” “”Educating the new generations to faith is a great, essential task that involves the whole Christian community”. It was said by the Pope as he opened last night the Yearly Meeting of the Diocese of Rome which is under way in the Basilica of St John Lateran until June 8th. “We all, and especially our boys and girls, need to live faith as a joy”, exclaimed Benedict XVI, as he invited the congregation to fight “two basic trends of the current secularised culture, which push against the Christian announcement and cannot fail to affect those who are just building their own preferences and decisions”. One, explained the Pope, is “that agnosticism that comes up when human intelligence is reduced to a simple calculating and functional reason and tends to suffocate the religious feelings”, the other is “that process of relativisation and uprooting that erodes man’s most sacred ties and worthiest affections with the consequence of making people fragile and our mutual relations uncertain and unstable”. Another trend that is stigmatised by the Pope is “that strange oblivion of God that exists in many areas of the world today” and which “begets much short-lived commotion, many useless controversies, as well as deep dissatisfaction and a feeling of emptiness”.
