The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC): cloning causes moral crisis

Moscow, Russia
December 27, 2002

The Russian Orthodox Church considers cloning a dangerous experiment that can cause a profound moral crisis, reported Interfax. "If the cloning of a person has actually occurred, then this fact would be very disturbing for Orthodox Christians," said deputy assistant of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, Father Vsevolod Chaplin.

The religious minister also added that such a point of view was expressed by practically all Christian churches in the world, and that legislation of civilized countries prohibited cloning.

There is a question about whether a cloned child would grow up healthy and be of sound character, but even if this were so, two profound moral problems arise," remarked Father Vsevolod.

First, "what sort of person would it be, knowing that he, of all people, was somebody's copy?" Secondly, as Father Vsevolod commented, far more serious of an issue than that, why is so much money and energy being put into experiments for cloning?

In the opinion of the ROC representative, "the entire thing behind this is an effort by the rich to not believe that haughty people can't live on Earth eternally." It's no accident that the Raelian sect, which is sponsoring experiments for cloning , states that its final goal is the continous transplanting of the brain from one cloned body to another, so as to have, as the clergyman explained, to all intents and purposes, a breeding farm for "replacement bodies."

The Russian Orthodox Church does not condemn the cloning of individual organs, said Father Vcevolod, but "if human clones are bred for the egotistical reason of giving one person a second, a third, a hundred or more lives, then a profound moral crisis arises."

At the same time the church representative mentioned that "disease and even death from the point of view of Christians is not always evil," and if people arrogantly to make their earthly lives "eternal" in contempt of God's law, then they were doomed to profound disaster and unspeakable suffering themselves with their clones, particularly if this human society were doomed to be "spare parts."

source: ntvtv

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