Ovidius University from Constanta

Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj Napoca

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

EM.
EDITURA DIDACTÃ §I PEDAGOGICÃ, R.A.
 Organizatorii Simpozionului:

+ Prof. Univ. Dr. Teodosie Petrescu, AVIOITAMASTHI

Arhiepiscopul
Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Bogdan Moise,
Decan al Facultätii de Teologie Sfântul Apostol Andrei din
Prof. Univ. Dr. Virgil Frunzä,
Decan al Facultátii de Psihologie si $tiintele Educatiei din Constanta
Prof. Univ. Dr. Räzvan Ionescu,

SI
Prodecan al Facultátii de Teologie Sfântul Apostol Andrei din
Pr. Conf. Univ. Dr. Dänut Popovici,
Prodecan al Facultátii de Teologie Sfântul Apostol Andrei din Constanta
Lect. Univ. Dr. Catalina Mititelu,
Facultatea de Teologie Sfântul Apostol Andrei din
Lect. Univ. Dr. Claudia Popa,
UH SHT VI
Facultatea de Psihologie si Stintele educatiei din Constanta
Lect. Univ. Dr. Mihaela Oros,
Facultatea de Psihologie si §tintele Educatiei a Universitätii Babes-Bolyai din
Cluj Napoca

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Nationale a

Educatia religioasä în context european / coord. vol.: pr. conf. univ. dr.
Dánut Popovici, lect. univ. dr. Claudia Popa, lect. univ. dr.
Oros. - Bucuresti : Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, Bibliogr.
-
ISBN 978-973-30-3736-1 ploy do erosnibiooD

I. Popovici, Dänut (coord.)

II. Popa, Claudia (coord.) I ChriST.1019,3082A.
III. Oros, Mihaela (coord.) usO CriT.

Intreaga responsabilitate pentru continutul materialelor apartine în exclusivitate

autorilor.
 Universitatea Ovidius din Constanta
Universitatea Babes-Bolyai din Cluj

SIMPOZIONUL

EDUCATIA RELIGIOASA
ÎN
CONTEXT EUROPEAN
mai 2014 -

Tiparità cu binecuvântarea
† Prof. Univ. Dr. Teodosie PETRESCU
Arhiepiscop al Tomisului
. PhD Co

Editura Didactica si Pedagogica R.A.

Bucuresti, 2014
 Content:

+ Prof. PhD Teodosie PETRESCU, Archbishop of Tomis,

Foreword ......................................... p. 9
Prof. PhD Razvan IONESCU,
A Question for The Third Millenium: Is Theology's Place Among The
Academic Space Anylonger? ................................c......oo p. 11
Fr. Professor Emeritus Nicolae V. DURÀ,
A Modern Higher Education Institution, Ovidius University of
Constanta (Romania) p. 26
Prof. h.c. Manfred WAGNER,
ReligionspädagogischeAusbildung in Baden-Württemberg.............. p. 45
Prof. PhD András MÁTÉ-TÓTH,
Interpretations of Religious Change ..... ... .........................p. 56
Fr. Prof. PhD Gheorghe ISTODOR,
Christian - Orthodox Education in the Current Post-modern
Context p. 70
Fr. Assoc. Prof. PhD Dänut POPOVICI,
The Internet - a Modern Means for Spreading Religious Information ... p. 80
Fr. Assoc. Prof. PhD Danut POPOVICI,
Aspects concernant l'éducation religieuse selon âge et instruction p. 95

Fr. Assoc. Prof. PhD Danut POPOVICI,

The Education of Emperor Constantine the Great and its reflection
his relation with the Church of Christ . p. 111
Assoc. Prof. PhD Mihaela DIMITRESCU, Assoc. Prof. PhD Corina
Maria ENE, Lect. PhD Yvonne LACROIS,
Knowledge-based Society and Higher Education in Private
Offer Adaptation to The Needs of The Labour Market in
Universities
The Era of New Technologies p. 121
Assoc. Prof. PhD Mihaela DIMITRESCU, Lect. PhD Luiza
Lect. PhD Yvonne LACROIS,
Considerations on Higher Education Funding in European Union
Increasing Academic Performance p. 136
Fr. Assoc. Prof. PhD DOru DAMEAL
Religious Education Contribution to Prevention of School Violence ... p. 148

Fr. PhD Nicole Marius PAICU,

Christian Education - Deifying Logotherapy p. 154

Lect. PhD Mihaela OROS,

Änderung des Bildungsparadigmas zur
Der reflexive
Ausbildung von außerordentlichen Lehrern p. 171
Lect. PhD Catalina MITITELU,
Education. The Romanian Legislation and
The Right to Religious
180
Religious Education p.

Lect. PhD Mariana MITRA,

Family Education through Violence p. 189
Lect. PhD Claudia POPA,
European Social Policies for Religious Educations ....................... p. 200
Lect. PhD Nicugor TUCA, Fr. Lect. PhD Dragos BALAN,
Fr.
God's Place in The Contemporary Romanian p. 209

Fr. Lect. PhD Adrian VASILE,

The Catechetical School of Alexandria - a model of p. 219
Fr. Lect. PhD Iosif Gyulai MURESAN,
Religious Music and The Teaching Role of This Art .................... p. 231
Fr. Asist. Prof. PhD Maxim VLAD, OTO1 juniO CiS
Orthodox Canonical Legislation on Religious Education Today.......... p. 240
Fr. Asist. Prof. PhD Iulian ISBÄSOIU,
L'éducation religieuse en Roumanie et les Recommandations de
l'Assemblée Parlementaire du Conseil de l'Europe p. 252
Fr. Asist. Prof. PhD Nicolae POPESCU, Ass iM GAT
About speaking in Parables and Salvation p. 267
Fr. PhD Ioan Valentin ISTRATI, 19100d

Religious Education n European context. Several remarks ........... p. 284

Deacon Dr. Ioan DURA,
Education in a Pluri-Religious and Secular Context: Interreligious
Dialogue as Basis for a Good Social Cohabitate. . ......................p. .288
PhD Candidate Rázvan Constantin
Religious Education Component that Shapes Human Personality ... p.
Abbreviations p. 305
 GOD'S PLACE IN THE
ROMANIAN

Fr. Lect. PhD Nieusor TUCÃ

Ovidius University of Constanta
Fr. Leet. PhD Dragos Corneliu BÄLAN
Ovidius University of Constanta

Abstract:

The Church and the school have always been supporting each other
in the process of man's training, in his preparation for life and society; they
have taught him to dissociate good from evil. The first schools operated in the
places of worship or next to them. Today, the school separated from the
Church cannot succeed in the huge responsibility of educating children.
the present Romanian school, one can feel, on the one hand, the consequences
of the materialist-atheist ideology of the communist period, and, on the other
hand, the influences of a world undergoing full process of secularization.
Religion has always given a sense and a direction to the human
Religion - as an educational discipline - has the role of binder between
disciplines that have lost or did not have God.. By learning religion, the
pupils will better understand the meaning of man, because religion forms

man for himself and for society; it a need of human nature.

Keywords: God, school, education, religion,

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor

In one of his books, is not one of the kind:
shows that the fundamental question of morals
good (correct) life from a a moral perspective?"
"How
or should
"What ruleswe lead awe respect to become good?". The true question
should
"What do we live on? What are the
of morals
moral is, on
sources the
that wecontrary,
use to quench our thirst? What gives us strength

to act morally?"
Die Entstenhung de neuzeitlichenldentitat, dt.

Charles Taylor, Quellen des Selbst.

Ub. Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 32.

209
 This power to act morally is given to us by our Orthodox faith,
alive for over two thousand years. The culture assured its future,
has
its perennially, only on the basis of the immortal religion. In our
means Orthodox
eternal culture
Christianity! religion,
Here is encompassed the essence of
geographic area, creation . life, the
the triumph of good! *Here, in
but also of the
between the Carpathians, the Danube and the Sea, the Romanian
future
people, the first in time to have populated this area and the only one
his existence by writing his own
that inhabited it perennially, has built
national, cultural and religious history. Born out of the Daco-Roman
and sanctified by the Evangel, the Romanians are
the only
osmosis
people stepping into history as a Christian people. Latinity and
Christianism are the two
coordinates defining and singularizing it
among the of the Earth. Despite all the vicissitudes that it
has gone through and that it has had to face, this people has come out
victorious every time, accomplishing, with God's help, its calling
mission in history and in
The Church and the School are two institutions that
are
extremely close as function so that it is impossible to serve in the
Church and to forsake school and the other way round, to be part
the school and to forsake the Church. This happens if you
understand and appropriate their role. The fundamental reason why
the Church and the School suppose one another is the fact that both of
them have in view man. There is no salvation without knowledge
no knowledge without training. The Church's mission is man's
salvation and the School's mission iS man's training. He Who founded
the Church, our Savior Jesus Christ, called Himself "Rabbi"
(Teacher), one of His missions being to teach, and
missions given to one of the
the apostles shows that one of the functions of
Church will be that of teaching: "Go
(Matthew 28:19). and teach all nations..."

The Romanian spirituality, a fruit of

Church and School the unity between
Church and School have
training process, in man's
alwayspreparation forstayed
life andtogether
society, they have
in man's
taught man to tell right from wrong, to discern
a sinless, normal life, a life of faith, of virtue, and life
between especially
in sin and
have
2 Alexandru Ionita, Din trecutul Bisericii si Patriei
Constanta, 2001, p. 5.
noastre, Ed. Ex Ponto,

210
educated man to think about the physical life but also about the
immortality of the soul.
In our Romanian villages, Church and School - two important
and imposing edifices, are situated almost
next to each other
and this happens because the two are edifices of the spirit and of faith
and their place can only be next to each other. Light and happiness,
calm and peace irradiate with
golden rays both from the altar of
Church and from the gentle word of the priest, but also from the
teacher's desk and from the innocent eyes of the children in the school
desks.
From the beginnings of the priests and the monks
were erudite people, they read, printed books, wrote letters. This
why the first schools functioned in the precincts of the places of
worship or near them, and the priests or even the cantors served
teachers. Let us remember that even our great story-teller Ion Creangä
relates that the priest Ion Humulesteanu or badita Vasile, cantor of the
Church of Humulesti, were his primary-school teachers. At that time,
the children learnt using the Church books, which were their first
ABCs.
On Romanian land, the first schools were, consequently, those
"from the porch of the Church" and from the monasteries, and the
Church served the nation's education and language having the
conscience that this is its mission. Near the Church of Saint Nicholas
of Scheii Brasovului was created the oldest Romanian school of
country (1495).
Studying the history of the Romanian people, we have the
conviction that the Romanian school was born in the Church of the
nation, sprung from it and remained close to it. The books, assets
the Church and also of school, were printed for all the Romanians of
all the countries. The books of Transylvania crossed over the
Carpathians
in Wallachia and Moldova, and those of Wallachia and
Moldova also penetrated in Transylvania "to spread the word of
Holy Scripture... in all the countries and lands speaking the Romanian

language"s and to be of good use "to all the people speaking

Romanian"*. Printed by the Church, they were taken over by the
school and by the educated people of the nation and profitably used
the conscience of ecclesiastical and national
means of reinforcing
Mitropolitul Nicole al Ardealului, Biserica Ortodoxa una §7 aceeasi in
Románã,
toate timpurile, Sibiu, 1968, p.18.
Ibidem.

211
unity of all the Romanians. "For two millennia, during which
Romanian's soul was shaped, his soul, says Octavian Goga as the
a
vast basin, has gathered in it memories and hopes, joys and crying, an
the thrills that made it vibrate along the centuries. Who could disjoint
this treasure of feelings and select the mystery that gave birth to the
multifold variety expressing our national specifics?" he wondered?

The Romanian spirituality was born in the Church and in school, and
preserved through the collaboration of these
Romanian
twospirituality is a creation,
has
fundamental institutions; the
miracle sprung from the unity of action of the two institutions. Bya
means of them, the society has preserved, cultivated and transmitted

For values.
its cultural hundreds of years, in the Romanian Countries, people have
quenched their thirst from a unique spring of moral and spiritual life:

the Orthodox ethos present in the Holy Evangel and generally in

Holy Scripture
the Holy Fathers, and in the Holy
Liturgy and in all interpreted
the divine services of the Church.
however, in the history of the Romanians
At a certain moment,
second source of the moral
there was a breakup that imposed
the Christian ethos: the ideology and aspirations of
along with
Horia Roman Patapieviei, in his work The Recent Man
Enlightenment.
wrote the following things referring to the fact that only by faith
over the threshold of ephemerality: "The human
God can man
societies are born, live and die on earth; it is here that their destinies
are fulfilled... yet they do not encompass man as a whole. After his
commitment in the society, man still has the noblest part of himself
available, as he remains with those great capacities by which he
ascends to God, to a future life, to unknown assets from an invisible
world... As individual and identical people, as beings truly endowed
with immortality, we have a destiny different from that of the States.
In the present Romanian school one can feel, on the one hand,
communist
the consequences of the materialist-atheist ideology of
period, and, on the other hand, the influences of a world under
secularization, so that, slowly but steadily, the Romanian school tends
to draw away from the Church, as in it blows the "wind" of the
suicide, of addictions, of delinquents explains the and proliferation criminals among of the pupils cases
autonomy from God. This and of

5 Octavian Goga, Precursori, Ed. Minerva, Bucuresti, 1989,

° Cf. H.R. Patapievici, Omul recent,
p. Ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti, 40. 2005,
p. 397.

212
students and the unfortunate lack of submission to the educators and
to the parents.
A Godless school can no longer set in order the lives of its
disciples. It can provide to them computers, modern laboratories for
their specialization in one scientific domain or the other, but without
God, it will not be able to protect them from robotization,
dehumanization (loss of their moral dimension) and the danger
becoming rootless people.
The School, separated from the Church, cannot succeed in the
huge responsibility of education, because of opposition of a series
of "ideologists", "philosophers", "moralists" and "educators", stars,
superstars, megastars, people with no God, no commitment and no
family, who by their negative example given by their own life in the
media and at concerts, exhort the young generation to immorality
laziness and inoculate to them "Freud's complex", namely
theory according to which in order to get rid of complexes we need
get rid of shame.

The Christian education of the

Saint John Chrysostom considers children to be the greatest
caress that God has given to mankind after it has lost immortality,
its fall into sin. Children are the ray of light and the source of joy in
their parents' soul, a cane for the old age and for the weaknesses
those who have given birth to them and have raised them.
represent a divine gift, a blessing for their parents, as, with their
coming in the world, our home, our family needs to become a a place of
joy and of hope.
The joys of the true parents are the accomplishments or
realizations, successes and achievements of their children, and
similarly their worst hardships are not their personal ones, but the
defeats, failures and hardships of their children. Our children are
heritage we leave behind, reason and the motivation of our
endeavors and sacrifices of a lifetime.
In order for them to become a true caress for our tired
and difficulties, our children need to be raised and
burdened by years
educated in a Christian spirit, with love for the true moral and
religious values.
Therefore, this education needs to begin in the early childhood,
and must become a constant of their life. And the first exercise they

Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 2001, p. 15.

See Savatie Bastavoi, Intre Freud si Hristos,

213
 can acquire is prayer and going to church. There iS nothing as
helpful
for a child's healthy physical and psychological development
as

Education is the most beautiful and the most difficult art, the
parents
prayer being true artists endeavoring to achieve artistic works.
and faith.
Theis, at the beginning, like a block of
child, says Saint John Chrysostom,

marble. Just as the sculptor has to shape his block of marble

beautifully, similarly parents need to beautify their children's lives
with the highest virtues and, removing all that is sin and alien, need to

their children into true living artistic works.

turn The method of education needs to rely on love, goodness and

kindness.
In conclusion, we can state that the most important educational
the Church and school. Children represent the
factors are the family,
important investment of our life. Children are the ultimate and
most
essential motivation and reason of our life and this is why a loving and
responsible parent cannot have peace and joy unless his child
ha
them as well. We work our whole life for them, hoping that they will
return some of this help to us when we will need it most, in
our
moments of disease and old age, of need and powerlessness, just as we
have given birth and helped them grow and prosper "in due time and
any time". The true heritage that the parents should leave to their
children is not material but purely spiritual and consists in faith,
honesty, goodness, kindness, meekness, love,
purity etc. Some of us
are too busy with the immediate and material investments
profit, and forget or ignore the time and feelings and a fast
to our children and that need to be given
when we realize it, it might be too late. Just as a
tree needs to be looked after when it has been planted, to grow
upwe should supervise, guide and
straight and beautifully, similarly
possibly correct the physical and psychical
children from their early age. Once the tree has grown up crooked and
sickly, all our efforts might prove to be in vain. development of the
Therefore, at the root of the true education, we
and patience, because to educate
need
a
most beautiful and the highest qualities of
person, to adorn a to put love
a endeavor, but
easy, nor a Short-term supposes a lifetime effort.
person with the
human being is neither
Arguments in favor of a religious education
We want a
united
about a unique State, Europe,
we vote we oftenof
constitutions talk
theabout globalization,
European Union, We
 rejoice at the integration of our country as member of the
Union, we wish to guide ourselves according to the
same
socioeconomic principles and desires, yet we should not let ourselves
«disinherited" of the fundamental values of our tradition.
In the concert of mankind, each and every people has a
specific message of civilization and culture, and the Romanian people
has been born to be Christian-Orthodox by excellence. And this fact is
all the more important, seeing the words Simion Mehedinti uttered a
century ago: …each man and people in history is worth as much as
has grasped from the Evangel of our Savior Jesus Christ"8
Although there are voices rejecting the functioning of the
Religious Education class in the name of the State's lay character and
of the freedom of thought, we consider it normal that, in a pluralist
society, people should hear about the Bible in schools, otherwise
cultural heritage becomes impossible to understand and they
hear about the Fathers of the Church in the study of thinking"
The training of the young people through the educational
system needs to be multidirectional and polyvalent, as the school
educates the individual from an intellectual, moral, civic, esthetic,
hygienic perspective; this is why the religious component is
organically added to the previous perspectives, meeting the need
an educational and training complementariness and continuity. For
this reason, it is necessary that these sides of education be envisioned
as a global, integrative approach! Or as follows: as a discipline of
education, religion has the role of binder between the disciplines
have lost or did not have God; by learning religion, the pupils will
better understand man's role, religion trains man for himself and for
the society, it is a need of the human nature.
The arguments in favor of the religious education are many:
the religious type of training sets
a. the cultural argument
motion the mind and the soul, opens the towards diverse cultural
experiences. The lack of training from a religious perspective
spiritual infirmity, being a form of analphabetism.

DICHoToli DES
tocit
Apud Vasile Nechita, Hristos in scoalà. Impliniri si esecuri in predarea religiei
8
in
scoalä, in TV, nr. 9-12/2002, p. 128. Claudiu Soare, Ed.
translation by
Olivier Clement, Viata din inima mortii,
Cucos,
Targoviste, 2001, Educatia religioasã. Repere teoretice si metodice, Ed. Polirom,
p. 43.
10
Constantin
lasi, 1999, p. 13.

215
 b. the psychological argument religious education invites to
reflection, to self-knowledge; it is not just the transmission of
knowledge but also the shapingspecific
or training of the personality. Turning
to religion
C. theisethical
healingargument
and saving.the religious type of morals
can fill a
gap or can help overcome some existential orientation gap.

d. the sociological argument the religious values are meant to

create sustainable
bring people together, to
e. the historical argument -
for many centuries, the culture was at
home in churches and monasteries
ecumenical argument - the religious education and training
f. the and understanding of his fellow, and
for the acceptance
prepare man
he becomes more generous and less suspicious of the others
the theological each person should be guided to
g. reach a a deep sense of life and of the existence
God, to
h. the pedagogical argument religious education opens the
appetite for self-improvement and represents a way of making the
self-responsible in relation to the subsequent options'1
These arguments in favor of a religious education correspond to
the essential dimensions of the human personality, those that form the
"puzzle" of personality on its way towards adulthood: physical
dimension, psychical dimension but also social dimension.
Religion gives sense and direction to the existence. The
values are values par excellence. The religious values
not
integrable but integrative the religious values draw a unifyingarvault
sheltering under their arch the most remote values.

Desecration We would like and to depersonalization. The estrangement from

God
believe that
founding crime of Nietzsche's today's
of the man has not been born
decide but
be called "homo religiosus". However, the on the contrary can
misunderstood his calling HOMO SECUNDUS DEUS - looking
contemporary for
man has
his happiness
accomplishment
Today, the European in the temporality
type of civilization of this
wants itself life.
freed
religion and morals, therefore it from
modern. This means that man no wants itself
longer post-Christian
trusts and
his axiology, hispost-
old
reference system that configured it initially and in
and implicitly Christ held
a central
this day, man has been on the lookoutplace. Since the
for "trifles".. which Christianity
Renaissance to

11 Ibidem, p. 26.

216
 The man of our century
bored of the worlds and does not findphysically
his immersed in
eternity, because between the man matter
joy in the voyages towards
of our days, an unbridgeable gap has been "in
created created.
God's image" and
man
We are under the impression that
societies we live in tend towards our we are evolving, that the
are under the impression that good, the
good of all of us; we
the technological means
of living, of any kind, are making our lives and the means
easier, yet, probably we do not realize that this progress of any kind
happier and our work
does not have man's salvation as its aim. Father Dumitru Popescu,
recent paper - The Church and politicsin (Biserica si politica)
a
in this sense: "man has won great victories in the fight for
wrote
conquering
the great or the universe, but deep
overwhelmed by irrational forces that he in his soul, he feels
which ceaselessly fuel the can no longer control
explosion of violence that we are all
witnessing, powerlessly. Our Savior Jesus Christ is
right when he says
that "man gains nothing if he wins the whole world but he loses his
soul".
If we do not need Christ in our schools, if we do not need the
true faith in the education of our children, if we do not need the
teaching showing us how to make the difference between right
and
wrong, what do we need, then? Yet, in order to be bereaved of our
identity of Christian-born people, we are confronted with different
"methods" trying to uproot us and to lead us astray from our true
feeling and living.
However, when troubles appear in our lives, we are
wondering: How can God let all these things happen? An eloquent
answer has been given 1N this sense by Anne Graham, the daughter of
the great American preacher, Billy Graham. When asked about the
attacks of September 11, 2001: "How could God let this happen?", she
replied "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as are, but

for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out
out of our lives...»13
of our government and to

Conclusions
It is strange how people despise God and then they
themselves why everything is getting worse and worse. It iS
writing, but we distrust the
how we believe all that the papers are
1-4/2005, p. 120.
Gb, nr.
Dumitru Popescu, Biserica si politica,
12
1
Apud Vasile Nechita, op. cit., 129.

217
 that, more often than not,
words of the Bible. And it iS even stranger
we, the Romanians, are able to deny our own being to reach certain

Romanian Orthodox Church has supported Romania's

temporary goals.
to permanently militate for
joining the maintaining of the European of our forefathers' Union, yet it spiritual needs values and faith, without
The
because "whatever" we may
own identity
which we"The
believe, would loseisour
world not ruled by Nero but by God?
14.
Consequently, the Religion class doubtlessly needs to be part
of the national curriculum because it is only there that we
learnto Christ. Without Christ, we gettoto
more honest, more correct, closer
be

fall, we get to live an insignificant, sad, useless life, a senseless

tribulation towards a senseless end of our life this is most
the Religion class: the presentation of
lesson provided
the real, miserable state of man in this world, a state of downfall
important
without the sure guidance provided by
confusion, of disintegration,
Christ, but also of the possibility to face the tests of life with dignity
that no other discipline can present better or to
and serenity, a state
which no other discipline can offer viable alternatives; it is (
profound lesson of life, the most profound and important lesson,
namely that of being a true man.

1 Henryk Sienkyewicz, Quo vadis, translation by Stan Velea, Ed. Leda, Bucuresti,
2004, p. 59.

218