In a recent group conversation, one person mentioned that he uses his cellphone to call his mother who’s just upstairs of their home. Technology has contributed to the erosion of the moral fibre of our society. Communication technology diminishes face-to-face contact which is important in building relationships at home, school, work and in the society in general, resulting in behaviours which are self-centred.

Parents who are not as technologically literate as their children are unable to monitor their children’s usage of computers and other communications technology. The spiritual lenses that were once used to filter information have been clouded by technology; the soul feels the negativity of such an impact. It leads to students getting into websites which negatively influence their moral values, plus the way information is fed into our homes and our personal lives through the media does not assist us in building our moral codes.

Today there is a deep longing in the hearts of our elders, a desire for God to come, to intervene and mend this badly broken relationship. As stated in Psalm 42, “As a deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My being thirsts for God, the living God.” The desire that we have for God corresponds with God’s desire for us. We have broken that relationship with Him through sin and a lack of moral values and God woos us to return to Him, as expressed in the words of this song, “Come back to me, with all your heart, don’t let fear keep us apart…Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life.” In return, we can express our love for Him by obedience to the “rules and regulations” He has given us for living.

2 Corinthians 3:18 states, “If we repent and embrace His offer of reconciliation through our Lord Jesus Christ, His son, we are called to a life of grace that transforms us into Christ’s own likeness.”  It seems that our National Prayer and Pledge, one element of which is respect for those in authority in addition to one another, are recited meaninglessly. Members of our society also seem to be gravitating to the “money god” and Scripture tells us very clearly that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Some of us love it to the extent that we will use loopholes in the ‘system’ to steal from others who have worked and sacrificed to have an enjoyable, comfortable retirement.  This unscrupulousness and apparent loss of conscience are evidence of the moral decay of our society.

Our consciences not only appear to be dead or clouded but we are also confusing young minds. Who is to point the right direction to our nation’s children? Many letters to the newspapers refer to us as a “godless” society and make the observation that we have lost a sense of sin. Pope Pius XII often said, “The greatest sin of our modern generation is that it has lost all sense of sin.”  We need to regain a sense of sin for we have been in the depth of darkness as far as our relationship with our God is concerned. The need to be re-united with our Creator is dire. A renewed, revived, re-woven, rekindled and regenerated moral life is a must at this time. We can compare this in a physical sense to the many times when our country was plunged into darkness, how we despaired until the light returned and how we then felt so relieved. The only source of electricity in the darkness would have been from generators which allowed some to continue their work. They gave us some hope in the midst of the darkness. The regenerating and bringing back of the light of the world could only come from the source of light for our souls, our perpetual generator, which steers us to do the right things and make good decisions. The God-given, light-giving Ten Commandments are no longer being upheld; it seems we have lost our moral compass.

– Evangeline Davis, Archdiocesan Catechetical Office, http://www.catechetics.rcpos.org

Continued Next Week