A CONFERENCE will take place in Dublin today on the vulnerability of young people to the attractions of both religious cults and satanic rituals.
The two main speakers are Dr Martin Eggleton, who runs Inform, the New Religious Movements Centre at the London School of Economics, and Mr Mike Garde, a field worker with the Dialogue Centre, which researches and educates people about cults in Ireland.
Mr Garde said he had found from his visits to schools that most young people associated confirmation with getting money. "The confirmation moment is not their point of entry to, but their point of exit from the churches," he said.
Many then spent their teenage years experimenting with the darker side to fill the gap". This could range from following Death Metal music, playing with tarot cards and Ouija boards, holding seances, to raiding graveyards.
Modern, liberal religion had tended to get rid of the Devil there's no concept of the Fall or of Satan, so there's no problem of evil for young people" he said "They begin to wonder where badness and evil comes from and start experimenting themselves. "We, parents and religious leaders, are not prepared theologically to think these things through."
Liberal theologians like Hans Kung were "good at looking at the structures of evil in our society, but they're no good at seeing Satan as a personal influence in people's day to day lives".
Mr Garde recalled that local clergy had said the young people who had desecrated bodies in St Michan's Church, Dublin, recently had not left any satanic symbols. "My point is that our society has become so infused with the occult that we don't need symbols any more."
Dr Eggleton will speak from his long experience in England about how intelligent and otherwise discerning young people can suspend their critical faculties and be emotionally vulnerable to the message of cults.
The conference, "Searching Youth", is being held at Clonliffe College under the auspices of the inter church New Religious Movements Committee, chaired by Father Martin Tierney.