Print This Post


On March 18, 2012, the Estonian version of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia’s book ‘Freedom and Responsibility: In a Search for Harmony. Human Rights and Personal Dignity’ took place at the Estonian National Library. The key speakers included Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, Metropolitan Kornily of Tallinn and All Estonia, Archpriest Juvenaly Kaarma of the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Tallinn, and S. Mjannik, member of the Synod of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Present at the event were Bishop Lazar of Narva and Prichudje, Russian Ambassador to Estonia K. Merzlyakov, Bishop Philip (Roman Catholic Church in Estonia) and representatives of the public and cultural circles in Estonia, as well as diplomats and journalists.

The DECR chairman said in his speech:

‘I am glad to present to your attention the translation of the book by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia ‘Freedom and Responsibility: In a Search for Harmony. Human Rights and Personal Dignity’. This book was written by the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church when he headed the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations. It is a collection of His Holiness’s articles and speeches reflecting on such a fundamental question as human freedom, the answer to which is to determine the general vector of social development today.

‘The collection has been republished several times in major world languages and has invariably provoked interests among readers representing various areas of humanitarian knowledge, such as theology, philosophy, human rights, etc.

‘Today we can see two distinct approaches to the understanding of freedom and responsibility. One believes human freedom to be a self-sufficient category of the anthropocentric world. This approach denies the contribution of religion in public life and attempts to build the world without God, that is, a world whose criterion is man. We can see the products of this thinking around us: these are the sway of passions and the domination of injustices, wars and arbitrary rule. In our opinion, such can be only a humanity torn away from the spiritual tradition.

‘The second approach, advocated by the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church in his work, is based on the profound conviction that freedom acquires values only if it works for the salvation of man, for his life according to God’s truth. Without responsibility, without moral guidelines, freedom turns into an empty form filled with all-permissiveness and sin.

‘The freedom of a believer comes from the Creator and he is called to bear responsibility for this gift, to use it for good both in his personal life and in his relations with those around him. It is not an easy task because human nature bears the imprint of sin to which all human beings are inclined. For this reason, the society should create such conditions that would keep our brothers from disreputable actions rather than promote them. You must know that recently a group of women blasphemers committed a sacrilegious action in Russia’s central cathedral, the Church of Christ the Saviour. It is not for such realisation of freedom that humanity exists. Indeed, a person torn away from his or her culture and ignorant of the idea of a holy place can lose the notion of what is appropriate and what is shameful. For this reason we all are called to assert in society through education, the mass media and popular culture not the ideals of all-permissiveness and indulgence in passions but the love of God and the neighbour. Then it will never come to the minds of young women or men to burst into a church, a mosque or a synagogue, wearing motley.

‘How to build a free society promoting the growth of virtue in man? This is the message of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill’ articles included in the collection I am presenting. Many of them were drafted by His Holiness at the time when he, in his capacity of chairman of the department for external church relations, chaired the drafting group for a conceptual document of the Moscow Patriarchate on human rights. For several years there were several meetings to draft ‘The Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights’, which was to be adopted by the Bishops’ Council on June 26, 2008. All this time, the basic ideas of the document were reflected in numerous addresses by the present Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

‘The articles in this collection explain in an accessible language the patristic understanding of human freedom and dignity which can and must be lived up in today’s life by peoples who claim to be Christian.

‘Today the Baltic countries exist in the context of European integration processes. It is especially important therefore that the peoples of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania should preserve the moral guidelines of social development, which, regrettably are often lost in the pursuit of formal freedom. It shows especially strongly when European liberals, in promoting the rights of sexual minorities, challenge the notion of traditional family and use the pretext of political correctness to restrict the rights of Christians to condemn sin.

‘I hope that the Estonian version of the book by the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church will arouse interest and become a stimulus for a discussion on a wide range of the problems of human rights which should be put at the service of good and justice’.

The publication of the Estonian version of the book by Patriarch Kirill was prepared by the Publishing Department of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate together with the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations and the Moscow Patriarchate Publishers with the support of the Foundations of St. Gregory the Theologian and St. George the Victorious.

DECR Communication Service