RUSSIALINK: “Patriarch Kirill speaks out against Western-style globalization” – Interfax

Patriarch Kirill file photo

MOSCOW. Nov 1 (Interfax) – Following the Western model of globalization would be a mistake because it has no room for traditional values, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said.

“The narrow paradigm of the New Time speaks of globalization as an inevitable process. Hidden underneath the word ‘inevitability’ is the western principle of global development which features liberal secularism and modern forms of colonialism,” Patriarch Kirill said at the opening of the World Russian’s People’s Assembly at the Kremlin on Thursday.

So the crisis of the modern world is one of the New Time values: “in politics, in economy, in the social sphere, culture – we find ourselves being held hostage to the past preventing us from calling things by their proper name and giving an adequate response to existing threats.”

The church is not claiming to be offering the only right solution but it can remind what the main error of the New Time is, he said.

“This mistake is a departure from tradition, the system of passing values from generation to generation which forms the civilizational code of peoples with its cultural, spiritual and religious paradigms, relying on God-given and thus invariable moral values which have accompanied the humankind throughout history. Experience shows that the trampling of these values has led to tragedies and cataclysms in personal, societal and international relations,” Patriarch Kirill said.

Rather than creating a unified philosophical-ideological foundation for the whole world with its ideological diversity, the globalization process should be confined to markets and capitals, movement of people, free border-crossing, a unified global system, fair economic relations, overcoming poverty, and a common strategy to protect the environment, the patriarch said.

“That will be a pragmatic globalization, one that does not encroach on human souls but strives to establish efficient and, if possible, fair world order,” Patriarch Kirill said.

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