Need of a Faith

There are many to dispute Pope Benedict’s opinion about the impact of secularism he expressed at the start of his recent historic visit to the United Kingdom. He views secularism the root cause of all the social, economic and moral ills of the western societies today. He invited his audience to return to the religious values. Could he convince the people or not but has stimulated a discussion. Who criticize the pontiff on his stand on the issue have many points to differ with him. Five major points are as followed: 1: Secularism is a trend and mood like ever changing dress and hairstyle fashions or if something more it is a movement and not an ideology like socialism, communism and nationalism influencing the whole ramification of man’s life. 2: Secularism is not identical to atheism rejecting the religion and its explanations. 3: Secularism does not deny the need of moral code for human life. 4: Secularism does not mean incompatibility with religious beliefs. A religious man can follow the secular approach while a secular person may be found practicing the religious rites and rituals for his inner satisfaction and solace. 5: Secularism has never demanded absence of religion from the politics.



Philosophically it may be correct but as we know the words and terms do have their psychological impacts. Being loose in case of Faith is in most cases identical to being morally debauched. It is not an undeniable fact that most of the avaricious, lascivious and rakish people in the Western societies are found among those who are disassociated from their religion. And, the same is case of those here in our own ranks who are not stuck to their Faith are found extremely dissolute.



The western societies have traversed a long ideological journey before reaching secularism as its concluding end. Christianity is not a complete code of life, so it never pocked its nose in kingly affairs. Still its policy of nothing to do with how to carve a system to establish political, economic and social system is the same. It has only something to morally indoctrinate the people without interfering in the worldly matters how Caesar runs the affairs of the Empire. The proverb ‘Leave what is for Caesar and give God what is for Him’ was coined long after Caesar used to grab all without leaving anything for God when an expedient dealing took place between the Church and state. A deceptive theory of the ‘Divine Rights of the Kings’ got invented. A game of selfish use of political and religious authorities intrigued by both the church and the state started making the oppressed people fed up of the religious rogueries.



And that was the time when ‘Rationalism’ rose to measure every thing with the yardstick of reasoning and argument. The Christianity, while getting judged through the touchstone of wisdom, proved unable to come up to the mark and satisfy the commonsense. The philosophers, who rose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not totally disapproving the need of religion, tried to shorten the growing distances between the religiosity and the rationalism but in vain. The Protestant Movement is still thought to be a reformist and not eliminating wave of religious thinking. Many other factors occurred gradually forcing the Christianity to retire entirely to the position of an individual matter of man with no concern with collective issues of human life. In the meantime hurricane of materialism got stronger leaving little for God. Christianity lost its hold on its followers. The more materialism grew the more religiosity shrunk. At last it lost its last entrenchment which now, after the centuries of loss, the Pope appeals to regain to remove the social, moral and economic evils.



In our ranks too there is a group of intellectuals always trying to weigh Islam with the same scale, which showed the Christianity weightless, while both the religions are of completely different nature. A state of chagrin and disgust towards religion and a reckless attitude about moral values, which developed in the West, was a result of the failure of Christianity to guide them in all the spheres of their life. On the contrary Islam is still a potential force to build a vibrant society on the basis of spirituality and morality and lead its followers to prosper in the worldly and material areas of life also. Anyhow, so far as the views of the Pope are concerned, we should fully support him for the better of the Western societies. Rapid drowning of humanity in the pool of moral evils in any one part of the world has its negative impacts on the others too.