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What are the main problems of the teaching of religion to children and adolescents in Ukraine? How can such education be provided without violating the principles of freedom of conscience and the secular character of education in state schools? These are the questions to which the participants in the recent round table on “The religious teaching and education of children and adolescents in Ukraine: problems and solutions” sought to give a reply. Held as part of the Conference on “Religion and Government in Ukraine: problems of bilateral relations”, the meeting was promoted in Kiev by the O. Razumkiv Centre for Research on Economic and Political Life and the branch office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in the Ukraine. The participants included the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the Rector of the Catholic University Father Boris Gudziak, the President of the Institute of Studies on Ecumenism at the same university, Father Ivan Dacko, and representatives of other Christian Churches and of the government. The “need for the spiritual education of children and adolescents” emerged from the discussion. “The Churches observed the participants at the round table teach children in their Sunday schools and have no need for government interventions in this activity. The support of the institutions is however necessary for launching the course of Christian ethics in schools of general education”. The participants also underlined the need for “the religious communities to be granted the right to establish their own schools of general education”, also through the “government funding of the public component of such schools” and the need to “approve the public recognition of degrees in religious science”. Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, archbishop major of Lvov, underlined the importance of introducing “the course of Christian ethics whose main objective is the union of the Ukrainians of East and West on the basis of common moral criteria, so that all may feel brothers and sisters”. It is also “shared cultural and ethical and moral symbols concluded Husar that foster mutual understanding”: hence the importance of the course of Christian ethics. On the question of the recognition of the degree in religious science and of the Catholic University of the Ukraine as a recognized university Father Boris Gudziak, called the present situation “unacceptable”. In the view of Father Ivan Dacko, the most significant result of the meeting was “the unanimity for the first time demonstrated by the representatives of the Christian Churches in the country in the defence of their own right to transmit Christian ethics in Ukrainian culture through schools of general education”.
