Mar Diascoros Metropolitan says premarital counselling for students to offset high divorce rates

MUSCAT : Dr Yuhanon Mar Diascoros, Metropolitan, Madras Diocese of Indian Orthodox Church, has once again underscored a major role for the youth of the Orthodox church. Envisaging a bigger role, the Metropolitan, says the youth cannot be grouped under a ‘diaspora’ but they have an entirely different theological concept.

In a recent interview during his recent Episcopal visit to Muscat Maha Edavaka, Mar Diascoros has maintained that ‘faith’ alone was not the issue here and has put forth some facts about the youngsters of the church.

The Metropolitan explains that the new generation of youths were not taking marriage with all seriousness thus losing its sanctity. While the married were taking life rather easy and end up in divorce on trivial family issues. His Grace mentions about the increasing number of high rate of inter-caste and inter-religious marriages among youths and admits that at least 50 per cent in Madras Diocese, which he heads since 2009, had these type of marriages.

Premarital counselling, Dr Mar Diascoros, has therefore suggested be made compulsory from high-school onwards and not during the days prior to marriage in the present set up. The Madras Diocese has thus taken the lead and started group counselling sessions from high school onwards for the students.

One of the major project which the diocese has planned is towards providing the student community with proper guidance at different places all over Tamil Nadu and not concentrating merely on chapels. This was started at Coimbatore and Karunya University which has a large number of students from the IT sector. His Grace suggests that students be tapped from hostels and not just from centres of worship.

Now the scheme is now being slowly extended to big cities like Sriperumbudur, Salem, Erode, Nampally, Chengalpattu and with a prayer group in Namakkal. This will propel the students to stay in our hostels and also enable some source of income for the diocese, Metropolitan adds.