While taking a short holiday on the heights of Kesrouan, at that moment wrapped in the glory of the rays of the setting sun, I was discussing the need for religious formation of our youth with a certain zealous young priest. I suggested that the years spent in a university were decisive, while my clerical friend insisted on the over-riding importance of home.

Frankly, he did not convince me. It was not that I actually disagreed with him about the importance of the home. There was an English cardinal by the name of Vaughan in the nineteenth century whose mother had spent an hour every evening praying that all her children should become priests or nuns; four sons became priests, the two others entered a seminary but returned to lay life and all three daughters became nuns. In fact most saints and most good priests, monks and nuns have come from good Christian homes. But there is no rule.

Simple reliance on home influence seems to come from a narrow sectarian view of religion. One’s religion is too often seen as a tribe whose numbers have to be maintained by inheritance and whose blood-line must be kept pure, untainted by that of outsiders(1). But there is always a leakage, a steady draining away of lost sheep, which has to be made up from the numbers point of view. And the fact is that not all so-called Christian families are good. Many are mediocre and some are rotten to the core. Western materialism is no longer merely Western. It has invaded the whole world and is already well entrenched in Lebanon, where more than anything else it threatens all the precious social values.

Unfortunately, the chief influence in most homes nowadays is television. Advertisements for cars show them being driven at impossible speeds on empty roads that certainly do not exist in Lebanon; the advertisements do not show the cars being driven with care and respect for other motorists through rush-hour traffic! Once upon a time children were taught polite table manners and enjoyment of food through moderation, but now television teaches them greed, a good training for obesity. When one sees children arguing with helpless mothers about their food on TV one only wishes their mothers would give them a good spanking.

The music clips show young blacks and whites of a criminal underworld against a slum background with songs of violence, revolt, debauched sex and even Satanism. With such role-models presented to them, one can hardly complain if blacks in the West turn to crime and disorder, or are treated with suspicion and contempt. Once upon a time in order to dance one learnt strict rules of courtesy and etiquette. “Education” is reduced to learning how to use a computer and schools are no longer expected to teach discipline and good conduct.

Further, in these times of rapid change and development, when a paternal frown no longer brings cowering obedience, when rare are the children who spend their whole lives in mountain village communities, very few parents have the level of religious knowledge needed to prepare their children to go out in the world. Even in the great cities of our age, otherwise educated Christians pass their lives with an infant-school level of religious instruction. It is not enough to have a mother who is a veritable grenouille de bénitier (holy water frog) as the French say and who fills every shelf in her house with horrible sickly pious pictures (art de St.-Sulpice).(2) Many are lost to the faith because they cannot reconcile their natural drive with the impression received from their parents that sex is by nature evil and that marriage is a sort of toleration of sin. One mother I knew was shocked that her daughter should want to marry in the month of May, sacred to Our Lady. Unfortunately, very few people read the Old Testament, the Gospels or the epistles of St. Paul to learn how marriage is holy and its pleasure willed by God.

Many parents make religion a solemn, serious matter, a tedious bore, a matter of “don’t do this and don’t do that”, so it is scarcely surprising that their children should throw off all restraint once they are free of parental authority. This reaction against the Calvinist streak in Protestantism may explain the collapse of religious practice in Northern Europe a century ago. Church attendance, often twice on Sundays, was obligatory and sermons often two hours long, generally about the eternal punishment that awaited most of the congregation after their death. On Sundays, all the children’s toys were locked up in the cupboard and all play and laughter forbidden, while the silence of the tomb descended on the house.

My London parish priest was brought up in a Catholic family full of the joy of the Resurrection and the Gospel message – in 1949, when over ninety, his father attended the golden jubilee (50 years) of the ordination of his two sons. However, the children had one aunt of strict Reformed tradition. Once when Christmas fell on a Sunday, the adults and children were romping about but noticed their aunt sitting in stony silence. “Why don’t you come and play and have fun with us?” they asked. The crushing answer came in sepulchral tones, “Those that laugh on earth will howl in Hell!” Even in Lebanon many older people may remember religious fear being used by teachers of a less educated generation to impose discipline in school.

But there is another aspect to the whole question. Christianity, Islam and Buddhism are missionary religions, each intended for all mankind.(3) Of course, there are the “Fundamentalists”, whether in Washington or Waziristan, who see religion in terms of war of their community against the infidel. A Fundamentalist is a person who ignores the fundamentals of his religion and replaces them with some personal obsession. Salman Rushdi has pointed out (BBC, September, 2005) that nowadays more and more people seem to define themselves by what they hate. As far as Christianity is concerned, it is invidious to pick out texts here and there; simply the whole Gospel is missionary, burning with love for all humanity. It is impossible to read the New Testament with an open mind and come to any other conclusion. “Going, therefore, teach all nations...” (Matthew XXVIII, 19)

We do in fact see that there are many who have strong religious convictions, yet were not raised in a religious home. I know a Muslim who is a model of Islamic piety as well as generosity and professional integrity although his father was a prominent member of a basically atheist political party. Dr. Sherwood Taylor was an eminent Oxford University scientist and well-known atheist intellectual who became a zealous Catholic propagandist as a result of studying the Galileo case. Many defenders of Christian belief, such as G.K. Chesterton and Sir Arnold Lunn, have been converts who wished by their writings and speeches to pass on their new-found treasure to others.

In my own case, I was brought up by grandparents in a home where my mother, a convert to Catholicism, could have little influence. My grandfather was a typical example of late Victorian religion, what might be called Low-Church Anglican, imbued with a deep suspicion of Popery but at least with the virtue of tolerance for what he disapproved. He had a huge “Family Bible”, which he opened only to amuse me with the engraved illustrations. He was of extreme moral rectitude, having resigned in World War I from a military defence force because other members had sung a dirty song. Yet he never actually went to church, prayed or mentioned religion. My religious faith is something I owe entirely to a providential visit to the local parish church, where again apparent coincidences led me to meet the priest, whom I addressed as Sir instead of Father, thus awakening his concern. This holy man became the decisive influence in my life.

In Britain and America during and after World War II, many who had been brought up in religious ignorance and indifference found their faith as a result of military service in the armed forces, where they were impressed by the example and arguments of prayerful friends. At the British Air Force base at Habbaniya in Iraq, with the support of an excellent chaplain, a number of airmen who attended daily evening Mass led friends to the Church and these on their return to Britain themselves became plunged in religious activity. Incidentally, at this time seminaries and monasteries were crowded out with ex-soldiers who had seen the hapless state of unbelievers and wished to be missionary by prayer alone or by prayer and action.

No less than twelve quite irreligious businessmen were led to God by a stock-broker I knew, a controversialist of burning missionary spirit, I believe himself a convert. While others thought of missionary work as something done in Africa or Asia, he was obsessed by the need for reconverting Britain to Christianity.

In order to keep one’s faith in a world which is for all practical purposes atheist, one needs to know the reasons for one’s faith so as to be able to preserve and foster it. Most people imagine that faith is something blind and that the reasons for it must not be questioned. I was very pleased when His Eminence Justin Cardinal Regali said to an NDU audience that every Christian should consider himself a missionary with the duty of influencing those around him. But to do this one must be properly prepared. In most cases a young man or woman is cast in his final intellectual mould during the late ‘teens or around the age of twenty. Therefore in the terminal classes Christian schools should give a course of Apologetics, that is to say the philosophical, scientific and historical reasons for belief in God, His Revelation, His moral law and His Church. In this way the young person will be able to resist the temptations of the world and the doubt that creeps into the soul when surrounded by materialism and mockery of God, when suffering from discouragement and depression, especially when studying in other countries.

He will soon have the urge to enlighten others; for this he will need to deepen his understanding of his faith by reading and by discussion and to lead a life of prayer, for no work for God can be done without His help, that is to say without the action of the Holy Spirit. Love and care for those who know not God will deepen his own spiritual life.

What is more, he will direct his natural desires to founding a deeply Christian family with a partner chosen for Christian virtues. Love for God means love for souls both within the home and in the outside world.

Reproduced by kind permission of NDU Spirit, Notre Dame University, Louaize.

(1) In fact this tribal view of religion is the enemy of religion, as can be seen in the Balkans and Northern Ireland.

(2) Eastern iconography is far more instructive. Many people confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The icon of Youakim, Anne and their daughter Mary shows Youakim placing his hand on the shoulder of his wife, a subtle way of indicating that the conception of Mary, unlike that of her Son, was carnal. But many western “pious” pictures are enough to turn anyone off religion.

(3) This of course is not the case of Judaism, a fact which tends to vitiate dialogue, particularly with those who are Zionists, for lack of common ground to start with.