Orthodox Christian initiative group threatens with civic disobedience

An Orthodox Christian initiative group accuses the present government of pursuing an anti-Christian policy and starting a real political, administrative, legal and media war against the Orthodox Church. The accusations were made by representatives of the group in a news conference on Thursday. They also said that more and more laws are in contradiction to the canonical right and traditions of the Christian peoples, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The new administration continues the old government's policy aimed at marginalizing the Christians and rejects their requests not to use identification codes and other signs that defy their convictions in our country,” the initiative group's jurist Elena Batca said. She also said that the present government continues to discredit the Christians that have documents without identification codes. Elena Batca considers that the government defies the Christian religion. She gave as example the placement of symbols of other religions in the center of Chisinau. She stressed that the group of Christians who removed the Jewish candlestick are threatened with legal action. As to the declaration of December 25 as nonworking days, the jurist said that only the Church has such a power and the government did not have the right to intervene. According to Elena Batca, the Orthodox Christians are dissatisfied with the fact that the new government voted in favor of legalizing homosexuality at the UN on December 18, 2009, which is inadmissible for the 93.4% of the country's Orthodox Christians. The representatives of the initiative group said that in accordance with the Fundamentals of the Social Conception of the Orthodox Church, when the power forces the Orthodox Christians to abandon Jesus and the Church and accept sins, the Church is obliged to disobey the state and can ask all the faithful to do the same.