International Orthodox Christian News

“What is more humanely: to prove that man originated from a monkey or to tell him he was created by God? What is more humanely: to suggest that nothing awaits man after death or to promise him afterlife? What is more humanely: to justify disorderly sexual relations, divorces, abortions or to stand for lasting family with many children?” Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria said in his interview to the Science and Religion magazine. According to Bishop Hilarion, who represents the Russian Church to the European Institutions, “it was Christianity that brought man to unprecedented height, thanks to Christian morality, slavery gradually vanished in the world, Christian morals gave the basis for today’s human rights conception.” Bishop Hilarion considers it “a deceit of atheistic kind” to oppose humanism to religion: “We stand for a human being, while you, priests and clerics, are against him.”

“I am convinced that Christianity is more humanistic than humanism of secular kind that, in fact, is deeply antihuman as it is equally anti-Church and atheistic,” he said.
Bishop Hilarion noted, “Man is ennobled only with consciousness that he is the image and likeliness of God, a spiritual creature dominating in natural and social world called to transfigure it and rein it.” “Human self-affirmation leads to self-destruction,” the Bishop believes. However, he thinks, “We shouldn’t negate every truth of humanism as many reactionary theological trends do, but to establish creative Christian humanism.”

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