Ukraine Churches are now facing up to the challenge of proposed changes in the education curriculum for school students as the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has decided to implement a mandatory "Ethics" class to replace the current "Christian Ethics" class for the coming 2005-2006 school year.

Upon the announcement of the proposal in late May, the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Ukraine have demonstrated a rare unity to protest against the government. According to the Tablet, a Catholic newspaper based in the UK, the Churches appealed to the country’s president, Viktor Yushchenk, saying freedom of conscience is being ignored.

"The time has come for independent Ukraine to break with totalitarian Soviet tradition, in which parents and children are Christian at home but must be atheists or indifferent to Christianity at school," they said in a joint statement.

According to a press release from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), after Ukraine’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union, the country has experienced a national and religious renewal. The UGCC has set as a priority, the implementation of a "Fundamentals of Christian Morality" into the school curriculum.

In collaboration with the Orthodox Church, Christian Ethics classes were first introduced in Ukranian general secondary schools in 1997 under the authorisation of the local government after years of preparation of materials and experiments.

The statement from the Church further explained that Christian Ethics education has demonstrated its beneficial effect on the development of spirit, soul and body of the young people and children.

It even stated, "Over the course of less than 15 years, tens of thousands of adults and children found the path to God and their Church in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Uzhorod, Donetsk , Odessa and Kyiv. Very often children who were given the opportunity to discover and learn Christian values, helped their parents to keep their families together, to realise the meaning of their own life, and to return to Ukrainian religious traditions."

Through Christian Ethics education, the country has gained a unique experience in the cooperation of Family - School - Church - State, the Church said.

The Church denounced the content of the proposed mandatory ethics curriculum because it does not "base itself on God's Truth, but stands on the shaky foundations of transient human attitudes". It warned that the curriculum will "systematically and single-mindedly destroy children's souls and demoralise them" and is regarded as "an assault on the treasures of the Ukrainian Christian tradition".

One of the examples cited by the Church is a materialistic interpretation of a person's essence in the curriculum which refers: "The Human Being - a part of nature".

The Church appeals to the government to take into consideration "the long term, positive experience of teaching the subject Christian Ethics in secondary educational establishments". It also demands "the inclusion of the class Christian Ethics as an invariable part of the basic curriculum beginning with the 2005-2006 school year".

"The protest has no political undertones, but is simply required by the need to care for the spiritual welfare of the faithful of the UGCC - citizens of Ukraine," the Church added.