Young people told about navigating cultural crisis

By MINA AMSO

In the midst of the modern chaos, where technology races forward and societal bonds seem to loosen, a disconcerting reality lurks beneath the surface.

As Brendan Malone, director of Life Net NZ and Founder of Activ8 Pro Life training week, passionately articulated, what we’re facing today isn’t the heavy-handed totalitarianism of the past, but rather a subtler, insidious form that seeps into our everyday lives. This “soft totalitarianism”, as he calls it, manifests in ways that might not confine us to cells. but suppresses our beliefs, dampens our voices, and erodes our sense of community.

This is what we’re living in, Mr Malone, who lives in Christchurch, emphasised during a talk at the Upper Room – a gathering of Young Catholic Professionals in St Heliers in Auckland on October 19.

“What we are experiencing right now is a soft totalitarianism. Not the hard totalitarianism of North Korea or the Soviet Communism or Iran where you end up in jail. The Christian isn’t something to be looked down upon, it’s often punished. People can’t get jobs, they get pushed out of workplaces, they get silenced, they get cancelled,” Mr Malone told the gathering.

With the decline of the age of Christendom, he said, the Church finds itself on the periphery once more, prompting an urgent need to regain its counter-cultural identity without being consumed by the very culture it seeks to influence.

How do we do that? He posed this question to the audience, igniting a discussion on the vital essence of building an authentic counter-culture rooted in the tenets of Catholic tradition, Scripture, and a living, proactive Christian faith.

“Don’t just reject evil, fill your house with goodness, truth and beauty. So that when those evil things come knocking there’s no room for them. Secondly, live not by lies, so fundamentally important,” he said.

Goodness, truth and beauty can be many things, one is holding on to and keeping Catholic traditions alive and a rock to live on.

“Don’t fall prey to passing trends and fads and fashions, look at where the rock is and plant yourself on the rock and build your house there. That means understanding who you are as a Catholic. What are our traditions, do I have a regular prayer life, am I missionary in my focus? Am I out there? Am I evangelising in some way? Am I speaking to the culture? Am I active in my local parish community?”

People often think “oh, I’ve got to change the whole world”, but Mr Malone said that that couldn’t be further from the truth. Ultimately people have the power to change the world if they lived out a life of goodness, truth and beauty in their own hearts, minds, homes and communities. It’s that simple.

Mr Malone urged a revival of the values that have long shaped communities.

“We’ve lost sight of Christ and Christianity, forgetting the sacred, transcendent principles that once united us”, he lamented.

As the world scrambles to cherry-pick fragments of Christianity while discarding its very core, Malone warns that the consequences are dire, leaving many adrift, yearning for something they cannot quite grasp.

“People are hungry, people are broken, people are searching,” Mr Malone said.

“I think [they are] maybe a little bit oblivious and numb to two things: all of us are going to wake up at some point and realise uh oh! What is my purpose in life, what is my meaning, what have I been doing for the last 20 years of my career. Where am I going?

“Sooner or later there will be a crisis point in every life, which we are forced to evaluate and confront. What is the meaning of life, is there more to this?

He said that people have lost a “sense of who they are”.

“If we don’t know we are sacred image-bearers made in the image of God, we won’t know how to find meaning, we won’t know what we’re supposed to be living for, community starts to break down, we don’t have a shared common vision of reality anymore.”

Malone’s called upon individuals to confront the crisis within, urging a return to the fundamentals of self-reflection and introspection.

“What is my life being lived for? Where is it going?” he asked, encouraging a prayerful journey to rekindle the lost connection with a higher purpose.

He challenged individuals to take responsibility, to become leaders in their communities, to foster a sense of togetherness amidst the relentless tides of cultural upheaval.

Mr Malone stressed the importance of community.

“Keep building it, keep fighting for it, don’t ever lose it,” he said.

Brendan Malone hosts The Dispatches Podcast and The Little Flock – a marriage and family podcast with his wife, Katie.