BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

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I wish this statement had come right after the European Court of Human Rights handed down its controversial verdict last week. It still is much better, however, than the terse generic statements that have come out of the Vatican so far - because Metropolitan Hilarion does not hesitate to express what Catholics would have expected the pope to say and which he has not.

For that matter, I am not aware that any other important religious leader has said anything about the case in public. Certainly not the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople under Patriarch Bartholomew which is supposed to represent all the Orthodox Churches in general. In fact, come to think of it, Bartholomew has only spoken out about ethical issues in the news when it has to do with the environment (but I think he has also expressed support for Bergoglio's open immigration advocacy). Has he too become too secularized?

Russian Orthodox Church protests the Strasbourg decision
to withdraw life support from baby Charlie Gard
INTERFAX

Moscow, July 3, 2017 - The Russian Orthodox Church protests the decision taken by the European courts to withdraw the life support systems from a 10-months old British boy Charlie Guard, who suffer from a rare genetic disease.

“Monstrous decision of the European Human Rights court demonstrates the deepest crisis of the notion of human rights protection. Today the right to life gives way to the right to death,” head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Hilarion said in his statement.

According to the hierarch, the situation is especially dramatic as the parents cannot take a decision independently. The metropolitan wonders “why in the 21st century in a free democratic state a family is locked in one clinic because of the court decision and cannot turn to another clinic.”

The Russian church official calls this situation “a violation against parents’ conscience, mockery OC them, sadism painted in humanistic tones.”

He stressed that in Charlie’s case there were doctors in the USA who were ready to treat him and finances for it. Despite it, the court took the decision that IT IS “in best interests” of the child to withdraw him from life support systems, provide palliative care to him and 'let him die with dignity'. [And seeking experimental treatment in the hope that it may work subjects him to indignity? Surely his parents recognize the indignity of not being able to decide about their own child and would be the first to refuse any treatment that would constitute indignity to the baby in any way!]

Metropolitan Hilarion is perplexed why it is always proclaimed that a human life is an absolute value in the West, but murder of seriously ill people including children become “legalized reality.”

He hopes that Charlie’s parents will have a chance to give their child a treatment, which they consider necessary. “I pray that they could go through the terrible trials they have to face. I hope that merciful God will not deprive little Charlie of His love and turn his sufferings to the promise of eternal life,” the Russian church official said in his statement.