24 November 2010
Indian Group
Lijo Vadakkan, Varghese Pallipuram
Youth of today have many doubts with regard to their life of morality and life of faith. In their day to day life, they are come across situations of crisis with regard to their moral life. They look for answers for their questions relating to their life of spirituality. Very often they do not approach priests and religious for getting answers to their moral and spiritual problems. We are able to satisfy some of their needs like intellectual needs, security needs, recreational needs etc. In the Catholic Church, we have educational institutions which provide quality education to the adolescents and youth. We have vocational training centres to equip the youth with a trade and thus the youth are able to get a job. We also have facility for providing recreation to the youth, through our youth centres. We have failed in satisfying the spiritual needs of the youth. Priests and religious are not competent enough to satisfy the youth convincingly in resolving some of their questions relating to moral issues and areas of Faith.
In the context of India, we have many past pupils who have passed out of our own Christian institutions and they hold good positions in the society. We do not see these past pupils leading a good moral and value based life in the society. They are caught up in the worldly attractions like getting power, position, money etc. by using any illegal means like taking bribes, involved in corruption etc. We might ask what sort of education we are giving them, if they are not able to lead a good moral and spiritual life in the society. One area of concern in the context of India is that we are not able to impart the Christian values to the youth because of the religious fanaticism existing in the society. Our Christian institutions are targeted at times by the Hindu fanatics for imparting Christian values to adolescents and youth. Another area of concern is the witness value of the Church. Priests and religious are not able to convince the youth on certain moral and Christian values because they are not truly becoming witnesses of Christ, today. Youth do not find role models in priests and religious.
Some radical changes in the Catholic Church will have to be thought of in accompanying the youth of today in their journey of Faith.
Secretary: Varghese Pallipuram
Photo: Joe Boenzi: "Morning walkways at Salesian University", 2010; "Garden walkways, Shrine of Bandel", 2009.
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