Predatory
We have to be wary of some dangerous ideas spilling out from decadent Western countries these days. The latest casualty, to my mind, is Kenya whose Parliament just legalized abortion on demand, a clear caving-in to US pressures under the Obama-Clinton administration.
We have been practically bullied by the same group and we just have to find a way to resist the tremendous pressures. The ideas and practices they espouse are clearly predatory.
Not only are they harmful. They also are aggressive in promoting their rotten causes. They’re good at preying on the weak and helpless, using every trick in the book to market their ideologically-driven projects.
What are some of these dangerous ideas? Aside from abortion, we have condoms and contraception, same-sex union, divorce, mercy-killing, sex education, reproductive health, family planning, population control, etc. Someone banded them together under the umbrella of ¨culture of death.¨
They come to us beautifully packaged, complete with icing and colorful designs, with a lot of moolah besides and all sorts of benefits. Their promises of good life soar stratospheric. Gratification is guaranteed and instant. No need to think much, no need to worry much.
I have seen a long list of powerful and moneyed foreign foundations and NGOs giving enormous amounts of grants even to local Catholic universities in order to promote some of these dangerous ideas.
Appealing, for example, to tolerance since we are now living in a culturally diverse world, suggestions are made to put a shelf-life on marriage, renewable every 10 years, or make any kind of union and coupling, be it temporary or gay, equivalent to marriage, to be given the same legal recognition and treatment.
To pursue these goals, they resort to making tendentious surveys, courting political and social leaders, even teachers, dangling externally benevolent projects but with noxious strings attached. They politicize the issues and start defining their new concept of morality and the like.
Truly tempting. But they are clearly against God’s will and law, screamingly immoral and definitely toxic. The devastation they have caused is truly disgusting. In Spain right now, for example, the government is promoting masturbation for children. That´s part of their sex education.
But then again, talking about God and morality is now tagged as politically incorrect these days. The intriguing part of all this is that when you get one of these dangerous ideas, you’re likely to get the others as well. That´s because they all spring from the same source, from the same spirit. Let´s not play dumb.
We can term such devious spirit as liberalism or relativism or secularism or materialism, etc. What’s common is their disbelief in God, formally professed or not. It has many variants—agnosticism, deism, even pantheism, etc.
These days, we need to be adept in discerning spirits, reading signs of the times, identifying ideological machinations, since there are many forces, both good and evil, at play not only in the world stage, but also in every corner, thanks to our advanced technologies. In short, we have to learn to smell a rat from a mile.
We cannot afford to be naïve, and to react to threats and possible problems with baby steps. A lot of things are needed—massive education and formation, a certain inoculation given our increasingly polluted world, intensification of spiritual and moral life.
Sorry to bring these terms in public. I know they´re supposed to be spoken in restricted circles. But given present circumstances, these abstruse terms need to be made popular, if not, household words. And besides, with the growing technical lingo we are exposed everyday, why should we not develop a taste for finer moral concepts also?
Thing is we need to be ready to grapple with these challenges today. Everyone has to be involved. Let´s stop wasting our time trying to figure out whom to assign these duties: the Church or the State, parents or teachers, etc.?
These responsibilities are for all, whatever sector of society one may belong. It´s not an either/or proposition. It´s both/and, all, everyone! It´s not exclusive to a certain group. It´s inclusive of everyone.
We have to get our act together. For this, one basic requirement is to overcome our deep-seated biases that relegate our faith to the background, giving rise to a schizophrenic type of Christianity.
We have to be more Christian. And not to be afraid that such trend would make us rigid, fanatical or fundamentalist. If we are truly Christian, we will have an openness and firmness to truth and charity like the one of Christ even to death.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
