RKS3S | Event

3rd International Seminar RELIGION, KNOWLEDGE, SOCIETY (RKS)

Human Person and the Challenges of Secularization

22-25 June, 2017, Vatra-Dornei (Romania)

Probably, the major challenge for the human person in our days is the postmodern society, a society that is experiencing the process of secularization, a society in which people lose any milestones, thus cancelling their positive perception upon life. The overwhelmed teens by this skepticism proclaim themselves the “no future generation”. Skepticism and depression arise from the apprehension and the disorientation in the face of a world apparently undetermined, chaotic, unstable, which grows as the person inside has already been attached to a certain set of ideals or values that he once considered, eternal and immutable. The tragedy of un-adapting is visible throughout the world, but especially in the youngsters who become the product of a consumerist society whose fascination towards them is stronger than ever. This world makes them prisoners of an individualist, materialist, and hedonistic interpretation of the human existence. The material welfare tends to impose itself as the only ideal in one’s life, which must be achieved under any circumstances and at any costs. Or, in this condition, the person is exposed to multiple violations that attempt to destroy its socio-religious dignity, also being exposed to the social dynamics dictating the most humiliating and abnormal means of orchestrating one’s life.

Thus, the exclusive preoccupation for “to have” replaces the primordial “to be”, along with the consequences arising from the interpretation and the living of personal values according to the selfish possessing law and orchestrating the others, leading, inevitably, not to an harmonious growth of one’s self, but to the severe psychological and ethical involution.

Last, but not least, one can observe more clearly a high tension between traditions and modernity, as the traditional is being perceived in a pejorative meaning, similar to unacceptable and old. Contemporary generations that face the consecrated values of Christianity do not understand them, because it is impossible for them to understand and to make acquaintance with them in a consumerist society in which everything is pragmatic, everything is “used”, money, economy; everything comes down to purely mundane values against the ancestral, spiritual values. Today, the world is living a true tragedy. Secularization is breaking Man apart from God and making him the slave of a material life that is suffocating him. The tragedy of the religious indifference atrophies the consciousness of people, the perception they have on religion, deforming what is authentic in the religious experience. The existential questions are remaining unanswered and they expose the contemporary man to depressing disillusion or to temptation of eliminating the very human life that questions these problems. Thrilled by the fascinating and innovative of a scientific and technological development, as well as through the misuse of an un-bordered freedom, the man cuts the religious roots lying in his heart; he, thus, forgets about God, considers Him meaningless towards his personal existence, denies Him, causing a moral relativity. By secularization, the human condition is reduced to existence in this world; there is nothing before or after the man.

This international seminar intends to offer a theological and philosophical approach of the challenges of secularization regarding the human person.

Scientific committee

Teodosie PETRESCU - Archbishop of Tomis, Faculty of Theology, “Ovidius” University of Constanța (Romania)

Costel MITU - Dean of Faculty of Theology, “Ovidius” University of Constanța (Romania)

Nicolae ACHIMESCU - University of Bucharest (Romania)

John FARINA - "George Mason" University (SUA)

Katarína VALČOVÁ - University of Žilina (Slovakia)

Jannel ABOGADO - Center for Religious Studies and Ethics, University of Santo Tomas (Philippines)

Michal VALČO - Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (Slovakia)

Jove Jim S. AGUAS - University of Santo Tomas (Philippines)

Mohamed Ahmed SULEYMAN - “Beni Suef” University, Cairo (Egypt)

Alexander CHIRILA - Webster University (Thailand)

Dan-Gabriel SÎMBOTIN - Romanian Academy - Iași Branch (Romania)

Ismat NASSAR - “Beni Suef” University, Cairo (Egypt)

Sergei NIZHNIKOV - Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (Russia)

Cristina GAVRILUȚĂ - “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași (Romania)

Ana PETRACHE - University of Bucharest (Romania)

Nicu GAVRILUȚĂ - “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași (Romania)

Laurențiu TĂNASE - University of Bucharest (Romania)

Florina HARIGA - “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași (Romania)

Bogdan CHIRILUȚĂ - “Ovidius” University of Constanța (Romania)

Edward ALAM - Notre Dame University (Lebanon)

Ioan DURA - “Ovidius” University of Constanța (Romania)

Organizing Institution

Faculty of Theology - “Ovidius” University of Constanța (Romania)
Department of General and Applied Ethics, Faculty of Arts, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (Slovakia)
Center for Religious Studies and Ethics, University of Santo Tomas” (Philippines)
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, "Beni-Suef" University (Egypt)
Global Citizenship Program & ESL, Webster University Cha-Am Main Campus (Thailand)
Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences, Peoples` Friendship University of Russia (Russia)
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Žilina University in Žilina (Slovakia)
Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Studies and Dialogue, University of Bucharest (Romania)
Center for Culture and Education, Archiepiscopate of Tomis (Romania)

Programme & Photos