moral decline? closing parishes and the state.

Sadly, I was informed today that many of the roman catholic parishes in my hometown will be closing down within a few years. I'm not sad in the fact that I participated any practice of faith within these establishments, but that it is a grim sign of the times.

Although I had grown up as a practicing roman catholic, one can never be expected to understand the motives of any type of faith at such a young age. For me, church was a social event more than some place where you would witness the birth, death and ascension of christ in a procession, three hymns and a recessional. I would alter serve every Sunday and be loyal to Father Rodzinka while trying to stifle my countless yawns during the service (those were the days I would wake up at 7am!)

After many years absent from the confines of the church and delving into different disciplines of science, my perspectives began to shift towards the ideas of evolution. This is where in, my opinion, the paths between faith and materialism diverge.

Materialism at the most simplest definition is a 'preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values.'

Science fits in very snugly with materialism in that it concentrates mostly on fact and fact is, the majority of the time, derived from tangiblities and physical matter. In the 21st century, we rely heavily on this materialism in our everyday lives. In fact, I believe that we have gone so far as to making it into a crutch.

Science is materialism at its most empirical level. I could write a litany on the definition of materialism alone, so for simplicity sake I will leave it at this most fundamental definition.

Now that we know where these two currents diverge, it might be easier to see clearer through the differences. Humans are always concerned with wanting to "see results or instant gratification" materialism is the best route to this since we can manipulate matter to what we want to see and not necessarily what really is there. When we put the two up against eachother in this forum of "seeing results" I would bet that spending one hour at the local wal-mart would be more rousing than spending one hour cooped up in a church pew. This is one reason why the numbers are declining in the church. The old generation is dying off and the Gen X'ers raised in a material frenzy just "don't get faith dude". This, coupled with the catholic church's stubbornness towards change will only continue to see it's followers lost.

All of this begs the question of whether or not religion and science can co-exist peacefully. The short answer is yes. Science is what we know but can't feel and religion is what we can feel but we don't know. The very essence of Being could be hidden within these two opposing concepts. But, as humans it is no surprise we expect to reach this paradigm overnight. It takes generations of cultural evolution and thought to reach these enlightenment and this is our next cultural 'enlightenment'. Our very greed and need for instant gratification is getting in our way towards growing intellectually!

Someone asked me the question today for the reason of continuing moral decline. The thoughts I have set out on this page tonite are just the start of an answer. I can also note that we do not even know for sure whether moral decline is even occurring - there is no certain way to measure that. If it is occurring than it is occurring because something is changing within our society and this we can see and this is the only way we can draw observation without the danger of mere speculation.