Pushing out the pushover
The lines are drawn. The flashpoints are building up. We need to shed off our pushover type of Christianity to effectively grapple with the intensifying challenges we have at hand.
The world is drifting to uncharted waters of secularism, each time deepening and worsening. Faith and religion are put on the back burner. Ideologies, full of so-called practical and get-real guts, take over.
Local and world leaders are increasingly showing atheistic or agnostic visions of life. Systems and structures are patterned after these worldviews. The effects are now conspicuous in people’s mentalities, cultures and lifestyles.
We are actually being pushed to make a radical choice. Are we still with God or against God? Do we believe in the spiritual and supernatural world, or there are just material and temporal realities around? We cannot remain undecided, unsure which way to go or jump.
Christian believers are now asked to be consistent all the way in their spiritual and moral life. All aspects, all levels, fronts and fields in life have to be covered. A certain kind of Christian militancy, different from the political and social one, whether leftist or rightist, is desired.
We need to put more range and depth in our Christian life, overcoming a two-dimensional mindset that has been dragging us down to complacency, inaction, flippancy, superficiality, isolationism and the like.
Now is the time to clearly see the indivisible link of faith and religion with all our other concerns. In fact, now is the time to deepen our conviction about the leading and inspiring role of our religious beliefs in all our earthly affairs.
We just cannot remain in the practical or commonsensible level. While always good, that level cannot cope with the over-all reality upon us. It tends to follow a sense of prudence that is more of the flesh than of the spirit, more of the world than of God.
We have been stagnating in that attitude, and it has led us nowhere but growing worldliness and vanishing spirituality. The mistakes and excesses of the past religious extremism are no excuse to ignore the objective need for faith in our life. We just have to find the proper balance.
We should not be afraid that a faith-based orientation in life can lead us to become rigid and out of step with other people having different or opposite viewpoints. A genuinely understood faith would know how to blend with everyone and with everything while keeping its consistency intact.
Obviously, there will be mistakes along the way. But corrections will always be available. With God, even the humanly impossible will become possible.
By the way, the current Church predicament involving sex scandals of some members of the clergy needs to be put in its proper perspective. It has been twisted along the lines of a secularist, antagonistic mentality.
A study made by a certain American professor Philip Jenkins yields the following findings that can be helpful in this regard:
- - Priestly celibacy is not the issue. Married men are more likely to abuse children than unmarried.
- - All religious groups have pedophile scandals, and the Catholics are at the bottom of the list.
- - Child abuse in prevalent in all areas of society—schools, youth organizations.
- - Doctors, farmers and teachers are professions most likely to abuse children—not clergy.
- - Catholic cases of pedophilia make more headlines because of anti-Catholic prejudice and because the Catholic Church is bigger and more lucrative to sue.
- - Most cases of child abuse are homosexual in nature. But this aspect is downplayed in the press to be politically correct, to avoid associating it with the ongoing gay agenda in the world today.
- - What we now call ‘cover up’ was often done in a different cultural context, when the problem was not fully understood and when all organizations hushed scandals. It is unfair to judge events thirty years ago by today’s standards.
- - We must be wary of false accusations. The accused must be given fair hearing.
- - When guilt is established the offender must be punished, not sheltered.
- - Distinctions must be made between different types of abuse. Some offenses are more serious than others.
- - Number of offenses must be considered. One lapse is not as serious as repeated, persistent and premeditated offenses.
Church history tells us the Church emerged from worse past problems chastened, purified and made stronger. Let’s face this present crisis courageously. In the meantime let’s work on that Christian militancy expected of us. We have to push out the pushover Christianity.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
