Build theocracy: although this is not a charitable

In Belarus, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II awaits. The authorities intend to present his Holiness a gift by approving in the Russian example in the Law "On the Freedom of Religions and Religious Organizations" The Priority of the Traditional Religion (Read - Orthodoxy).

In the state press - a noisy campaign: they say, Belarusians are eagerly belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, and therefore the missionary activities of Catholics, especially Polish priests, are unacceptable, and Protestants - these are savings luring young people into totalitarian sects. And so on in the same spirit. The authors are outraged by the inactivity of law enforcement agencies that do not stop the activities of "adherents of non -traditional religion." The protests of the non -Orthodox are ignored - after all, freedom of speech.

Meanwhile, the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country are now less than the next two other leading faiths. (The Belarusian Orthodox Church has 1172 parishes, Protestants - 879, Catholics - 416, hereinafter - the Old Believers, Muslims, Jews ...) The likes were not observed since 1838, when, after the division of the Polish -Lithuanian, the Belarusian lands of the Greek Catholics (Uniates) were transferred to Orthodoxy. Now, after the fall of Soviet state atheism, according to the Committee on Religious Affairs and Nationalities under the Council of Ministers of Belarus, only up to 20 percent of the population is connected with the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, President Alexander Lukashenko calls his country Orthodox. Official propaganda claims that 80 percent of the inhabitants belong to the Belarusian Orthodox Church. The Ministry of Internal Affairs produces the newspaper "Orthodox Warrior". There is a coordination council for cooperation between the Belarusian exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ministry of Education. Minister of Education Peter Brigadin approved the proposals of Orthodox teachers on the wide conduct of lectures on spiritual and moral subjects and the organization of television and video tutorials in schools. According to BelTA State Republican Film, schooling intends to transfer to a five-day course, and the released Saturday day "devoted to the implementation of cultural and spiritual and moral programs."

There is nothing reprehensible in this if a visit to Orthodox classes is voluntary and believers of other denominations, as well as atheists will be able to educate their children according to beliefs. However, this is unlikely, because even subbotniks in Belarus are carried out by decree of the government, and public services prescribe all forms of ownership - how much they should expel to the subbotnik fund. The biblical question arises again: a person for Saturday or Saturday for a person?

It seems that Orthodoxy was adopted by the ideologists of the Belarusian ruling regime in love with Panaslavism and is presented as one of the factors that contribute to the rapprochement of Belarus with Russia. It is no coincidence that in the bill "On the Freedom of Religions and Religious Organizations", which the other day has to be considered by the Belarusian parliament, everything has been done to complicate the departure of the cult non -Orthodox. And this is in a multi -confessional country!

Under the new law, only a citizen of Belarus can be the head of the religious organization, and a foreign citizen has the right to engage in religious activities for no longer than a year. This is equivalent to the closure of most Catholic parishes, because due to the impossibility of obtaining the appropriate formation of Catholic priests in Belarus under the Soviet government, he is not enough acutely not enough. Of the service parishes 266 priests 149 are foreign citizens, mainly Poles. The authorities on formal occasions refuse the assigned assignments to the issuance of permission to enter the entry. Unreasonable refusals in the extension of previously issued permits occur. The good six months was forced to work in Brest illegally priests Zbignnev Karolyak, who, without any explanation, refused to extend permission to stay in Belarus. The flock wrote a petition, turned to justice. In vain. The shepherd was forced to leave the state, and he has no replacement yet.

In accordance with Article 24 of the bill, a religious organization may be liquidated in case of harm to the health and morality of citizens. However, it is not said who should evaluate this. It can be assumed that religious organizations engaged in active missionary activities and calling their adherents to an ascetic lifestyle will be recognized as most harmful. The sect of "Jehovah's Witnesses", which was banned in the USSR, but legalized in 1990, may well fall under these criteria, and its 26 communities are prohibited.

If the bill is adopted in an unchanged form, then the “departure of religious cults without the formation of a legal entity” will also be recognized as illegal. This is very similar to Soviet practice, when it was almost impossible to register a religious organization, and the police caught illegal immigrants.

By the way, about the Soviet regime. In her time, most religious structures were destroyed or nationalized, and those that have been preserved, believers of non -Orthodox faiths receive back with great difficulty. Church s. Yana of the Baptist in the Raubichi of the Minsk region, the authorities agree to return only after a new building is built for the ethnographic museum now built at the expense of believers. In the Minsk Church Roha continues to give concerts of chamber music, and parishioners are forced to coordinate the departures of services with the administration of the Philharmonic. A similar situation with Jews, whose religious educational institutions and synagogues are still adapted for secular needs. According to the President of the World Association of Belarusian Jews, Jacob Gutman, in the elephant of the Grodno region, the temple is used as a public toilet. However, many Jews left, and now often there is often no one to demand the return of cult structures.

In 2000, for the first time after the fall of the communist regime in Minsk, it was forbidden to pass the religious procession of Catholics for the celebration of God's body in the Independence Square of the church. Symon and Alena. In the year, the current broadcast on the State Radio Sunday Mass was banned, which has been aired for the past eight years. Orthodox transmission on the same radio continues to be broadcast.

The confessional inequality planted by Belarusian atheist officials is, of course, not good and is unlikely to benefit the same Orthodoxy - a forbidden fruit, as you know, is sweet.