47. Gnosticism gave way to another heresy, likewise present in our day. As time passed, many came to realize that it is not knowledge that betters us or makes us saints, but the kind of life we lead. But this subtly led back to the old error of the gnostics, which was simply transformed rather than eliminated.
66. Let us listen once more to Jesus, with all the love and respect that the Master deserves. Let us allow his words to unsettle us, to challenge us and to demand a real change in the way we live. Otherwise, holiness will remain no more than an empty word. We turn now to the individual Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew (cf. Mt 5:3-12).[67]
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78. Jesus offers a justice other than that of the world, so often marred by petty interests and manipulated in various ways. Experience shows how easy it is to become mired in corruption, ensnared in the daily politics of quid pro quo, where everything becomes business. How many people suffer injustice, standing by powerlessly while others divvy up the good things of this life. Some give up fighting for real justice and opt to follow in the train of the winners. This has nothing to do with the hunger and thirst for justice that Jesus praises.
101. The other harmful ideological error is found in those who find suspect the social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist. Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend. Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.[84] We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.
108. Hedonism and consumerism can prove our downfall, for when we are obsessed with our own pleasure, we end up being all too concerned about ourselves and our rights, and we feel a desperate need for free time to enjoy ourselves. We will find it hard to feel and show any real concern for those in need, unless we are able to cultivate a certain simplicity of life, resisting the feverish demands of a consumer society, which leave us impoverished and unsatisfied, anxious to have it all now. Similarly, when we allow ourselves to be caught up in superficial information, instant communication and virtual reality, we can waste precious time and become indifferent to the suffering flesh of our brothers and sisters. Yet even amid this whirlwind of activity, the Gospel continues to resound, offering us the promise of a different life, a healthier and happier life.
116. Inner strength, as the work of grace, prevents us from becoming carried away by the violence that is so much a part of life today, because grace defuses vanity and makes possible meekness of heart. The saints do not waste energy complaining about the failings of others; they can hold their tongue before the faults of their brothers and sisters, and avoid the verbal violence that demeans and mistreats others. Saints hesitate to treat others harshly; they consider others better than themselves (cf. Phil 2:3).
131. Look at Jesus. His deep compassion reached out to others. It did not make him hesitant, timid or self-conscious, as often happens with us. Quite the opposite. His compassion made him go out actively to preach and to send others on a mission of healing and liberation. Let us acknowledge our weakness, but allow Jesus to lay hold of it and send us too on mission. We are weak, yet we hold a treasure that can enlarge us and make those who receive it better and happier. Boldness and apostolic courage are an essential part of mission.
138. We are inspired to act by the example of all those priests, religious, and laity who devote themselves to proclamation and to serving others with great fidelity, often at the risk of their lives and certainly at the cost of their comfort. Their testimony reminds us that, more than bureaucrats and functionaries, the Church needs passionate missionaries, enthusiastic about sharing true life. The saints surprise us, they confound us, because by their lives they urge us to abandon a dull and dreary mediocrity.
150. In that silence, we can discern, in the light of the Spirit, the paths of holiness to which the Lord is calling us. Otherwise, any decisions we make may only be window-dressing that, rather than exalting the Gospel in our lives, will mask or submerge it. For each disciple, it is essential to spend time with the Master, to listen to his words, and to learn from him always. Unless we listen, all our words will be nothing but useless chatter.
166. How can we know if something comes from the Holy Spirit or if it stems from the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil? The only way is through discernment, which calls for something more than intelligence or common sense. It is a gift which we must implore. If we ask with confidence that the Holy Spirit grant us this gift, and then seek to develop it through prayer, reflection, reading and good counsel, then surely we will grow in this spiritual endowment.
Previous research has consistently found that religiosity is positively related to well-being, and so I expected that people who believed in God would report greater well-being than people who did not believe in God. Although such relationships do not directly address relationships between religiosity and social capital and prosociality, they add to the body of research on the topic of relationships between well-being and religiosity.
As discussed previously, most religious belief systems encourage followers to act prosocially, e.g., to be kind and helpful to others. This suggests that those who believe in God should be more prosocial than non-believers, no matter how prosociality is defined (e.g., as bonding or bridging social capital). Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that relationships between religiosity and prosociality might vary as a function of whether interpersonal or ideological prosociality is being examined.
As discussed by Kim-Prieto and Miller (2018), the upshot of research on the moderating effects of national levels of religiosity is that individual-level relationships between religiosity and well-being tend to be stronger in countries in which religiosity is more normative than they are in countries in which religiosity is less normative. For the present study, I expected that relationships between belief in God and well-being and between belief in God and social capital would be stronger in countries in which a greater percent of people believed in God than in countries in which a lower percent believed in God.
Finally, I analyzed what is called the post-materialism index, originally formulated by Inglehart (1977). The index reflects the extent to which individuals place greater importance on non-material goals such as freedom of speech, gender equality, self-expression, and environmentalism than they do on material goals. More details about how this measure was calculated can be found on the website for the survey (EVS/WVS, 2020). Although the index is calculated using some of the items that have been mentioned previously (e.g., priorities for the future), given its widespread use, it was analyzed for the present paper. Individuals were classified as either materialist, mixed, or post-materialist.
The results of the analyses of well-being, including expected values for respondents who believed in God and those who did not, are summarized in Table 1. There were significant effects for belief in God in the analyses of happiness, satisfaction with life, and self-reported health. On average, individuals who believed in God were happier than those who did not, they were more satisfied with their lives, and they reported better physical health.
The results of the analyses of ideological prosociality, including expected values for respondents who believed in God and those who did not, are summarized in Table 3. There were significant effects for belief in God for eight of the twelve measures: belonging to an organization concerning environmentalism, aims for the country, joining boycotts, attending lawful demonstrations, joining unofficial strikes, and being classified as materialist and as post-materialist. The results of these analyses indicated that people who believed in God were less ideologically prosocial and were less civically involved than those who do not believe in God.
The results of the analyses were largely consistent with the expectation that differences between believers and non-believers would be larger in countries in which belief in God was more normative than in countries in which belief in God was less normative. As can be seen in Table 1, this was the case for happiness, life satisfaction, and self-rated health. The difference between believers and non-believers was twice as large in high-belief countries than it was in low-belief countries.
For interpersonal prosociality (Table 2), the moderating effect was significant for all six outcomes for which the belief in God effect was significant. The difference between believers and non-believers was larger in countries in which there were more believers than in countries in which there were fewer believers, except for trust in people from other religions, for which the difference was in the opposite direction.
As expected, individuals who believed in God reported being happier and being more satisfied with life than individuals who did not believe in God. Moreover, this difference was greater in countries in which more people (percent) believed in God than in countries in which fewer people believed in God. Such differences are consistent with much of the previous research on this topic. As discussed by Kim-Prieto and Miller (2018), a variety of explanations have been offered for such relationships; unfortunately, the combined WVS/EVS dataset does not contain the information necessary to examine such possibilities. 2ff7e9595c
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