Departing Pat. Lubomyr speaks on Church-State relations

(RISU) - “The state wants to control the Church as it is afraid of it. Why? Because the Church defends freedom even at the social level and brings up mature, thinking and responsible citizens which is not convenient for the state power.” So said the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Lubomyr at the session of the round table. “State-confessional relations in Ukraine, their specificities and tendencies of development,” organized on 8 February in Kyiv by the Razumkov Center. So reported the Information Department of UGCC.

The Head of UGCC noted in his address that both the Church and the state serve the same people and, therefore, they should be considered partners. Each of them has its own field of activity and should respect the parallel structure and not interfere in its activity. “As we are talking about structured units, their relations can be regulated by means of the law by fixing limits of responsibility and cooperation. In an ideally arranged society, these two partners complement each other even though they never should merge into one reality or be subordinated to each other,” stressed Patriarch Lubomyr.

According to the hierarch, it is known from experience that the consequences of the use of the Church by the state as a subdivision of its structure can be very negative as well as the consequences of the opposite situations when religious organizations try to govern the society through the state structures, restrict freedom and rights of citizens.

Talking about the social aspect of the question, the head of UGCC stressed that the Church is a community which consists of people and exists for people and differs from other forms of human community, established by God, such as family, community, nation, state, as regards its special, religious mission: “Church is built on God’s Word, has supernatural means to achieve its own goals and acts on the basis of God’s revelation,” stressed Patriarch Lubomyr.

The head of the Church stressed that the Lord expects mercy, truth and justice from those who bear any responsibility and reminded those present the words of the Ukrainian Constitution: “The Preamble (the part defining the spirit and not only the letter) of our Constitution contains wonderful words–let us hope that they will not be deleted during rewriting of the Constitution–namely, that the document is passed “with awareness of the responsibility before God, one’s own conscience, previous, present and future generations.”

According to Patriarch Lubomyr, another objective of the Church is to preach the hope put in God, God’s peace despite various alarming signals, numerous manifestations of untruth and injustice which have become part of our time: “Perhaps, prophetic reminding of God’s wrath and the power of God’s mercy will seem contradictory to many, but one should remember that the ultimate goal of the Lord God is not to destroy but to convert the sinner,” said the head of UGCC during the session of the roundtable.

The session was held within the framework of the standing roundtable “Religion and Power in Ukraine: problems of relations” held on the initiative of the Razumkov Center. It was attended by representatives of the Churches and religious organizations, state authorities and the religious scholarly community, people’s deputies and representatives of the public.