Consequently, for the sacrament of repentance to be effective, sincere heartfelt repentance and a firm intention to correct one's life are necessary.

Is abortion permissible if conception occurred as a result of rape?

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)  

For some reason, your reasoning completely forgets the innocent baby who is to be killed. Hardly anyone will argue that rape is a serious trauma for a girl, but this does not lead to any right to kill someone who has done no harm to anyone. Life is one of the greatest mysteries of God. The Lord God did not give anyone the right to kill. Murder is a violation of the most important commandment – "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17). This prohibition expressed the great theological truth that all people are God's creations, and constitute His inheritance, which no man can encroach upon.

There are many cases when women go through the entire period of pregnancy, give birth, and then leave the babies in the hospital. People suffering from infertility take abandoned babies into the family and raise them as full-fledged members of society. The mere fact of conception as a result of rape does not mean that the child will be spiritually or physically deficient.

Abandonment of one's child is a sin, but not as grave as murder.

Dear Lydia! Do you know how an abortion is performed? I will give a description made by a man who committed many murders of infants, and then was horrified and gave up this criminal occupation.

Bernard Nathanson worked at St. Luke's Hospital at the University of California. The hospital received the latest diagnostic equipment, including an ultrasound sonograph (USG), which made it possible to observe the fetus. This was a kind of "window" into the mother's womb. This most modern diagnostic equipment allows you to observe how the child in the womb breathes, sucks his finger, swallows, sleeps... "I asked a doctor I know, who performed about 20 abortions every day, to do an ultrasound of the abortion process for one working day. He complied with my request, and then we looked through the materials together. Never again did this doctor perform abortions!! We were terrified. Thanks to the documents I received, I could see that the child's arms and legs were torn off by the suction machine, how the umbilical cord broke, how all the organs were sucked out, how the skull was crushed with a special instrument. It was really a shock for me."

Later, Nathanson created a film in which there is such an accompanying text. "We are now seeing a 12-week-old baby on the screen in a real-time ultrasound image. Here is his head, here is his body. And this is a hand reaching for the mouth. If we take a closer look at the image, we can distinguish an eye, a nose, a mouth, and even a brain cavity filled with the brain. This sponge-like tissue is the placenta. And here below, at the edge of the screen, there are legs. We can see the heart beating, making about 140 beats per minute. The child changes his position a little from time to time. His movements are calm, he is in a protected space. The shadow that has now appeared at the bottom, next to the border of the screen, is a vacuum curette... The amniotic sac is ruptured, the amniotic fluid has come out, the instrument is sucked to the baby's body and, under the influence of pressure, tears it away from the head. There are no legs anymore. We see the movement of the instrument tearing apart the body. All the force of negative pressure is directed against the child... The body was destroyed. Now the doctor inserts another instrument, an abortion, to grip the head tightly with it, crush it and remove it from the uterus... The head is captured... We can only see pieces of tissue and shards, indicating that there was a living, helpless, tiny human being here recently."

It is the interests of these innocent babies that are defended by the Church, and not by criminals, as stated in your letter.

What does it mean: "... and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (Matt. 5:32)?

Priest Athanasius Gumerov, a monk of Sretensky Monastery  

1. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord does not offer a detailed legislation on the family, but speaks only about the purity of Christian marriage. There is no doubt that we are talking about the guilty party here. If the marriage breaks up because of the adultery of one of the spouses, then the person who enters into the marriage is also involved in the sin of adultery.

This understanding is also reflected in the canons of the Orthodox Church. If the marriage broke up because of adultery, then it is supposed to be investigated. If the crime of one of the spouses is confirmed, then he is entitled to penance (spiritual punishment). The innocent party is allowed to remarry. At the same time, a person is not deprived of church communion.