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CENTER SECTION: MULTIGENERATIONAL MINISTRY
THE YOUNG CATHOLIC CHURCH: Roots and Wings
by Robert McCarty
At the 1993 World Youth Day gathering in Denver, 80,000 young people in Mile High Stadium were chanting, “John Paul II, we love you.” The pope was visibly moved. He came out to the end of the stage and replied, “John Paul II, he loves you.” The young church responded wildly. Those young people gathered together heard firsthand that the Catholic church loved them. Pope Benedict XVI, in his April 19, 2008, address to youth and seminarians in New York, continued this practice of challenging, welcoming, and loving our young people. He said, “You are Christ’s disciples today. Shine his light upon this great city and beyond. Show the world the reason for the hope that resonates within you. Tell others about the truth that sets you free.”
The world and the church will soon fully belong to them. And parents and pastoral ministers hope that Catholicism enriches their lives the way it has enriched ours. The challenge for parents and all church ministers is whether Catholicism will be experienced as meeting their spiritual hunger.
Catholicism as a response to their hungers
We must be clear about this—this generation of young people is different from any previous generation. We are familiar with the old rationalizations about this stage of life:
• young people don’t want to be around their parents or other adults
• they might be interested in spirituality, but they are not interested in church
• they are not really interested in knowing more about Catholicism; it’s more effective to concentrate on building community through social events
These are myths that hamper effective pastoral ministry with young people.
Additionally, we think it’s normal for young people to leave the church during young adulthood only to return when they marry and want their children to have the sacraments. After all, that’s what many of us did. However, this pattern, too, is no longer true for many young people. The tremendous increase in ecumenical and interfaith marriages alone, has loosened the bond to one’s family church, and many young adults are “church-shopping,” looking for a faith community where they experience welcome and belonging, and where they “shop” is greatly influenced by their experience of church as teenagers.
Many young people today are searching for an authentic experience of God and they need a faith that enables them to better articulate their experience of God. They want a religion that helps them understand life with its joys and sufferings. They search for a faith that makes sense, that provides direction and meaning, and that challenges. And they want to be connected with others—youth and adults—who are on this same search.
In their hunger for the holy they exhibit openness to transcendence. In their hunger for justice, they are open to service. In their hunger for connection, they are looking for a spiritual home. For us to be effective in “passing on the faith”—and I firmly believe we can—we must first respond to these hungers.
Increasingly, our young people struggle with being believers and belongers. Many are deeply spiritual and many, as well, are religious—connected to faith communities. They understand spirituality in terms of mystery, beauty, compassion, inclusivity, and justice. Religion, however, is often perceived as being about harsh judgments; abstract doctrine; rules; and boring, meaningless rituals. Pope Benedict addressed this in his April 2008 address when he said, “Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian faith.”
Catholicism is most effective as a response to youth’s hungers when it provides a context and a language for naming and celebrating their experience of God, serves as a conduit for the Jesus experience, and provides a sacramental community—a spiritual home.
Strategies
There are practical strategies and experiences to foster the faith-maturing process in our young people, assisting them in becoming believers AND belongers.
Practice our religion
Contrary to popular opinion, the number one influence on the faith of young people is the faith life of their parents. Young people really do mirror the faith life of their parents, so the way we practice our religion is very important. Our participation in Sunday Mass and our involvement in the life of the parish by participating in retreats, church organizations and ministries, or adult catechesis sessions are signs to our children that our religion is a significant part of our lives.
Model our faith
Faith should influence our lifestyle choices, use of time, how we handle conflicts, the relationships we form, and even how we handle work issues. It is in the real life situations that faith is often most real.
So, do we pray at home in the evening? Before family meals? In restaurants? In our prayers do we remember those less fortunate? Do we pray for our children’s intentions? For their friends? Do we model forgiveness and reconciliation in our lives by admitting when we are wrong and by forgiving when we have been wronged? How do we handle crises in our life, such as death, divorce, pregnancy, and illnesses? Does our faith affect how we celebrate Christmas, Easter, or other holydays? Do we participate in service organizations and spend time contributing to our civic communities?
Our young people watch to see if faith makes sense to us, if faith works for us. They are looking for a faith that provides meaning in all areas of their life.
Connect young people to the community
It really does “take a village to raise a child.” Meeting their hunger for connection begins when young people feel welcomed on Sunday and it is fostered by their participation in the faith community. This sense of belonging is a very strong bond. Parents should encourage their teens’ participation in appropriate parish activities. Here young people can connect with their peers who are also on the faith journey, creating a positive peer group. Further, they can also connect with other caring, faith-filled adults who emulate that sense of belonging. Parishes must be intentional in including young people in their liturgical, pastoral, and leadership ministries. We can’t wait until young people ask or volunteer; we must actively invite them into responsible participation in the life, work, and mission of the faith community.
Doing faith
One of the most important characteristics of youth spirituality is their need to “do faith.” Acting because of one's faith is a powerful experience. Perhaps the most profound experience of doing faith is involvement in justice and service projects. Serving in soup kitchens, participating in a work camp, working in shelter programs or community emergency outreach centers, tutoring children, or participating in public events for justice have a very significant impact on teens' faith, responding to their hunger for justice.
Similarly, young people “do faith” when they participate in retreats, pilgrimages, or public Stations of the Cross. These are experiences of putting their faith in action. And these experiences become even more powerful when youth and their parents share the event together.
Achieve religious literacy
Young people do need to know the traditions, creed, teachings, and stories of the community. They need to know the story of Jesus and the gospel message, and many are genuinely interested in reading and understanding Scripture. They also need to know what it means to be a Catholic. The faith community needs to be a place where youth can bring their questions and search with others for answers that make sense, and provide meaning and purpose in their lives. Further, our young people need to know about that unique dimension of our faith often described as our Catholic imagination. Catholics “see” the world differently. Through our sacramental lens, we encounter a world filled with God’s presence, and our traditional practices, our use of images, symbols, and ritual, provide an avenue to encounter the ever transcendent and immanent God.
Prayer skills
Youth need both personal and communal experiences of prayer. They should be encouraged to pray on their own, in their own words, using their music and symbols, even writing their own prayers and spiritual poems. Often, they are very open to traditional contemplative Catholic approaches to prayer, such as centering prayer or Lectio divina, which enable them to connect with the Spirit within.
They should also be encouraged to participate with the faith community in worship experiences, sharing in the community's understanding of God, their traditions, their rituals, and their ways of praying. This both/and approach to the personal and communal dimension fosters their experience of prayer as the outpouring of their relationship with God and deepens their faith.
Gathering experiences
Young people’s hunger for connection, to belong, has an especially important impact on their faith identity. Youth want to be part of something bigger, but in a society that seems to give so many mixed messages about religion, they find themselves struggling with belonging to a church or acknowledging participating in church. Coming together with their peers—and with caring, believing adults who share the same faith—is very important. Gathering experiences provide much-needed support for their growth in faith.
These experiences begin with the local parish youth ministry program. Youth need to gather with their peers right in their own church. However, gathering experiences move beyond the local church. Coming together with other youth at diocesan conferences and national and international events gives youth a sense of belonging to something bigger. One of the main benefits of these events is their connection with their peers from around the country and around the world. Truly, they feel like they belong to something bigger and something universal, and this experience of church continues to provide them support and encouragement.
Wings and roots
One of my favorite posters says, "There are only two things we can give our children that last: the first is roots and the second is wings." Many youth eventually move through a searching style of faith, challenging the beliefs and practices of their parents and their church, and some even move away from regular participation and association with the institutional church. This is a time of "wings" for young adults, a time for stretching and flying and experimenting—not only in terms of faith, but also in terms of finding themselves, deciding on their important values, entering into relationships, and making decisions about their future. If we have provided "roots" when they are younger, then their flying is not nearly so frightening for them, or for us.
These roots are established first in the family. Youth will remember the care, concern, and support they have experienced at home. They will remember the freedom to ask hard questions and to have different answers than their parents. They will remember how their questions and differing opinions were listened to respectfully, even as they heard their parents' beliefs and faith stories. And they will remember how their parents attended Mass regularly, participated in their local faith community, and lived out their faith daily.
Roots are also their memories of other caring, believing adult role models who expressed love and concern for them, and their memory of a welcoming and supportive community of believers who invited them into their midst and encouraged their active participation. Roots are the memories of those times when they experienced God because others were visible signs of God's love for them. These powerful memories connect our young people to the faith community, enabling their hungers to be fed and deepening the roots of the young Catholic church!
Scriptures of their own lives
As youth search for a personal understanding of God, they must be able and encouraged to look for God's presence in their personal, lived experiences. They should be assisted in naming their experiences of a God who is active and present in their lives. God does not wait to be invited into the lives of young people. God takes the initiative and is present, but waits to be identified or named. Many youth need the language to help them understand and express their experiences of God.
Parents, and other caring, faith-filled adults, can assist teens in naming God's presence in their joys and sorrows, their hopes and dreams, and in their day-to-day life. Of course this requires that we have the language to name the presence of God in our own lives! We can ask our young people where they experience God, where they pray best, where they feel joy and sorrow, for God is present there. The following are sample questions that we can use to begin conversations about faith and religion:
• Where do you most experience the presence of God?
• Where do you pray best? When do you pray?
• What characteristic of Jesus most attracts you? What do you like best about Jesus?
• What is the best part of belonging to our parish? What is the one thing you would change about our parish?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is going to Mass on Sunday for you? What makes it a (2, 5, 7, etc.)?
Mr. Robert McCarty is the executive director of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM) in Washington, DC.
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