Editorial

A recent publication about the religious beliefs and practices of university students has drawn much public attention. It has partly confirmed, partly denied most people's ideas about these young people. Though, if one wants to be honest to oneself, a lot of the findings should not be surprising, let alone shocking.

The most striking finding of the survey is that most students believe in the dogmas of Christianity, including life after death and the resurrection of the body. Moreover, over 70 per cent are churchgoers, even if some of them restrict themselves to one Mass a month and many of them do not receive the sacrament of Communion regularly.

On the other hand, many of them do not go to confession and have not been for a long time. In this respect, they are probably not very dissimilar from many members of the generation preceding theirs.

In fact, many of these students appear to have what one of the authors of the study calls an "individualised Catholic identity". They may go to church, pray fairly regularly, or whenever they feel they need to, and believe in a variety of dogmas, but they refuse to recognise the Church as a mediator between themselves and their God. They have become Malta's brand of Protestants, and like traditional Protestants in other cultures they are already finding themselves in a rough sea of doctrinal uncertainty that may eventually drown them as members of the Church.

This antagonism towards the Church and some of its teachings can be seen most clearly in matters of morals and, especially, in matters impinging on human sexuality. In fact, 94 per cent of them still believe in some form of marriage and many of them wish to be married in Church. Yet, one wonders if quite a few of the respondents were not determined in their views by considerations of social pressure and even of aesthetics. It would be interesting to compare the figures for university students with those for young people in other categories since cohabitation without previous marriage has become so much commoner.

The study shows that 58 per cent of the respondents see nothing wrong in living together before marriage and a much higher percentage disagrees with Church doctrine on birth control. Indeed, 58 per cent is a fairly high percentage, even if it is perfectly comprehensible at a time when the number of marriages ending in legal separation is dauntingly high.

The findings seem to indicate that the absence of divorce in our legal system and the unlikelihood of its introduction in the near future is serving as a "deterrent". In fact, 48 per cent of the respondents said they would welcome the introduction of legal divorce in Malta and even if 52 per cent disagree with them, 40 per cent do not consider divorce to be morally wrong and only 24 per cent would not consider divorcing under even the worst circumstances.

This sort of trend might, on the one hand, press a Maltese government to consider enacting divorce legislation sooner rather than later and the Church to both increase its opposition but also revisit its pastoral work in this regard.

Some, perhaps many, of the respondents may soon become influential in various sectors of society, so their views must be considered with great seriousness. If Malta's politicians still believe that Christianity has been a strong influence for good in our society they should cooperate with the Church as it tries to stem or at least slow down the worrying trends revealed in this study.