Patriarch and teenagers

​We are publishing a commentary by Ksenia Sergazina, associate professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities and an expert at the SOVA Center, dedicated to the patriarch’s last speech - about how important it is for the Church to establish a dialogue with young people.

Speaking at a meeting of the Supreme Church Council on June 13, 2019, Patriarch Kirill once again - but very carefully - spoke on the topic of protests in Yekaterinburg. The main topic of his speech to church colleagues was the education of youth, the preservation within the church walls of grown-up children, for whom “paternalistic” rhetoric is no longer attractive.

“ How important it is for the priest to be able to switch something in his mind in time, abandoning the paternalistic language with which he addressed young children ,” says the patriarch. “ And the parents have the same language,” because for a young child this language is not shocking; on the contrary, it is very clear and understandable for him. At this age, the child still has little experience, he does not have the opportunity to compare, and when a mother or father speaks edifyingly, this is embedded in the child’s consciousness. <…> But when he enters adolescence, a paternalistic attitude can cause irritation. And we are talking not only about irritation towards the clergy - first of all, parents feel this irritation when a child stops obeying, when he has his own agenda, when parents cease to be authorities for him, when someone becomes an authority for him - another, outside your own home. The priest must very keenly feel this transitional age and change the language and manner of communication with the child. He should become a friend to older children. Perhaps this is difficult for a person in a cassock, especially one who has reached a certain position, accustomed to the fact that he is the main boss in the parish, that everyone surrounds him with love and respect. Becoming a friend to children is, of course, a certain challenge, but if we want children to remain in our parishes even in adolescence, then priests should become their first friends .”

The conversation about the importance of establishing dialogue with teenagers and young people who require a different language and a different position - on equal terms - deserves attention in itself. It is not so often that such voices can be heard in the Church - especially from the First Hierarch. And this conversation really reveals and highlights a problem that is not usually discussed: when and where do grown-up baptized babies go?

But in the patriarch’s speech there was another concern, another “pain”: the fewer young people in the Church, as it seems to him, the more among them there are those who oppose the Church.

“ We know what is happening in our society now. For example, they organized a group of young people who had nothing to do with the construction of the temple in Yekaterinburg. I was able to get acquainted with what information people exchanged on social networks - it was a well-organized event in which young people took part. But why did she so easily succumb to those who called for abandoning the chosen site? The idea to build a temple in this place was completely logical ..."

One can hear annoyance in this - how is it possible, someone lured our gullible teenagers to the “dark side”... And in this annoyance one sees a reflection of indifference to the topic of protests against the construction of churches and against the transfer of churches to the Church - not only in Yekaterinburg, but also in Moscow , in St. Petersburg, Tambov, and other Russian cities. Indifference, hidden, for example, in a conversation with journalists in Strasbourg at the end of May, when the patriarch said that protests against churches in Russia are “an exotic phenomenon” and “very rare”, that in general “temples do not bother anyone,” although they have to “In a number of cases, the Church is faced with unmotivated anger.”

Can we consider that attempts to come to an agreement with church youth before they leave the church gates is the first step towards dialogue with society, a dialogue that is needed and has long been awaited? Or is this another attempt to strengthen the defenses and close the church doors more tightly? Time will show.