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Avoid wasteland, embrace God, in hope, faith
By George Evans
July 9, 2010
    Several months ago, I devoted this column to the question of increasing secularization in the West and Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to address it in his pontificate including numerous references to it in his encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (“In Charity and Truth”).
    I raised the question of a particular manifestation of this reality in the     United States with the story of a dinner Carol and I had in New Orleans on a Friday in Lent with only one fish entree on the menu.
    I noticed with great interest, therefore, an article in the July 1 Clarion-Ledger which pointed out before starting his vacation at Castel Gandolfo the pope continued his efforts to address the problem of increasing secularization in Europe with new initiatives.
    Among other things it stated, Pope Benedict XVI tapped a trusted Italian, Msgr. Rino Fisichella, to head the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, a new Vatican department designed to reinvigorate Christianity in the parts of the world where it is falling by the wayside ....
    Benedict announced the creation of the new evangelization office earlier that week, saying it would promote Christianity in countries where the church has long existed “but which are living a progressive secularization of society and a sort of eclipse of the sense of God.”
    As a European steeped in centuries marked by the flowering of Christianity and Roman Catholicism, the pope is obviously heart sick with trends of empty churches, rampant divorces, abortions, and heterosexual and homosexual lifestyles tearing at the heart of marriage and family life.
    And though he knows the clerical sexual abuse scandal is making the situation worse and more painful, he also knows the problem is much deeper than the hurt of that scandal. It is a fundamental problem of faith, the lack of belief in God and the lack of the felt need for God in order to make sense out of life.
    It is the modern Westerners rejection of afterlife as a challenging reality and prospect replaced by comfort with the belief that man alone controls his destiny for the 60 to 90 years he has and then all ends.
    Benedict is fighting with all he has to try to turn this around. His 2010 travel itinerary targets the West — Malta, Cyprus, Portugal, Britain and Spain. His latest encyclical, though addressed to the whole world, has particular direction to the secular West and even more to his beloved Europe because the secularization there is even greater than in the United States and Canada.
    Commentators on the European scene now talk about assisted suicide being generally accepted and as routine as hospice care would be in the U.S. Jack Kevorkian would not even be noticed there.
    To show how far the pendulum has swung, I share a report from England which shows where things are.
    A man’s wife was terminally ill with cancer though death was at least some short time off in the future. She scheduled an appointment to end her life, which was readily accepted.     The husband declared that he loved his wife so much he couldn’t bear to live without her and though he had no life threatening condition, he decided to schedule his own death simultaneously with his wife. Both died together apparently with the adulation of those who knew of the proceedings.
    This example shows where we have come in the West with our lack of respect for life and our lack of belief in a God who is involved with our lives. There is no limit on what can occur if we lose the sense of the transcendent Other and, for the Christian, his son Jesus.
    There is no purpose for any of us other than to control the time given us in the way we determine best and to end it in a way and at a time we choose best without regard to anything or anyone else. There is no need to serve others as we have always been taught by Jesus, when the relationship with him is no longer at our core.
    Have we progressed to the same point as Europe apparently has in a secularization that divorces human life from everything that is not measurable, pleasurable, consumable and controllable?
    Have we succeeded in making a mockery of the last judgment scene in Matthew 25 when the sheep and goats are separated based on feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty?
    Is there time left to avoid the wasteland of consumerism and secularization and embrace one another and God in hope and faith.
    Benedict has taken an institutional step in that regard with his recent action and appointment. We need to do the same in our small way daily step by step.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish.Contact him via email)

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