One of the cultural challenges to the Church today is the process of secularization. Pope Francis in EG expresses the following concerns:
(1) “The process of secularization tends to reduce the faith and the Church to the sphere of the private and personal.” 2) It rejects the role of transcendent principle in life. (3) This in turn has produced a growing deterioration of ethics. (4) There is a weakening of the sense of personal and collective sin. (5) A steady increase of relativistic approach to life resulting in moral relativism. (6) Particularly the young are so disoriented in their outlook that they consider Church’s teachings of objective moral norms as unjust and even opposed to basic human rights.” (7) There is so much of indiscriminate bombardment of data that the people are unable to make a proper moral discernment, if one takes all the data as being of equal importance.(8) Hence, there is a dire need “to provide an education which teaches critical thinking and encourages the development of mature moral values” (EG # 64).

Almost in parallel lines of thought, Gandhi too had expressed his concerns on various occasions. A few of the most important observation may be cited here, corresponding to each of points mentioned above in EG.

(1) “The whole gamut of man’s activities today constitutes an undividable whole. You cannot divide social, economic political and purely religious work into watertight compartments. I do not know any religion apart from human activity” (VT 321).

(2) True, Gandhi gave due importance to reason. But he also spoke about the limits of reason, pointing to the faith as the transcendent principle of human life (Truth, 85-86).

3) “True religion and true morality are inseparably bound up with each other. Religion is to morality what water is to the seed that is sown in the soil” (Bose 255). “As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion overriding morality. Man for instance cannot be untruthful, cruel and incontinent and claim to have God on his side.”

4) As against the weakening of the sense of sin, Gandhi contended the eternal duel that is described in the Mahabharata is precisely what is described in Christianity and Islam as a duel between God and Stan, not outside but within. Zoroastrianism also talks about a duel between Ahuramazd and Ahriman. So Gandhi insisted that “We have to make our choice whether we should ally ourselves with the forces of evil or with the forces of good” (In Search, I, 167).

5) Gandhi’s views on moral relativism are exactly the same as Church’s teachings. “Reason is a poor thing in the midst of temptations. Faith alone can save us. Reason appears to be on the side of those who indulge in drink and free love. The fact is that reason is blurred on such occasions. It follows the instinct. Do not lawyers engaged on opposite sides made reason appear to be on their side? And yet one of them must be wrong, or it may be that both are. Hence faith in the rightness of one’s moral position is the only bulwark against the attack of reason” (In Search, 141).

6) About the disorientation of the youth, Gandhi had this to say. “Purely secular education is also an attempt to mould the body and mind after a fashion… The body and mind may be trained and directed. Likewise… Why may not a believer argue that he must influence the soul of boys and girls, even as others influence the body and the intelligence?” (In Search 1, 183).

(7) As regards the indiscriminate data swallowed by people on the basis of their reasoning that they take all the data as being of equal importance the following words of Gandhi could be a good counter argument: “Rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence…Who has reasoned out the use of prayers? Its use is felt after practice. Such is the world’s testimony” (In Search, I, 183-84).

(8) Gandhi, while exhorting the school children at Trissur, brought out the importance of growing in moral maturity thus: “Religious and moral instruction is nothing but character building. So I say to the boys and girls: Never lose faith in God and therefore in yourselves and remember that if you allow refuge to a single evil thought, a single sinful thought, remember that you lack that faith.” (Search 1, 49).

In sum, if the two great spiritual minds of two different times, climes and cultures have uttered almost the same words lest the process of secularization should hold sway the modern mind, it only indicates the gravity of the so called innocuous process of secularization. Could we then pay heed to them so that the crisis that is induced by secularization is averted in the Church!