The issue of the negative effect of the internet on child and youth development has continued to be on the front burner. Rev. Fr. George Ehusani, Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation in his keynote address entitled, “Taking Responsibility for the Future: The challenge before Ladies of St. Mulumba” raised the alarm at what he termed “Cultural degeneration” consequent upon “the preponderance of novel sexual perversions, including the menace of LGBTQ++, the sharp rise in the rate of depression, alcohol and drug addiction, and a multiplicity of psychopathologies that now plague many.” NETA NWOSU, Editor features highlights of the address delivered at the 46th Annual National Convention of the Ladies of St. Mulumba Nigeria in Abuja.
Introduction
At the Opening Session of the first plenary meeting of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria for the year 2005, I delivered a Keynote paper titled, “Success Without Successor is Failure in Disguise.” The presentation aimed at highlighting the tragedy that stares us in the face if (in spite of whatever we as Church may consider our successes today), we do not invest sufficiently in the future of our Church and of our society, through the establishment of vibrant spiritual, pastoral, educational and human development programmes and projects that are specifically targeted at salvaging our youth population and equipping them for meaningful existence here on earth and eternal salvation in Christ.
In today’s presentation on the challenge of taking responsibility for the future, and what role Christian women (and especially Ladies of St. Mulumba) are called to play, I would like to confront you all with some of the hard truths and the harsh realities of our day, and thereafter, attempt to demonstrate that these trying times are a summons for saintly Christians, self-sacrificing parents, exemplary teachers, and models of wholesome, meaningful and purposeful existence, to stand up for Jesus Christ, and to pass on the torch of authentic Christian civilisation to the next generation.
The contradictions and complexities of our age
Ours is truly a generation of multiple contradictions. We live in a world of information explosion and instant communication, and yet a world devoid of meaning. The more words we use, the less meaning we find in those words. Our communication gadgets are supposed to enhance our interpersonal communication, but it appears that the more access we have to the mobile phone and the internet, the more TV programmes we watch, and the faster the jets we acquire, the more we are alienated from one another. Our generation has the reputation of not only making war like previous generations, but with our modern communications technology we can now bring the horrors of war to each person’s living room, and even his or her mobile phone.
Today we do not stop at just being promiscuous like the fun-loving men and women of primitive times. No, we have become enterprising with our promiscuity. We now have a way of entertaining people in faraway lands, with the shameful and dehumanising acts of our promiscuity, thanks to the television, video and the Internet. The largest audience for this strange sort of entertainment everywhere today, are our gullible and vulnerable young people and children. There is the widespread rejection of traditional Christian values all over the place today. Many children of highly devout parents who are prominent in their parishes, often have no time for matters of the faith.
The consequence is of course, an ever-worsening sense of futility and the loss of meaning and purpose, that have become a trigger for the deification of wealth, the idolization of pleasure, and the glorification of violence in our day. The cultural degeneration we witness across the world today, is manifested in the preponderance of ever more novel sexual perversions, including the menace of LGBTQ++, the sharp rise in the rate of depression, alcohol and drug addiction, and a multiplicity of psychopathologies that now plague many.
Traditional moral norms no longer hold sway
True, traditional moral norms no longer hold sway in the life of many people today. The traditional agents of socialization – the family, the Church and the school, have lost much of their authority and pride of place in the socialization process. Today the peer group, the television, the home video, and such internet platforms as Facebook, YouTube, X, Tiktok, Netflix, and ChatGPT, etc., appear to have snatched from the Parents, the Priests and Catechists and the School Teachers, the primary prerogative of imparting knowledge and values and building the character of the younger generation.
While the 15 year old who goes to church in the modern society may be instructed for an average of 20 minutes every week from the pulpit and the one from a very good home may have the attention of his or her parents for an average of 15 minutes a day, (and that may be all the moral, religious and value instruction he or she ever gets), it is said that the same youth often spends up to 10 hours every day watching TV and browsing several internet sites, and taking in (often uncritically) whatever the TV and Internet platforms have to offer, including the good, the bad, and the ugly – from the dirty hardcore pornographic sites, to the frightening sites where young people are taught easy ways of killing people, or easy ways of committing suicide!
Thus, with the mobile phone in the hands of our children, the television in our homes, and the billboards littering our towns, villages, and highways, the more powerful influencers of our children’s values today are often social media personalities, popular musicians, movie stars, comedians, and sundry entertainers. Many of these celebrities are school dropouts, products of broken homes or dysfunctional families. Many of them are drug and alcohol addicts, serial polygamists, and unrepentant sexual perverts. Some of them are known psychiatric cases. Others regularly display symptoms of one psychopathology or the other.
But they are rich and famous. They often have millions of young followers on social media. This is why they are called social influencers, and they are regularly recruited as “brand ambassadors” by corporate organisations, whose primary interest is often the maximization of profit, and not the wholesome formation of the gullible and impressionable young people they have as audience.
Culture of materialism and hedonism now being promoted across the world
This major shift in the principal agents of socialization and the dynamics of youth formation from the parents to the television, and from the pulpit to internet platforms, which has occurred in the last two decades, has come with serious consequences for successive generations of human beings, which agents of the gospel, like the Knights and Ladies of St. Mulumba should be seriously concerned about.
With the powerful means of social communication now available to everyone, including the most criminally minded, long held moral values are now being overturned; secular, neo-pagan worldviews and ideologies are now being propagated; and the culture of materialism and hedonism is now being promoted across the world. What is more, satanic worship, with the most sordid and absurd rituals, is now gradually gaining ascendancy in this generation, and our highly impressionable young people are being recruited in their millions.
Complacency in the face of the enormous challenge
Unfortunately, while all this is going on, many parents and teachers, many Knights and Ladies, and many Bishops, Priests and Religious, have often continued to operate with a false sense of security, as if we were going through the best of times. Many agents of the Church, including highly placed Knights and Ladies, have remained complacent in the face of the enormous challenge that faces humanity, the Christian Church, and the quality of existence of our children and children’s children.
True, many lay and clerical leaders in our Church have not woken up to the harsh realities of our times, in order to make an appropriate response by way of a necessary up-dating or even a major paradigm shift in our parenting and faith formation processes. Instead, many have remained ensconced in an illusory world of success, applying the same old paradigms for parenting and for faith formation, that are today proving to be ineffective and ineffectual in the face of contemporary realities.
The family institution in an unprecedented existential crisis
The family institution itself is in an unprecedented existential crisis. There is widespread dislocation, dysfunction, insecurity, instability and uncertainty in marriage and family life, with the very high rate of divorce, single parenthood, and the now booming menace that is the “baby mama” phenomenon. Many of those going into marriage today lack the emotional and psychological maturity, as well as the spiritual disposition to enter into the life-long covenant commitment that the sacrament of matrimony entails.
Parents are constantly pushing their children into marriage, and insisting that they take on the sacrament of matrimony, but many of these children do not share the Christian sentiments of their parents, and so they are ready to break up at the slightest misunderstanding. Marriages managing to survive, are beset with numerous challenges The marriages that are managing to survive, are themselves beset with numerous challenges. In most cases these days, both parents work all day, and they leave the training of children to nannies or house maids who often have little or nothing to offer the children put in their charge. With the dwindling economic fortunes of many in our society, the emphasis is often on making ends meet. And so, all the attention often goes into looking for or making more money, to the utter neglect of the care and attention that the up-bringing of children demands.
Many of these parents do not seem to appreciate the fact that they are in constant competition with the TV, the Home Video and the Internet, for the moral and character formation of their own children. As a result, we are losing a hold on our children and the future generation, as indiscipline, violent cultism, drug and alcohol abuse, all shades of sexual perversion, the yahoo-yahoo and yahoo+ etc., have become a major feature of our youth culture.
Humanity at the crossroads
Looking critically at the state of affairs in the 21st Century global society, my impression is that humanity is at a crossroads, and we are presented today with unprecedented dangers, but also with profound opportunities for a major cultural and religious revival. There is a desperate yearning for meaning, a profound longing in the hearts of men and women, which our hi-tech civilization and dominant philosophies and lofty social ideologies of the day, have failed to address. And this is felt more critically among the younger generation.
Today many young people in our country and elsewhere are asking fundamental existential questions, namely: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of human existence? Is human life worth all the pains and anxieties? Why is there so much suffering? Why are some people so rich while others are so poor? Why is there so much injustice? Why is there so much hate all around? Why are there so many wars and violent clashes all over the place? Is there such a thing as love? And where can we find true love?
Young people, fear and anxiety
Yes, many of the young people in our day are full of fear and anxiety. Dislocated by family breakdown, destabilised by poverty and unemployment, and traumatised by widespread violence and insecurity of life, some of them are losing hope or becoming very cynical about life and what meaning there is in it. Many wonder what the future holds for them.
They ask: “Will tomorrow come?” “And what type of day will tomorrow be?” “What new threats and anxieties will tomorrow bring?” Yet others are full of hope and expectation of a new world order of love, justice, human solidarity and peace, where swords shall be turned into ploughshares and javelins into pruning hooks. Thus, I sense that the widespread existential nihilism or the crisis of meaning presented by the decay in the global culture of today, may be a providential opportunity for a renewed religious searching among the young generation.
Youth in Search of Spiritual Mentors and Models
The foregoing highlights of the state of the 21st Century human society indicates that the men and women of today, and especially the younger generation are fast losing the sense of meaning and purpose, and are in urgent need of moral and spiritual leadership. They are looking for people to help them answer the fundamental questions of life and help them resolve the puzzles and contradictions that human hatred, wickedness, corruption, violent conflicts, tragedies, suffering, pain, and death, as well as family dysfunction, have created in their minds. My personal conviction is that we Christian leaders and parents can make a huge difference in our broken and confused world, so our children and children’s children can find some purpose and make some meaning out of their lives. We can help them find answers to the questions constantly arising in their hearts, and direct their search towards Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, as well as the Answer to all of life’s puzzles.
Indeed, we are capable of showing the world and our young people the way out of the present dire circumstances. But the question is: Will we? Are we prepared to make the sacrifices required in championing this cause? Do we have the spiritual resources to chart the course of purposeful and meaningful existence for those of the coming generation? Do we have the political will to take responsibility for the future? Do we have the courage and the commitment to confront the challenges presented by the champions of senseless and godless modernity? The Lord has promised not to abandon us, but to see us through the darkest night of discontent, with his amazing grace. But are we ready to stand on his word? Are we ready to position ourselves in the breach, and assume a measure of responsibility for what happens to the next generation? And if I may put it more pointedly: Are the Ladies of St. Mulumba (and their Knights) prepared to answer their name, and courageously stand on their feet, to play the critical role that Catherine of Sienna, Joan of Arc, Julian of Norwich, and Theresa of Avila played in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries’ Dark Ages of Europe and the Christian Church?
St Paul challenges us in Ephesians 5:16, that “this may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it.” He places the responsibility of transforming an evil generation unto good, squarely in the hands of Christian parents and teachers! We read from the book of Joshua that at a time of widespread debauchery in the life of the emergent nation of Israel, when the majority of people had begun to lose faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and when they were taking to the worship of the idols like the Canaanite tribes round about them, Joshua their leader (who had been steadfast all his life and who was about to die at this point), summoned them to himself and demanded that they choose whom they want to serve – the God of Abraham or those idols that they had been flirting around with. He warned them that the God of Abraham is a jealous God and so it is not possible to combine the worship of the true God and their flirtation with the Canaanite idols. So, they must choose whom they would serve. Then he declared in those famous words, “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15).
Proverbs 29:18 says that where there is no vision the people do perish. The future of today’s younger generation in our country and elsewhere is being stolen from them by recklessly self-indulgent parents, senselessly corrupt and punitive rulers, scandalously greedy and power-hungry politicians, and callously exploitative corporate managers, as well as the blind merchants of the pleasure industry. The human society is today suffocating under the enormous weight of the seven deadly social sins identified by Mahatma Gandhi, namely: politics without principles; wealth without work; commerce without morality; pleasure without conscience; education without character; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
The cumulative effect of these anomalies is of course (as already indicated above) the preponderance of materialism, individualism, blind and senseless pleasure, drug addiction, multiple psychopathologies, meaningless existence, widespread violence, suicide ideation, suicides, or the prevailing death wish in the society. And faced with such a culture of absurdity, young people are desperately yearning for authentic leaders and mentors, to show them an alternative way through life. They are looking out for role models in an alternative culture of love, justice, peace, human dignity, marital fidelity, wholesome life and meaningful existence. To meet this challenge, the Lord himself is looking for men and women of integrity from among the adult generation, and especially from among Christians to serve as witnesses, champions, and advocates of the true Christian civilization of love. Yes, the Lord is looking for courageous Christian mothers and fathers, who would address critically the moral reproach that political and economic leadership have become in our country. More than ever before, we need committed adult Christians with sufficient moral credentials to serve as a sign of contradiction and point a different direction to our society, which is today on the verge of collapse as a result of progressive moral decay.
Taking Responsibility for the Future
The Lord the God of new beginnings challenges us clerical and lay leaders of the Church, including the Ladies (and their Knights), to champion the cause of moral and social rejuvenation for our people, in order to give hope to the rising generation. With the acrimonious poverty and the destitution of the multiple of people existing side by side with the affluence and conspicuous consumption of a greedy few, the Lord challenges us Christian parents and elders, to live such holy lives of frugality, self-sacrifice and self-denial as would serve as a powerful sign of contradiction to the confused youths of today, many of who have been led to believe that a person’s life is about the size of his bank account, the size of his house, the size of his car, or the number of followers he has been able to gather on social media.
The Lord challenges parents and leaders to show the true way of life to the young men and women of our day who are often lost in the world of endless acquisition, senseless consumption and mindless pleasure. By a life devoted to the pursuit of spiritual, moral and transcendental values, the Lord challenges us to demonstrate to the young people around us in the Church, at home, at work or at school, that “being” is greater than “having,” and that the successful life is one spent in the service of God and neighbour, not one spent in acquiring stupendous wealth for oneself, in the stupefaction of (inordinate) pleasure, or in the vanity and vain-glory of the modern celebrity.
I am convinced today more than ever before of the need to invest in our future by channelling a lot of our time and resources into diligent parenting, wholesome faith formation, and integral educational and vocational development of our children and youths, because the crowd of Knights and Ladies of St. Mulumba gathered here, and such other significant Christian groups and sodalities, are today called upon to let their lives bear fruits for future generations, to the glory of God. Yes, we must invest heavily in Christian parenting and in Christian youth formation, because our successes today must not end with our own generation. Our successes must have a multiplier effect on future generations of our country and beyond.
Let me be more concrete here: I consider that the Catholic Church will do well with a much better priest than myself. So, I am challenged to invest a lot of my time, talents and treasures in forming, inspiring and mentoring the young people around me, in purposeful, meaningful, and godly existence, so that from among those I succeed in forming, mentoring and inspiring, a better priest than Fr. George Ehusani will emerge in the Church of tomorrow, to the glory of God. In the same way, I challenge each one of you Ladies gathered here, to invest a lot of your time, your talents and your treasures in parenting, forming, mentoring, and inspiring your children and the young people around you, in purposeful existence, so that from among them, better Christian women than yourselves, will emerge in the Church of tomorrow, to the glory of God. This generation of adults in Nigeria have been severally called a lost generation, our political leadership has been described as a failed leadership, and a number of us who make up the elite class, have been referred to as corrupt, inept, self-indulgent, and bereft of vision.
To change the above narrative, we must invest heavily in the formation of our children and our youth population, so that from among them would emerge better presidents, better governors, better Local Government Chairmen and Councillors, better Directors of Corporate Organisations, better Teachers and Lecturers in our Educational Institutions, better Health Workers in our Hospitals, and better Husbands and Wives in our Homes. Yes, if today we invest deliberately and appropriately in our youths, through an ardent life of prayer and devotion, through a transparent life of Christian values and virtues, and through concrete human development and social enterprise programmes and projects, combined with the grace of God who has promised that the gates of hell shall never prevail against his Church, then we can look forward in the near future, to a more faithful and vibrant Church of Christ, and a more wholesome and peaceful humanity, than we have seen in our own generation. In the context of an age of discouragement and a widespread search for meaning among young people, I suggest that the primary preoccupation of Christian parents, teachers, and pastoral agents, should be to help the young people find a sense of meaning in life, to help them discover for themselves, a reason to live.
The starting point in the evangelisation or faith formation of young people today should be the concrete examples of devotion and sacrificial love on the part of the parents, their teachers and their religious leaders. They need to be reassured that Christian love is possible, and not an empty cliché. They need to see, demonstrated in the lives of their parents and others who bear the message of Christ, that Christian forgiveness is possible, that justice makes for peace, and that the human spirit grows only through self-control and the moderation of the appetites. These lessons can often not be taught or dictated to the young people. They have to be lived out by their parents, their teachers, and their faith leaders. Yes, the most profound lessons for godly living are often not taught, but simply caught by the young people. Pope Paul VI is said to have observed that “what modern men and women want are not more teachers, but witnesses, and that if they listen to teachers at all, it is because those teachers are also witnesses!” Christian parents and teachers, including the Ladies of St. Mulumba (and their Knights), who accept to take responsibility for the future, must take this charge of Paul VI very seriously.
Conclusion
As I conclude this reflection, it is important to emphasize that in pursuing the above objective of taking responsibility for the future generation and winning over our young people, away from the culture of debauchery, expressed in crass materialism, senseless hedonism, and extreme individualism, towards a life of fidelity in Christ that would guarantee a more wholesome humanity for future generations, the Lord does not abandon us to our own resources. Before we make any move as individuals and as groups, the Lord would already have taken the initiative.
He has promised to be with us always. He says that the powers of hell will not prevail against his Church. He assures us that his grace is sufficient for us, and so we need not be overwhelmed by the challenges of the moment. With this assurance, therefore let us march forward, full of confidence that, in spite of our past mistakes, the Lord will bless the little efforts and sacrifices we shall henceforth be making, to lay the foundation for a more faithful and vibrant Christian Church, and a more wholesome and peaceful humanity in general.
