From: Ouko joachim omolo
Voices of Justice for Peace
Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2012
When Pope Benedict XVI officially marked the end of the Synod on the New Evangelization yesterday with mass at St Peter’s Basilica with hundreds of bishops and cardinals gathered there, while reiterating that the Church has a responsibility to evangelize to the modern world, he was concerned in countries where Christianity is losing strength.
The Pope was also concerned in countries where Christians do not go to Mass or celebrating the Sacraments, and not passing on the faith to younger generations. He also stressed the importance of Confession, the sacrament of God’s mercy, emphasizing that there are still many regions in Africa, Asia and Oceania whose inhabitants await with lively expectation, sometimes without being fully aware of it, the first proclamation of the Gospel.
These people he said have lost a precious treasure, they have “fallen” from a lofty dignity – not financially or in terms of earthly power, but in a Christian sense – their lives have lost a secure and sound direction and they have become, often unconsciously, beggars for the meaning of existence.
Although the Pope did not mention specific countries where Christianity is losing strength, Britain is one of the countries in Europe where secularism has become a threat to faith. There is fear that Britain may no longer be a Christian country in just 20 years according to the new report.
If trends continue, the number of non-believers is set to overtake the number of Christians by 2030. Christianity is losing more than half a million believers every year, while the count of atheists and agnostics is going up by almost 750,000 annually.
Research by the House of Commons Library found that while Christianity has declined, other religions have seen sharp increases. In the last six years, the number of Muslims has surged by 37 per cent to 2.6million; Hindus by 43 per cent and Buddhists by 74 per cent. But the number of Sikhs and Jewish believers fell slightly.
The study, Religion in Great Britain, concludes: ‘Between the fourth quarter of 2004 and the fourth quarter of 2010, the Christian population fell from 78.0 per cent of the population to 69.4 per cent, while the group of people with no religion grew from 15.7 per cent to 22.4 per cent.
‘If these populations continue to shrink and grow by the same number of people each year, the number of people with no religion will overtake the number of Christians in Great Britain in 20 years, on this measure of religious affiliation.’
The researchers say this could be because ‘as children grow into young adults and form a religious identity independent of their parents, an increasing proportion are coming to regard themselves as having no religion’. They point out that the decline of Christianity would have been far deeper had there not been such high levels of migration.
Another factor that has contributed to decline of Christianity in Britain and entire Europe is the individualism and relativism that have profoundly changed the culture of our day. In today’s world, “the processes of secularization and a widespread nihilistic mentality, where everything is relative, have a crucial impact on the general mentality.
This is where life is often lived lightly, without clear ideals or sound hopes, in transient and provisional social and family ties. It is the life where younger generations are not educated in the search for truth or the deeper meaning of existence that goes beyond the contingent, to a stability of affection and trust.
This has also contributed to the piling up of more than a million abortions per year in America. On top of this, the number of divorces and illegitimate births continues to rise, as fewer “couples” bother to get married and the number of people addicted to pornography skyrockets, according to Fr. C. John McCloskey III, a Church Historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC.
According to a new Pew poll, the number of Americans who profess a belief in no religion at all has tripled since the 1990s, now accounting for one in five. This according to Fr John is because many of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church astonish them.
Like America, today in Britain more abortions are carried than any other country in Europe. It has overtaken France – which has a larger population – to become the abortion capital of the continent.
The rising rate has been pushed up by abortions among teenage girls, which increased by nearly a third over the past decade where half of all pregnancies among girls under 18 in Britain end in abortion.
The figures, collated by a European pressure group, showed that the 219,336 abortions carried out in England, Wales and Scotland in 2007 topped the 209,699 in France to put Britain at the top of the abortion count for the first time.
Britain was the country where most teenage girls have abortions – 48,150 abortions among girls under 20 in 2007 against 31,779 in France. In 2007 pregnancies among girls under 18 in England and Wales went up, not down.
Even in Spain where Roman Catholicism is the largest denomination of Christianity, most Catholics do not go to mass regularly on Sundays according to an October 2011 study by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research.
This same study shows that of the Spaniards who identify themselves as religious, 56 percent goes to mass few times a year, 15 percent go to mass many times a year, 9 percent some time per month and 16 percent every Sunday or multiple times per week.
A majority of Spaniards Catholic younger generation ignore the Church’s conservative moral doctrines on issues such as pre-marital sex, sexual orientation or contraception. The total number of parish priests has shrunk from 24,300 in 1975 to 19,307 in 2005. Nuns also dropped 6.9 percent to 54,160 in the period 2000-2005 in a country where there are over 37 million baptized, covering about 79 percent of the total population.
Today Spain provides one of the highest degrees of liberty in the world for its lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered (LGBT). Today, Spain is one of the eleven countries around the world that allows same- sex marriage and has the most progressive laws, since they also permit adoption by same-sex couples.
Another challenge to the new evangelization is the threats of Islam. Just when the synod bishops were preparing for the conference on the new evangelization, in Sudan Muslim extremists were sending text messages to at least 10 church leaders in Khartoum saying they are planning to target Christian leaders, buildings and institutions according to Christian sources in Khartoum.
“We want this country to be purely an Islamic state, so we must kill the infidels and destroy their churches all over Sudan,” said one text message circulating in Khartoum last month. The text messages were sent in July and August.
Church leaders in Sudan say they fear more persecution as they and their flocks become targets of local Islamists. In addition, Muslim extremists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh arrive in Sudan every two weeks to undergo training in secret camps in Khartoum before they are sent to various parts of Sudan to preach Islam and demolish church buildings, according to a Christian source in Khartoum.
Muslims believe that Allah has demanded that the evil and sinful Christians be sent to the fires of hell and if Islamics are convinced that all Christians are evil, the followers of Mohammed can kill with a clear conscience. The Quran states that “all Christians will be burned in the fire.
This can easily explain why Muslim Boko haramu in Nigeria continue to burn Christians in churches during prayers, the Al Shabaab and MRC in Kenya, burning of Christian churches in Tanzania and in Indonesia where a hardline Muslim mob clashed with police and burned two churches early this year.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
People for Peace in Africa
Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Peaceful world is the greatest heritage That this generation can give to the generations To come- All of us have a role.
