Modern youth: the conscious of sinfulness

Sociološki i pastoralno-katehetski vid

Abstract

Socio-cultural environment has an important role with the young in their formation of the sense of identity and acceptance of basic values. This article deals with basic features of spiritual and cultural scope that shapes life experience of the young, with the stress on overemphasized subjectivism, affective, intellectual and spiritual nomadic existence, consumerism, hedonism and the wrong idea of freedom, whose impact is the strongest. The young grow up in ethically neutral society, marked as a whole by moral insecurity and decreased subjective responsibility. Based on recent socio-religious researches among the young, the author shows that due to social differentiation, pluralism, globalization, moral relativism, the features of Christian morality are less and less recognizable, and vague understanding of sin in their behavior is more and more pronounced.
On the one hand in the life of a young person permissiveness and the ethics of an easy excuse prevail, particularly in sex matters, while on the other hand the sensibility for “social sins” strengthens. In the finishing part of the article, the author supplies a few pastoral guidelines to serve as guidance for the education of the young on Christian morality, i.e. towards developing the necessary sensitivity to sin.