Culture of indifference is worse than hate: Mangaluru Bishop

‘Hatred and indifference will burn us before it burns others’

Expressing his concerns over the growing culture of indifference, Mangaluru Bishop Peter Paul Saldanha on Thursday said many were promoting division, violence, and death.

In his message on the eve of Christmas, the Bishop said growing culture of indifference today was worse than hate. “If we love someone that person has a place in our heart and if we hate the person, he will be in our mind. But if we foster indifference, that person does not exist for us. We do not care whether he is alive or dead. This is the danger we are in, for many promote division, violence and death,” he said. Jesus, the Bishop said, teaches by example to care and share, to give and forgive enemies, and never hate anyone. “Hatred and indifference will burn us before it burns others,” he said and added that it destroys conscience and goodness among people. “We become dead people walking, a kind of zombies,” he said.

Expressing the need for fostering swachh mind and a pure heart, the Bishop said, “Let this Christmas be for us, a challenge to foster a pure heart so that we see God in our neighbour and in nature.”