Girls should study how to be mothers rather than go to school — controversial Russian Priest
Hot on the heels of calling live-in-girlfriends "free prostitutes," Russia's least politically correct clergyman, Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, is in no mood to stop making controversial comments.
The notorious cleric has once again come under fire — this time for questioning the need to send girls to school.
"It is more important to teach a seven-year-old girl how to look after a child, and not to read and write, which she already knows how to do," he said, speaking to Christian radio station Radonezh. "What is there to do in this school? Learn jealousy, name-calling, bad words, rudeness to teachers? Why? And so, she will ready to be a mother. She will be able to do everything."
According to the Archpriest, a young girl would be better served by learning in the home, rather than in school.
Smirnov's comments received a predictable backlash. Rock star Sergei Shnurov, who recently took his first step into politics, wrote a poem in response to the comments, suggesting that the Archpriest reduced the life of a woman purely to motherhood and marriage. "Let them prepare for childbirth and the grave, women get married, no need to study!" Shnurov wrote on his Instagram page.
The Church was quick to fight back against the criticism. Vladimir Legoyda, the spokesperson of the Moscow Patriarchate, criticized the story on his Telegram channel, attacking the media for "crossing the line" with their "distortion" of the story.
"Friends and colleagues, I understand that many people need 'hype,' but let's all stay professional, without turning this into a farce," he wrote. Legoyda claimed that the Archpriest did not speak out against sending girls to school, but merely advocated family education.
"Alas, thanks to low level of professionalism, illiteracy, or the deliberate distortion of some [journalists], readers of the above headlines will conclude that the Church declared war on education for women and girls, chained them to radiators and didn't let them go to school. Another scandal from nothing."
Smirnov has developed quite a reputation for controversial comments. As well as calling unmarried live-in-girlfriends "free prostitutes," the cleric has spoken out against a law prohibiting domestic violence, called Russian men "a national catastrophe," and dubbed abortion "worse than the Holocaust."
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