"What to give the child for his first communion? A watch, a book, no, no, that will come up with others... I'll give him a rattlesnake!". After a week of thinking, Grandma was satisfied with her decision. "A little snake can be very useful when it's well tamed," she said to herself. It sends messages, entertains with its dances, and even helps you sleep when it makes the figure-eight motion. Everyone has acquired one for a reason... The only thing is that sometimes it bites a little, and it's poisonous, but well, everything has its good side and its bad side, right?".

The child leaves the church, happy to receive so much attention from his family. They arrive at the house to celebrate and then the gifts appear. A book, a watch, another watch, a penknife. He accepts with his little hands and smiles. Grandma is waiting her turn to enter, looking for a coup.

At last, she makes her way through the guests and pulls out of her purse a beautiful rattlesnake with a little red ribbon tied around its neck. "Here, honey," she says, stretching out the creature, which begins to coil in her arms. Her name is Panchita, you can keep her in your pocket. But educate her, eh? Lest she digs her fangs into you, injects her venom and you end up dead in some corridor".

The child's eyes sparkled. He did not see the snake, but a smartphone. So he left the guests pinned in the living room, went to his room, bolted the door for the first time, and created an account at Instagram. Then another in Tik Tok. Thus, without realizing it, the day was gone. The same thing happened the next day. And the next...

Those who are part of the 96.7 million people who have watched the series Adolescence (Netflix2025) will agree that I am not exaggerating.

The use of screens among minors is a nightmare, but they get them anyway because, "whatever"Everyone has a cell phone. Many schools are taking action, but it is difficult to make progress because it is difficult to reach agreements between families.

Thanks to Jonathan Haidt's book, Anxious generation (Deusto, 2024), many educational institutions around the world have finally found the scientific basis they needed to dare to ban the use of cell phones during the school day.

For those who have implemented it, it has been a respite. "Now they play in the playgrounds," a teacher told me the other day. "When they had phones in their pockets, of course, nothing could compete with that. Now at least they listen to me," commented another.

However, once the problem is solved in the mornings, there are still the afternoons and weekends, which are often stolen by the screens. Therefore, the next step is to postpone the delivery of mobiles.

Haidt shows that doing so before the age of 15 is a serious imprudence. From this point on, the debate begins and the quality of the training provided by some families versus others is measured. Some prefer to stay with that age, others prefer to delay the delivery until 18. In this second position is, for example, the Spanish doctor Miguel Ángel Martínez, with his book Salmon, hormones and screens (Planeta, 2023). And, modestly, so am I.

At this stage of the game, young people recognize that the cell phone with social networks is rather like a poison. Many would like to use them more freely, but the notification system is addictive. The snake smiles at first, but then shows its fangs. The same thing happens with cell phones: once they fall into the hands of the teenager, they soon try to devour the owner.

Boys waste time, lower grades, deteriorate relationships with parents and siblings, fragment attention, incur mental illness (in the UK, a third of 18-24 year olds experience symptoms of depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder), suffer in their self-esteem, sleep less, witness cyberbullying, forget about God.

Parents, on the other hand, have not received special training to heal snakebites and understand their children less and less each day.

In the midst of all this confusion, there are families who manage to open an umbrella. "If it rains, at least we won't get wet," they say. They fight tooth and nail to preserve some traditions: eating together, having father-son conversations or praying as a family. At the same time, they look for tricks to avoid unfair competition: they delay the delivery of the cell phone until 18, or give one away at 15, but it is one of the old ones, that is, not suitable for social networks.

I've also seen some ingenious parents who get a brick without social networking, but with WhatsApp.

The effort of going against the tide involves them entering into lengthy discussions, it is true, but they know that the conflict is far less than if their children were to keep a IPhone-rattlesnake in his pocket since the day of his first communion.

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In the next few days, La Esfera de los Libros will publish my essay entitled The meaning of Christianity In it I explore, from a critical perspective, the relationship between Christianity and contemporary culture. Can Christianity offer a significant contribution to the construction of a more just and caring society? How should Christianity face the challenges posed by secularism, materialism and nihilism?

My response is optimistic, both for those who profess the Christian faith and for those who do not. Christianity still has vitality; it is by no means, as some argue, a lost cause. Being a Christian in today's consumerist society has intrinsic value and is beneficial to all, believers and non-believers alike. If the human being of the 21st century wishes to be vindicated, he or she must seriously consider Christianity. To do so, it is essential to return to contemplation, mysticism, aesthetics and liturgy.

To continue to illuminate our environment, Christianity needs to undergo an intense process of spiritual renewal, to return to its roots, to contemplate without rest the crucified and risen Christ. Paradoxically, in order to renew itself, Christianity must secularize and declericalize, and look to the first Christians, those who lived before the alliance between religion and politics, altar and throne, was established in the fourth century.

I argue that a society that undergoes a process of secularization without the guidance of Christianity runs the risk of falling into an impasse, plunging into extreme individualism, purposelessness and a deep existential sadness. In short, decadence. Therefore, my position is clear: let us secularize Christianity and open the process of secularization to transcendence. Let us collaborate between believers and non-believers, foster dialogue and eliminate the ideological prejudices and harmful polarization that has arisen in the wake of the woke culture.

Healthy secularization does not exclude God

A healthy secularization that opens the doors to transcendence does not exclude God. In this essay, I confront the theses of modern atheism with the mystical experiences of so many people over the centuries. I argue that Christian faith is not based solely on rational evidence, but on personal experience and divine revelation. I also insist on the importance of faith as a fundamental element for understanding the full meaning of human existence and for building a more just and compassionate society.

I conclude this essay with a fervent call for the construction of a culture of love, grounded in the essential values of Christianity. This culture must be inclusive, welcoming of diversity, promote sincere dialogue and be wide open to spirituality. In my view, Christianity is not a threat to modern society, as has been said; rather, it is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for forging a more humane, just and caring world.

The meaning of Christianity

AuthorRafael Domingo Oslé

Editorial: La esfera de los libros

Pages: 296

Year: 2025

Our society has the capacity to advance more rapidly and find a more effective balance if it transforms itself into a space that is simultaneously more secular and more transcendent. It must learn to be more technical and at the same time more human, more active and also more contemplative. In short, it must aspire to be a place of greater happiness and well-being.

Can a vibrant Christianity illuminate the secular age? Definitely. Not, however, a tired Christianity that victimizes, nor a fearful one that hides or lacks clarity and purpose. What our society really requires is a revitalized, energized, bold and transformative Christianity that deserves the enthusiastic and eternal recognition of Jesus Christ.

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Transcendentalism was an American philosophical, political and literary movement that flourished roughly between 1836 and 1860. It began as a reform movement within the Unitarian Church that sought to extend the application of William Ellery Channing's thought on the inner God and the significance of intuitive thought.

For the Transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. They labored with the sense that the advent of a new age was at hand, were critical of their contemporary society for its reflexive nonconformity, and urged that each individual seek, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "an original relation to the universe."

The American transcendentalism proposed by Emerson is based on the transcendental foundation laid out by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This foundation is that objects are not cognizable in themselves, but only through the spatial, temporal and categorical structure that the subject projects on the world. Based on this idea, Johann Gottlieb Fichte defined his metaphysics of the I and the Not-I as transcendental idealism. Friedrich Schelling elaborated the system of transcendental idealism and Arthur Schopenhauer called transcendental the reflection directed not to things but to the consciousness of them as mere representations.

The main figures of the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott. Also associated with transcendentalism is Emerson's friend and member of the "Transcendental Club," Walt Whitman.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803-Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 1882) was an American writer, philosopher and poet. A leader of the Transcendentalism movement in the early 19th century, on November 5, 1833 he gave a lecture in Boston in which he laid the foundation of his most important beliefs and ideas, later developed in his first published essay on Nature: "Nature is a language, and every new fact learned is a new word; but this is not a language taken apart and dead in a dictionary, but a language put together in a meaningful and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not in order to know a new grammar, but in order to be able to read the great book written in that language."

Emerson's philosophy is typically liberal: it enhances the values of the individual and the self, it is affirmative, vitalistic and optimistic. Hence the praise he deserved from Friedrich Nietzsche. He was staunchly anti-slavery. Towards the end of his life he sometimes forgot his name and when someone asked him how he felt, he answered: "quite well; I lost my mental faculties, but I am perfect".

Henry David Thoreau

His friend Henry David Thoreau (Concord, July 12, 1817-Concord, May 6, 1862) was an American writer, poet and philosopher, of Puritan origin, author of "Walden" and "On Civil Disobedience". Thoreau was a surveyor, naturalist, lecturer and pencil maker. One of the founding fathers of American literature, he is also the conceptualizer of civil disobedience practices.

In his work Walden he writes: "I went to the woods because I wanted to live alone, deliberately, to face the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what I had to teach and not discover, at the hour of death, that I had not lived. He did not want to live what was not life, nor did he want to practice renunciation, unless it was necessary. I wanted to live deeply and to extract all the marrow from life, to live in such an intense and spartan way that I could do without everything that was not life...".

On July 24 or 25, 1846, Thoreau met with the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of back taxes. Thoreau refused to pay because of his opposition to the U.S. Intervention in Mexico and slavery, and spent a night in jail for this refusal. The next day, Thoreau was released against his will when someone, probably his aunt, paid the tax, against his wishes.

The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau, and he would write: "under a government that unjustly imprisons anyone, the home of an honest man is prison"; "any man who is more right than his fellow man is already a majority of one"; "kindness is the only investment that never fails"; "make your life a brake to stop the machine". His essay on civil disobedience had a powerful influence on Lev Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

Walt Whitman

Finally, Walter "Walt" Whitman (West Hills, New York; May 31, 1819-Camden, New Jersey; March 26, 1892) was an American poet, volunteer nurse, essayist, journalist and humanist. His work falls within the transition between transcendentalism and philosophical realism, incorporating both movements into his work. He is considered among the most influential writers in the American canon and has been called the father of free verse. He was a deist and believed in the immortality of the soul.

Considered the father of modern American poetry, his influence has been extensive outside the United States as well. Among the writers who have been influenced by his work are Rubén Darío, Wallace Stevens, León Felipe, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Fernando Pessoa, Pablo de Rokha, Federico García Lorca, Hart Crane, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery, among others.

In 1855 he published his most famous book, "Leaves of Grass", where his most famous poem appears:

Oh, my self! oh, life! of your returning questions,
From the endless parade of the disloyal, from the
cities full of fools,
Of myself, which I always reproach myself (as,
Who is more foolish than I, nor more disloyal),
Of the eyes that in vain yearn for light, of the objects
of the ever-renewed struggle,
Of the bad results of everything, of the crowds
and sordid that surround me,
From the empty and useless years of others, I
intertwined with the others,
The question, Oh, my self, the sad question that
back - what good is in the midst of all this?
things, Oh, my self, Oh, life?
Reply
That you are here - that there is life and identity,
That the mighty drama continues, and that
You can contribute with a verse.

In 1865 he wrote the famous poem "O Captain, My Captain!" in tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination.

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Since last March 19, the digital debate has dominated the conversations between parents and teachers, when the Community of Madrid announced that next school year, 2025/26, it will be the first in Spain to eliminate the individual use of digital devices in the schools of Infant and Primary Education, without violating the acquisition of digital competences. The controversy arises because it has not been previously debated and it is an intrusive measure, as it infringes on the freedom and autonomy of public and private schools.

The draft decree has not been widely debated beforehand and affects very different aspects of the educational model of each school, which makes it difficult to know exactly its detailed purpose, whether it tackles the problem of the abuse of technologywhether it improves academic performance, mental health or what. In any case, Catherine L'Ecuyer, Diego Hidalgo, María Salmerón and Darío Villanueva agree with reversing digital abuse and in "The necessary technological de-escalation of classrooms", as the headline of El Mundo said in a joint article, as they see several reasons such as content cracks, pure modernity, attention deficit, lower academic performance, privacy, excessive digital competence, teacher relegation and economy, to minimize its use.

Lurihighlighting other aspects, says in ABC: "The debate about new technologies should not be approached in terms of academic performance, but rather by asking ourselves whether we want to be a digitally competent society or not. If the answer is yes, we must educate our students in the digital world from the very beginning. Undoubtedly, this entails new challenges and difficulties, but facing reality means managing the problems it presents us with and not avoiding them". The question therefore has a clear answer for him: technology must be used at school. Moreover, he sees the problem of technology abuse more as a problem at home: "The excessive time spent by an adolescent on social networks and without going out into the street to socialize is a family problem, yes, but not a school problem".

This has not prevented it from being well received by parents, as part of the solution to their problems, and by teachers, who have not put up much of a fuss either, but rather have seen it as a help in their educational task. On the other hand, the employers' associations of the subsidized education system are not so happy because perhaps the decision should have been taken differently, since it affects their decision-making capacity and their strategic plan. In any case, it is a good time to reflect and look for points of improvement on the part of parents and teachers. Because education has a lot of room for improvement, and it will shape the future of our society.

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The EU has recommended its citizens to get a survival kit in case of a possible attack or natural disaster. Water, tin cans, a flashlight, a lighter... basic things to survive the first 72 hours; but they forget the most important thing: something to make sense of those first moments of bewilderment and, depending on the severity of the case, of the new life that would have to start afterwards. In my case, I would not fail to include in the kit a small bible and a rosary. In a catastrophic situation in which hopelessness, uncertainty and fear would take hold of us, they would seem to me to be the greatest of treasures.   

I would begin, for example, with the Gospel according to St. John to read: "In the world you will have your struggles, but take courage: I have overcome the world"; I would go through Psalm 34 to hear that, "when one cries out, the Lord hears him and delivers him from his troubles" or that "though the just man suffer many evils, the Lord delivers him from them all"; to arrive at the Epistle to the Romans in which St. Paul would remind me that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present, nor future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus". The Rosary, especially when prayed in community, is a unique gift from Mary to find, in her who is the Help of Christians and Queen of Peace, the spiritual consolation and peace that we need in moments when life strikes us.  

A society as materialistic as ours, which ignores spirituality, is completely disarmed in the face of life's difficulties, even more so in the face of those that may arise according to the dystopian future that the EU presents to us. If all the meaning of our life is to have, what happens if we lose everything? We Christians have a kind of "emergency training" every Lent, when we try to live more austerely, depriving ourselves of some material things that we consider essential for the rest of the year, renouncing our tastes in favor of others... At this time, we remember, with Jesus in the desert, that "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God".

The Gospel is that word, food and drink, that our soul needs to continue to live; it is that lantern that shines in the darkness of fear; that lighter that can light the fire of our spirit when we fall apart and that multipurpose knife with infinite utilities for day to day life such as the education of children, care for the poor and sick, care for the elderly, the relationship with money or social organization. It is also that first aid kit with which to heal our wounds and prevent diseases of the soul; that thermal blanket that gives us the warmth of a good father when everything is cold around us; that walkie-talkie that puts us in contact with the community, with those who can help us; that battery-powered radio that keeps us in communication with Him, that brings us the Good News that we need to be repeated and, among many other things, it is also that identity card essential in every good emergency kit. 

It would be a different story in this Europe that is now rearming itself if we had kept our Christian identity in a waterproof bag protected from the dust of marketing and the dampness of the ideologies that have ended up corrupting it. Its founders carried it as a flag (literally if we study the origin of the EU insignia), aware that evangelical values such as truth, freedom, justice, charity, solidarity or the search for the common good guaranteed years of unity, peace and progress, but their successors considered it unprofitable for their interests and took it out of the kit. By depriving human beings and society of a sense of meaning, we are more vulnerable than ever to a possible extreme situation that may arise. 

The famous psychiatrist, Viktor Frankla survivor of the concentration camps, in his work "Man in search of meaning"He said that the human being "is that being capable of inventing the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but he is also the being who has entered those same chambers with his head held high and the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips". Today few know the Lord's Prayer or the Shema, so human dignity is worth only as much as two cans of sardines or a bottle of water. While some are preparing their strategic weapons, men and women destined for eternity are guaranteed just that: 72 hours of life.

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