ABSTRACT
This chapter recognizes the ramifications of tremendous social transformation for the private lives of Macau Catholics. It focuses on the burgeoning casino industry and its impacts on patterns of work and family life, and the ways in which Catholics came to terms with the manifold problems it generated. However, in order to understand how they would conceive and respond to socioeconomic development and its side-effects from an ethical and religious perspective, the chapter traces their socialization experiences – that is, how the Catholic institutions of education and social services shaped their moral consciousness in the first place. It attempts to clarify the method and substance of moral education and socialization in Macau Catholic schools. The religious education of Catholic schools should aim at instilling a moral voice more than increasing Church membership. In his celebrated study of Catholicism in mainland China, Richard Madsen tackled the relationship between religion and civil society from the perspective of the moral community.
