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Deputies of Various Factions Agree to Cooperate with Council of Churches in Legislative Area

18.04.2013, 12:02
Deputies of Various Factions Agree to Cooperate with Council of Churches in Legislative Area - фото 1
Interfactional deputies union In Support of Freedom of Conscience met with the heads of denominations represented in the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations.

Interfactional deputies union In Support of Freedom of Conscience met with the heads of denominations represented in the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations.

The meeting, which took place on April 17, 2013, in the Parliament began with a welcome speech by Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Rybak, the Institute for Religious Freedom reports.

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The Speaker supported the further steps of MPs toward establishing a permanent dialogue with the religious community. He said legislators should listen to the positions of society, their constituents, including believers.

Rybak called to overcome the "disease of spiritual growth" together in the name of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state. He assured his support for the cooperation of the deputies with the spiritual leaders of the country and expressed hope that such meetings will become a tradition.

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In turn, Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk recalled that the last such meeting took place in 2006. He said that laws adopted by Parliament must be based on the foundation of God's law of universal values. "If you search for a different type of foundation, then those laws are contrary to what Ukrainian civil society today expects," he said.

The UGCC head expressed a common position of denominations on a number of legislative initiatives.

The All-Ukrainian Council of Churches supports the preservation in Ukraine of traditional moral values ​​and supports the legal restriction on homosexual propaganda in order to protect children. Recall that Bill 0945 is supported by the previous compositions of Parliament in the first reading.

Also, Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk stressed the inadmissibility of adopting the government Bill 2342, which proposes to grant protection to sexual minorities from discrimination, thus encroaching on the right of believers to speak in favor of the traditional family and against such sinful phenomena.

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This idea was also supported by Patriarch Filaret Denysenko, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate.

"Rejecting traditional family values ​​and Christian morals is too high a price that the government offers to pay the Ukrainian society for a visa-free regime with the European Union," said the Patriarch Filaret.

In addition, members of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations made a formal appeal to the head of Parliament regarding the preservation of the National Commission for the Protection of Public Morality. In particular, the Council of Churches called on relevant committees and leaders of parliamentary factions to withdraw from consideration Bill 2142, which proposes to eliminate this commission as part of administrative reform.

A number of proposals in the legislative process were voiced by a representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate), Archpriest Rostislav Snigirev. Among other things, he stressed the importance of Bill 2051 on the right of religious organizations to establish educational institutions of state standards.

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A vision of further developing cooperation with the religious community at the meeting was voiced by deputy Valentyn Nalyvaichenko (UDAR party), Oleksanda Kuzhel (Batkivschyna), Oksana Kaletnyk (Communist Party of Ukraine) and the representative of the President of Ukraine in Parliament Yuriy Miroshnichenko.

At the end, head of the deputies union Hanna Herman (Party of Regions) thanked the representatives of churches and religious organizations for their propositions, active public position, and willingness to cooperate with the Parliament in the legislative process.