Religious indifference

WE cannot deny that there’s vast religious indifference and even hostility against religion today. That may be intriguing to say, since on the other hand, thanks be to God, we can also notice a surge of religious fervor in some sectors.

This contrast actually has been around since time immemorial, an indication that human history is always an interplay between good and evil, between God’s providence and man’s freedom. But what is interesting to note is the degree of seriousness into which both indifference and fervor have developed.

A complex structure of rationalizations now supports religious indifference and hostility to religion. It seems that the threads of naturalism, skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, relativism, etc., have become more sophisticated, snuffing whatever religious ember that may still remain in a person or in society.

Some intellectuals and occasional theologians join free thinkers in lending their dissenting voices and expertise to this trend, adding to the string of scandals the Church has been suffering these past few years.

Try to look at some of our so-called leading Catholic universities, and you will likely find nests of dissenters who invoke an unhinged type of academic freedom (aka, academic license) to retail their heresies and questionable if not patently erroneous ideas. They are quite well-funded and supported by powerful international ideological groups.

Even centers of religious formation and seminaries are infected with this kind of virus. Imagine seminarians and priests now taught about the beauty and practicality of contraception, etc. It’s really about time that a thorough clean-up be made in these places, but, of course, with due process.

In these places, reason and empirical findings are considered the ultimate measure of things, and are made to dispute the claims of faith, steadily removing its attractiveness to the people. With this approach, piety is slowly eroded until it becomes practically dead.

In these places, if things could not be fully understood and explained, if they could not be directly verified, if they are not socially, economically or politically practical, then they should be rejected. They are deemed senseless.

It’s as simple, or rather, as simplistic, as that. Such attitude sorely misses the point that truths of faith, being spiritual and supernatural, require more than human reason to be believed. It’s a tyranny to force everyone to work only within the framework of reason and understanding alone beyond which things simply cannot be true.

It sorely misses the point that we precisely need the gift of faith, because we are men of belief, more than of reason. Faith always respects reason, and always works through it, but is beyond it. It cannot be fully grasped by reason, much less by our senses. It has a longer spread, a wider scope, a deeper reach, a firmer grip on reality.

This is something to be understood well, because many are now so self-absorbed and self-righteous that anything that does not pass their empirically-based intellectual criteria just cannot be true.

With their vaunted irreverence, they mock and ridicule any reference to faith, to the spiritual and supernatural, often not realizing that they are actually acting out the roles of drunks and the drugged, or kids in tantrums, who can be eloquent in their locked-in state of self-righteousness.

How do we deal with this kind of situation? It’s good, of course, to enter into dialogue and personal dealings. But I don’t think that would be enough. Yes, there is need for friendly contacts and giving good example. But still those would not be enough.

Our Lord, when asked by his disciples why they could not cure a certain very difficult case, simply said that it can be handled only through prayers and fasting. I feel these are also what are needed to take care of this difficult challenge.

Religious indifference and hostility to religion have to be tackled by persistent effort to identify oneself with Christ through prayer and sacrifice. In other words, we have to be ready to be crucified, which is the best form of prayer and sacrifice.

There’s no other way. Unless we are willing to imitate Christ all the way to his crucifixion, we cannot expect to melt away the thick and sticky layer of religious indifference and hostility to religion among the people.

This crucifixion need not be in a public place. It can rather be in that personal effort to give everything to Christ—our mind, our heart, our feelings, our plans, our time, our honor, etc. Everything!

As Christ assured us, it’s when we lose that we gain, it’s when we die that we live, the last will be first…