RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

No mental disease diminishes the dignity of a person. The Church testifies that a mentally ill person, too, is a bearer of the image of God, remaining our brother who needs compassion and support

While appreciating the social role of women and welcoming their political, cultural and social equality with men, the Church opposes the tendency to diminish the role of woman as wife and mother. The fundamental equality of the sexes does not annihilate the natural distinction between them, nor does it imply the identity of their callings in family and society.

The Church raises the question concerning the need to establish comprehensive control over transnational corporations and the processes taking place in the financial sector of economy. This control, aimed to subject any entrepreneurial and financial activity to the interests of man and people, should be exercised through all mechanisms available in society and state.

Societies, which were separated earlier by distances and borders and therefore predominantly homogeneous, now come in touch easily and become multicultural. This process, however, has been accompanied by attempts to establish the dominion of the rich elite over the rest of the people and of some cultures and world views over others, which is especially intolerable in the religious field

History has shown that the life, borders and forms of states are changeable as created not only on the territorial and ethnic, but also economic, political, military and other suchlike grounds

The Church warns against the attempts to use the scientific and technological progress for establishing control over the inner world of the personality, for creating any technologies making it possible to infuse and manipulate the human consciousness or sub-consciousness.

The “right to death" can easily become a threat to the life of patients whose treatment is hampered by lack of funds.

The Church believes that human organs cannot be viewed as objects of purchase and sale. The transplantation of organs from a living donor can be based only on the voluntary self-sacrifice for the sake of another's life.

The cloning of human beings can corrupt the natural foundations of childbirth, consanguinity, motherhood and fatherhood. A child can become a sister to her mother, a brother to his father or a daughter to his or her grandfather. The psychological consequences of cloning are also extremely dangerous. A human being, who came to being as a result of this procedure, can feel not like an independent person but only "a copy" of someone who lives or lived before. It should be also considered that experiments with human cloning will inevitably produce as "by-products" numerous unfulfilled lives and, most probably, the emergence of a numerous unsustainable posterity. At the same time, the cloning of isolated organic cells and tissues is not an encroachment on the dignity of the personality and in a number of cases has proved helpful in the biological and medical practice.

Man has no right to claim the role of the creator of his likes or to choose their genetic prototypes, thus determining their personal characteristics .

The abolition of death penalty would give more opportunities for pastoral work with those who have stumbled and for the latter to repent. It is also evident that punishment by death cannot be reformatory; it also makes misjudgement irreparable

The Church insists on the need of humane attitude towards suspects, persons under investigation and those caught in criminal intent. The crude and improper treatment of these people can either fortify them on the wrong track or push them on it. For this reason, those awaiting a verdict should not be disfranchised even in custody. They should be guaranteed advocacy and impartial justice. The Church condemns torture and indignities towards persons under investigation

Sometimes crime is provoked by economic and social conditions, as well as the weak government and the absence of lawful order.

Especially dangerous is crime disguised under political and pseudo-religious motives, such as terrorism and the like.

The Church cannot approve the alienation and re-distribution of property with violations of the rights of its legitimate owners. An exception may be made only for the alienation of property based on the law, conditioned by the interest of the majority of people and accompanied by fair compensation. Russian history has shown that the violation of these principles has always resulted in social upheavals and people's suffering

In face of political differences, contradictions and struggle, the Church preaches peace and co-operation among people holding various political views

The presence in society of different, sometimes opposing political convictions and discordant interests generates political struggle which is waged by both legitimate and morally justified methods and methods sometimes contradicting the norms of public law and Christian and natural morality

God keeps man free, never forcing his will. Contrary to it, Satan seeks to possess the human will, to enslave it .… traditions, however, which do not know of the principle of the freedom of Christ, often seek to subject the human consciousness to the external will of a ruler or a collective

Any attempt to develop the civil, criminal and public law based on the Gospel alone cannot be efficient, for without the full churching of life, that is without complete victory over sin, the law of the Church cannot become the law of the world

Historically, both religious and secular laws originate from the same source

If the vision of the world in its integrity is lost, the field of legal regulation becomes reduced to the cases of the visible damage done, and the boundaries of the latter become more narrow with the erosion of public morality and secularization of consciousness

The secular law has as its task not to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but to prevent it from turning into hell.

Law is a special realm, different from the related ethical realm, as it does not qualify the inner conditions of the human heart.

In all times the Church has called upon her children to love their homeland on earth and not to spare their lives to protect it if it was threatened

National sentiments can cause such sinful phenomena as aggressive nationalism, xenophobia, national exclusiveness and inter-ethnic enmity. At their extremes, these phenomena often lead to the restriction of the rights of individuals and nations, wars and other manifestations of violence