RU 13/2007 - POLAND, RUSSIA

- POLAND: There is at least one country where they are discussing essential things, and not only futilities. In Poland they're rediscussing the law on abortion, yet one of the most restraining in Europe: abortion is solely legal in Poland in case of rape, incest or danger for the mother's life. It's true that, even in the Polish government, the discussion is fierce. Two of the three parties in the governmental coalition - the PiS party of the Prime Minister and the LPR party of the Vice Prime Minister - request that the law be modified, so that NO abortion is any more legal, and would wish to anchor this definition forever in the Constitution of the country, particularly because of the ever more menacing critiques coming from the U.N. and the European Union inciting Poland to abolish their abortion ban. According to a poll (by Polska Grupa Badavacza) 52.4 percent of the Poles are in favor of this new restriction, i.e. for the interdiction of abortion even in case of rape, incest or serious deformation of the baby. It's the president of the Republic himself, Lech Kaczynski, as well as the Prime Minister, his brother Jaroslav Kaczynski, who are against such a change: "This isn't the good moment for such a modification ", declared the Prime Minister, in opposition to his own party (PiS). On the other hand, the Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych, chief of the League of Polish Families (LPR), makes himself the courageous and omnipresent promoter of the total abolition of abortion. A pro-life rally assembled 400,000 demonstrators last week in the streets of Warsaw for pushing forward the new more restraining law. Giertych, who is also Minister of Education, got through the parliament yet another new law forbidding all propaganda of homosexuality in the Polish schools, even the simple mention of it. Teachers who would do so, will risk incarceration. "It's inadmissible that kids of 11 years old are exposed to such talking", declared Giertych. He also threatened that, if the hardly veiled pressures coming up from the E.U. against the Polish moral laws continue, his country could retire with big noise from the European Human Rights Convention. The Poles abolished in 1989 abortion which had been imposed by the Communist dictators, and they are not ready to get it reimposed by the Big Brothers in Brussels or New York. Long life to Catholic Poland!

- RUSSIA: The Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarchy of Moscow) and the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia programmed their reunification for May 17th, i.e. the feast of the Ascension, declared bishop Cyrill, metropolite of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The patriarch of Moscow Alexis II, and the primate Lavr of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia will sign on that day a canonical act of communion, in the new cathedral of Christ the Savior of Moscow. The signing of the official act will take place before the celebration of the 'Divine Office' which will be celebrated, for the first time, in communion by the metropolites and patriarchs of the two Russian Churches. Thus will end a separation of 90 years. The Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia had detached herself from the communion with the Patriarchy of Moscow at the time of the Revolution of 1917, suspecting it to be linked to Bolshevism. It has been admitted that all problems existing between the two Churches are not yet entirely resolved, but that there would not be any major obstacle any more to the canonical reunification and common eucharisty. It's true that between those two Churches the question of the liturgy - which is primordial for the prayer and the faith - isn't an issue, contrary to the oecumenical negotiations between Rome and the Orthodox. The latter ones fear the danger of a suppression of their millenial liturgy by the pope, if the communion was established, to the profit of a new modernist and protestantized liturgy as it is practiced today by Catholics all over the world. The Vatican may gesticulate that such a measure would be out of question, once the Orthodox would be united with Rome, but everyone can observe - with the Orthodox - that the Vatican let suppress his own millennial Latin ritual, the Holy Mass of all times. Under this light one understands that the talks of Rome with the Orthodox will not advance before the Latin old ritual is radically and completely restored by Benedict XVI. - (ru)

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