A religião e a religiosidade dos universitários da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This research aims at getting to know religiosity and the religious practice of students at PUC University. We face the need to know the religious situation of the college students at The Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, and how the actual crisis on faith affects them. We understand that the opinion of PUC students represent the opinion of college students in general, due to the fact they come from different places throughout the state and even from outside Rio Grande do Sul. Because of that they have received their upbringing in diversified environments, from both a family and cultural point of view. Society nowadays is going through a deep religious crisis, due to the emptying of our Churches. While old certainties and habits are being dissolved, new experimentations are coming up and they are insecure and hesitating. Therefore, many people believe in God as a superior and safe power, but don t have a religious belonging. The reality of religions in the country has changed in the last decades with the progressive decline of catholicism and the increase of religious pluralism in society, also the increase of syncretism, secularization, desacralization, atheism, religious indifference, etc. The most discussed issues, such as divorce, abortion, natality control, genetic human research, artificial insemination, the union of people from the same sex, etc bring up new questions regarding the updating of the church nowadays. There is also an advance in science and its discoveries and people can now live without feeling threatened. People can and should live in harmony between faith and reason without this being a contradiction. This research tries to identify to what extend these trends can have an influence in the understanding of faith. It also points out at new pastoral movements that can respond to the actual challenges of this moment of postmodernity that we are living.