Pinoy youth drifting away from Church

It may be home to some 65 million Roman Catholics, but even the Philippines is struggling to maintain young people’s interest in the Church, with the marginalized poor leading the drift from its fold.

While the Church still wields enormous influence over this Southeast Asian archipelago nation, Catholic dogma on contraception and divorce is causing a less conservative younger generation to shun the Church.

Some 800,000 young people from across the globe are expected to descend on Cologne in Germany for World Youth Day next week, but the event billed as combining youth culture and prayer has little resonance here.

The Philippine Church is sending a delegation of some 350 people, most of them believed to be middle class teenagers and a number of priests.

Ironically it is the high birth rate attributed to fervent Catholics in the older generation that has given the Philippines its youthful demographic and in turn is responsible for much of the apathy towards the Church.

With one of the highest annual birth rates in Asia, the Philippines has a young population with an estimated 17 million people aged between 15 and 25, according to government data.

These young Filipinos, especially in the cities, want more than their parents’ generation, have more materialistic lifestyles and ambitions and are being more assertive on social issues such as contraception and divorce.

Father Eli Cruz, rector of the Don Bosco Technical College, a school in Mandaluyong City with about 4,000 students, said that one problem was that the Church was failing to adapt to the changing attitudes of the younger generation.

"The Church is beginning to lose touch with an increasingly media-mediated and media-manipulated youth, the teenagers and the teens," he said.

"Most of our Church people do not speak their language. Most of our Church people do not comprehend the new psychology and the new culture brought about by the digital and Internet age." But he insisted it still had a fundamental role to play.

"I sense that what young people expect from the Church is Christian witnessing, holiness of life, spirituality, examples of the stories of heroes and saints and a sense of the sacred," he said.

"Our modern culture is short of all these."

It is this changing face of society that the Church has had to confront in recent years to keep young people true to their faith and stop the drift away, especially among the poor.

A survey conducted by the Church in 2002 found 45 percent of young Catholics were "nominal Catholics," that is to say they seldom attend services.

The study found that while the teachings of the Church had a "moderate to strong" influence on the values of young people it had a "minimal to moderate" influence on their lifestyle.

A recent report by the Episcopal Commission on Youth found young Catholics were divided when it came to faith.

"We have young people who actively live their faith. Then there are those who are baptized Catholics, yet remain nominal in their faith," the report said.

Bishop Rolando Tria Tirona, chairman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Commission on Youth, said young Filipino Catholics faced more pressures than their parents’ generation.

Society has become more permissive and the young find themselves the main target in the world of marketing and advertising.

"In many ways the simplicity of life has been eroded."

Father Cruz said that while middle class children have, to a large extent, maintained their faith, it is the poor who have been marginalized.

"From my own experience young people from the middle class, the so-called ‘ilustrado,’ are still attached to the Church and find meaning in their Catholic faith," he said.

"Sometimes, their Catholic value-systems may be compromised during weekend nights, especially in the city, but as a whole these young people do find reason to get support, involvement, and redemption in the Church.

"But the sad thing is that the greater number of young poor people are getting marginalized." — AFP