MACAU: 4th March 2005 -- In Don Bosco's day, the problem was La Giardiniera, the popular and bawdy next-door tavern.  In Macau, it's something like 17 different casinos, where the attraction for older youth is not quite what you think it might be - but it is money, yes.  The money that can be made as a junior fast-shuffler at the tables.  It beats, might one say hands-down, otherwise dreary days spent at the desk in high school or further studies.

    Or so think many of Macau's older youth (casino employment begins at age 18).  This is something of a challenge for Catholic schools purporting to teach a value base other than get rich quick.

    Fr Peter Pong is the Salesian principal of St. Louis Versiglia College in Macau.  He is also chairperson of the Catholic Schools Council in that special administrative region.  While the casinos are not so much of a problem to his under18's, they are a problem more generally to Catholic and Salesian education which, as he says, has as its purpose "to foster students' judgement of what is right and wrong".

    Fr Pong's advice to those 'of age' be they present or past students, is to look beyond fast money and fast shuffles and ask other questions about job satisfaction, the possibilities of developing one's true potential and the meaningfulness of the work.

    The pursuit of wealth is a lure, but even those who are initially attracted to it, at least in the case of the Macau casinos, soon realise it is not everything.  The casinos are mostly run by wealthy off-shore entrepreneurs, card-dealers work in shifts with little contact amongst themselves, and there is often no written contract.  It all adds up to something less than ultimately satisfying.

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