result in the state gaining total control over them, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Vsevolod Chaplin has said.

Moscow, January 11, Interfax - Government accreditation of religious educational institutions in Russia will not result in the state gaining total control over them, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Vsevolod Chaplin has said.

"I don't think there is a threat of total control over the educational process being ceded in the transition to government accreditation. Naturally, a theological school should keep its centuries old traditions and the requirements developed for secular colleges cannot be automatically applied to them, however, I find the appearance of a general standard of education useful," he told Interfax on Wednesday.

Graduates of Christian or Muslim theological academies have not been regarded as people with a higher education in the past, he said.

"The graduates of higher religious educational institutions in Russia cannot get secular jobs or defend theses on secular subjects which constitutes an evident discrimination," he said.

He said the Russian Orthodox Church has been discussing the recognition of the diplomas of theological schools with the Education Ministry for many years.

"Our position and that of the ministry have come closer," he said.