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Religious and moral factors
22. Amongst the elements
which make up the cultural heritage of a people, religious and moral factors
are of particular interest to the sower. There is in contemporary culture a
persistent spread of religious indifference: "Many however of our
contemporaries ...either do not at all perceive, or else explicitly reject,
this intimate and vital bond of man to God".(32)
Atheism, understood as a negation of God,
"must therefore be regarded as one of the most serious problems of our
time".(33) While it can take various forms, it often appears today
under the guise of secularism, which consists in an excessively autonomous view
of man and of the world "according to which it is entirely
self-explanatory without any reference to God".(34) In the
specifically religious sphere there are signs of "a return to the
sacred",(35) of a new thirst for transcendent reality and for the
divine. The contemporary world acknowledges in a more comprehensive and vital
way "the renewed interest in religious research".(36) Certainly
this phenomenon "is not without ambiguity".(37) The
widespread growth of sects and new religious movements and the revival of
"fundamentalism" (38) are factors of serious concern for the
Church and require careful analysis
23. The moral situation of
today is on a par with its religious situation. There is an evident obscuring
of the ontological truth of the human person—as though the denial of God meant
an interior breakdown of the aspirations of the human being.(39) In
many places this contributes to the rise of an "ethical relativism which
would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social
life".(40) Evangelization encounters a privileged field of
activity in the religious and moral sphere. Indeed the primordial mission of
the Church is to proclaim God and to be his witness before the world. This
involves making known the true face of God and his loving plan of salvation for
man, as it has been revealed in Jesus Christ. To prepare such witnesses, it is
necessary for the Church to develop a profoundly religious catechesis,
nourished on the Gospel, which will deepen man's encounter with God and forge a
bond of permanent communion with Him.
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