Godless

In a gathering of about a hundred students during a seminar on moral values the speaker asked: Who among you go to Mass every Sunday?  At first there was no response. But when the question was repeated five hands were held up somewhat timidly. That was a group of mostly Catholic students. Yet sadly, only five of them said they complied with the obligation to go to church and hear Mass on Sundays.

In another forum also of students almost all of whom were Christians, a campus ministry head asked who among them believed that pre-marital sex was a sin. Nobody except one among the 40 participants answered yes. Some said they did not know whether it was a sin or not, and impliedly conveyed that they had had such experience because it was a generally accepted practice among young people.

Alarming, these disclosures certainly are, alarming, more so to people who are involved in the upbringing of the youth. Cebu is a highly Christian province in a highly Christian country. It was here where the first Filipino Christians were baptized. It was here where the first cross was planted. How come Cebuano youth have become irreligious? Where are the families that nurtured them? Where are the schools and the churches?

More than 400 years of Christian exposure has made most Cebuanos baptized Christians like the average Filipino. But contemporary forces spearheaded by western secular world view are eroding such faith making the values of love and fear of God almost irrelevant. No more do family prayers resound at vesper. No more do families hear the Holy Mass together. It seems the family has lost its anchorage in the divine and the supernatural.

One could say these concerns properly belong to the church. Somehow, however, in the Philippine context, the church has not been successful in its character formation mission among the young. One has only to scan the church-goers on Sundays to find out that these are mostly composed of middle-age or elderly people with only a sprinkling of teen-age or adolescent worshippers.

Where are the young ones whose unbridled ways need the mellowing influence of spiritual experiences? They are somewhere where the fun and gaieties are-in malls and beaches and disco houses.

Failure of the family, failure of the church, these go with the failure of the school system in its formation program. Copied from western concepts of education, Philippine education centers mainly on fashioning the child towards social competence in a highly materialistic world whose measure of what's important is what satisfies the senses.

Thus from year one up the child's mind is bombarded with facts and figures from various disciplines plus exposure to career-related skills including technical and vocational ones. Where are the lesson on faith and religion? There's none except those occasionally imparted by volunteer catechists once a week at the most inconvenient periods. Yet even this is not happening in most basic level schools because the western idea of a spiritually neutral system is a traditional fixation in the minds of most Filipino educators. Faith in the Almighty is enshrined in the Constitution. But the mind of most Filipino educators has been soaked wet in the concept of western pragmatism that frowns on even the mention of God in the classroom.

Take the current K+12 craze. Is not its catch-phrase employment readiness? Will there be mention of God in K+12 learning centers? Will there be lessons on self-sacrifice and service to one's fellowmen? How about love of truth and honest living, will the child learn these?

With the failure of the school, the church and the family to turn out upright young men and women into the mainstream of society, are we surprised that corruption has become almost a way of life in the bureaucracy and even in the private sector? The go getting politicians who plunder the economy, the conscienceless corporate moguls who cheat on their workers' pay and never pay the right taxes, the smugglers and drug lords-from where do these come but from generations of godless citizens society has produced?