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THE CANONICAL LAW AND ITS ROLE IN PREVENTING OF TEENAGERS MORAL DEVIANCE

M. M. Vlad, N. Stanescu

Abstract

Religion is a form of social consciousness that represents a basis of the deepest human reflections through specific theories and practices. This reflects the continuous tendency of human mind: to know, to question in connection with what is known, to overcome concrete existence, to enter a world that is beyond the objective aspects. Man as a multidimensional being, relates to existence, not only by reason and pragmatism but also by feeling and contemplative experience, ranging restlessly between the profane social space and the "sacred" reality of a perfect society called the kingdom of God, making religious experience be considered as consubstantial with human being. According to these considerations, the Romanian Orthodox Church is preoccupied, at all times, with the moral and spiritual education of children and youth, contributing greatly to shaping and forming the human person, through the responsible involvement in society. Orthodox Christian education should conceived in accordance with the spiritual needs specific to each age. This refers both to an informative dimension, that of making available to children and young people a set of moral knowledge and to a formative one in terms of assimilation and transposing religious precepts into life. Therefore, Orthodox Christian education will not be limited to the transmission of information. It will emphasize in particular the moral and spiritual formation of children and young people, putting their lives in accord with the Gospel ideal of Christ. The informative purposes of religious education concern the acquisition of a religious culture that includes a set of specific knowledge. It has mainly a theological, doctrinal, liturgical, canonical-disciplinary character, embracing concepts and ideas of the history of various faiths and religions of humanity and their impact on the national and universal culture. Thereby, religious education constitutes a component of the education for values, integral education, being tied to intellectual, aesthetic, moral and civic education ensuring continuity on the spiritual, social and individual level. Formative purposes of religious education consists in involving all the intellectual capacity to decipher and experiment deeper meanings of existence. This process occurs through internalization of religious rules by harnessing the substrate of moral and religious values, by transposing them in fact. Religion requires an intellectual side, resulted in dogma or religious conception; the affective component hypostasizes the feelings of respect and reverence for nature worship and rituals; an active - participative dimension presents in terms of discipline canonical fulfillment and moral imperatives. All these objectives are expressed in the sententious canonical Orthodox Church legislation. By knowing canonical and disciplinary norms and imperatives of the Church, teenagers, and all young people in general would benefit substantially, this leading to the prevention of the occurrence of deviant moral in their lives. Through this study we try to demonstrate that the Orthodox Church has always reflected on these moral and disciplinary dangers which tend to distort and alter consciousness and behavior of young people, by encoding solutions to these challenges in canonical legislation.

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