Abusing religion

WE are already familiar with the problem of secularization. That’s
when God is set aside not only in society—as in business and
politics—but also in one’s personal life. This is the anomaly
besetting many developed Western countries that are entering what
is known as post-Christian or post-religion era.

That means religion is already considered as passé and obsolete. Any
mention of God is likely met with a laugh, a derision if not an open
hostility. In these places, men are convinced there’s no other source
of light, wisdom and guidance than their own selves, their own ideas
and devices.

Under this category, we can cite isms like atheism, agnosticism,
relativism, skepticism, deism, etc.

But another anomaly can also be found in the other end, precisely
happening in places known for religious zeal. Our country falls
largely under this classification. Here, religion tends to be abused
and exploited. In the end, religion is used to deform, emasculate and
even kill religion itself.

This happens when religion is detached from a living relationship
with God, with his Church, his doctrine and sacraments, and personal
struggle. It is driven more by one’s ideas and efforts. Faith becomes
mere philosophizing and theologizing, full of form without substance.

Spiritual life freezes into mere external appearances, reduced to a
lifeless set of pietistic practices. Sanctity deteriorates into
sanctimony. Hypocrisy, calculation, pretension, treachery abound.
There’s bigotry instead of broad-mindedness, rigidity and intolerance
instead of respect for freedom and variety.

This irregularity has many faces. To mention a few, we can cite
religious fanaticism and bitter zeal, fundamentalism, clericalism,
superstitious beliefs and practices, simony or commercialization of
sacred things, pietism and quietism, fideism and a string of other
heresies.

I suppose we can cite our Lord’s own experience at the hands of those
who crucified him as the extreme form of religious abuse. Imagine,
they were convinced they were doing it out of a keen sense of
religious duty itself.


Our Lord himself said: “The hour comes when whoever kills you will
think that he does a service to God.” (Jn 16,2) This is the ultimate
in religious abuse.

One can readily suspect religion is abused when all those calls for
goodness and holiness are full of sound and fury and bombast, but
lacking in charity, patience, mercy, humility, meekness, etc. It drips
with self-righteousness, ever eager to flaunt itself and have its
authority felt.

There is clear bias and prejudice in the understanding and
application of the doctrine. Unfair and discriminatory selectiveness
marks the study and practice of the faith.

A holistic approach to religion and freedom of consciences are often
compromised in the pursuit of holiness. There’s an absence of balance
and openness. Even the elementary norms of naturalness are violated.

Of course, religion will always involve a specific way of life,
marked even by a special charism. But it’s a uniqueness that does not
annul religion’s universal and common end, but rather enriches it in
an original way.

In abuse of religion, coercion is subtly made and can lead to
brainwashing and to manipulative isolation of people from others.
People are made to do religious practices without fully understanding
them.

They do these practices more out of fear than of love, more for some
ulterior motives than out of a sincere desire to know, love and serve
God and others.

The virtues are pursued mechanically, not organically in the sense
that they are vitally motivated by charity as they ought to be.
Sincerity, for example, can be understood as simply telling the truth,
the whole truth, but without any mention about charity, prudence and
discretion. Truth is divorced from charity.

When religion is abused, prayer turns into a soliloquy rather than a
loving dialogue with God. Love for sacrifice does not spring from the
spirit, but is merely a put-on.

When religion is abused, priesthood is less an office for a total
holocaust of self-giving, and more an occasion for privileges. The
scandals that black-eyed the Church these past years involving some
clerics arise from this disorder.

We need to be wary of these tendencies and possibilities that are
open to all of us. We can even fall into them without noticing it,
since the decline to religious abuse can mimic the process of osmosis.

We have to ask our Lady to teach us how to truly deal with God
without being deluded by the wily ways of religious abuse. Like her,
we need to be always simple and humble to be able to stick to what is
authentic religion.