A couple in Russia face jail after their religious zeal compelled them to drive their child, injured in a car crash, to church for an urgent baptism rather than to hospital.
The two-month-old infant was dead by the time it was delivered into the hands of the priest, Fontanka.ru news website said Sunday.
The boy sustained a brain injury in a minor crash in St. Petersburg on Saturday despite being in a child safety seat, the report said.
The worried parents sped him up to the church because “otherwise he would be denied the Kingdom of Heaven,” investigators cited them as saying, Fontanka.ru reported.
Now the two parents, both in their forties, are being investigated for “failure to assist a person in danger,” punishable with up to a year in prison.
This is usually the part where I go off on the ignorance of these people, but I will let a spokesman for the church do that instead.
“This is superstition, not religion,” an Orthodox Church spokesman told Fontanka.ru. “They should have gone to the hospital, it’s only human.”
Yeah, no shit!
This is the mindset of fundamentalists. The soul of the baby is much more important than the physical body. I hope the authorities go easy, since the parents don’t know any better, and that was a snap decision based on their indoctrination. My mother AND her sisters would have done the same thing.
ReplyDeleteClearly the parents both suffer from mental illness brought on by religious brainwashing.
ReplyDeleteWow, looks like American Fundernut Religionists could learn something from the Russian Orthodox Church, a church so much older and richer in tradition than these grandstanding upstarts.
ReplyDeleteUS to consolidate Vatican and Italian consulates and the US catholics are pissed. Excuse me, Catholicism started long after Jesus' reign of misstated adventures
ReplyDeleteBelief in superstitious nonsense is NOT harmless.
ReplyDeleteJust read this comment on a blog story about the myth of uninsured people being able to access health care through ERs and free clinics. The article talks about the frightening state of health care in Texas where the GOP is doing everything they can to block implementation of the ACA and how even fewer people are getting health care than before.
ReplyDeleteAt first I assumed this comment was sarcasm, but then I realized this person was serious. It seems his name is quite an understatement.
"lessthantolerant
Feeding parasites more entitlements only increases the number of parasites. letting them dies from lack of health care at least keeps the numbers from expanding too fast."
Wow. Wonder if he considers himself a good, pro-life Christian?
The mother was in her 40s when she gave birth to the child.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the kid was consequently at risk for multiple medical and genetic problems, and this tragedy actually might have spared him misery down the road.
Why was she getting pregnant so late in life? A bit of vanity, at the cost of compromising the baby's future well-being?
"up to a year in prison" ?????????????????? Seriously? What the hell's wrong with this picture?
ReplyDeleteI rarely "agree" with church orthidoxy, but this time I do!
“This is superstition, not religion,” an Orthodox Church spokesman told Fontanka.ru. “They should have gone to the hospital, it’s only human.”
It's almost as feckless as boarding a plane with ruptured membranes, driving/flying for hours, passing Neo Natal Intensive Care specialists to go to a private practice that doesn't even deliver high risk babies.
Coming a little late, but there's some doubt about the veracity of this story. Another source said that the parents already had an appointment with the priest; it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision to save the child's soul. As well, the Orthodox Church does not subscribe to the view that unbaptized children don't go to heaven. So all that makes me believe this very well might be a tall tale, like the story of the Polish girl who committed suicide so she could be with her dead father.
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