Cardinal-Designate and World Youth Day (WYD) organizer Americo Aguiar generated lots of heat with his remark that the Lisbon event is not about “conversion” but “fraternity.” The blowback has led to walk backs, from “I was read out of context” to “I didn’t mean that” to “I hope everybody has an ‘experience of God.’”
We even got Aguiar’s version of an “I Have a Dream” speech:
Above all, my dream is that these young people who come to Lisbon return to their countries with the desire to be better, better people, regardless of their religion, regardless of everything else. Why? Because in Lisbon they found white and Black people, large and small, from the South and the North, rich and poor, Muslims, Jews and others, and they discovered that difference is wealth. And that all this diversity of brothers and sisters is always an opportunity.
A lot of critics—myself included—have argued that young people are being served watered down Catholic-Lite Kool-Aid in lieu of rich Catholic Cana wine.
Nobody can argue with the hope that young people return from Portugal “better people.” Who would want them to come back “worse people?” But, apart from that platitude, go back and read Aguiar’s quote. And, above all, do you notice what is missing?
The one missing word is “Jesus”.
We can concentrate on the Christological anemia of WYD (or at least its coordinator). And while I hope Catholic youth go home with broader sympathies for those with different skin pigmentation, height and weight, and yearly income, let’s widen our aperture—because WYD is not the problem.
No, I think it’s a symptom of something deeply wrong in the Church.
It does not take a Ph.D. in sociology to tell you that the Church is hemorrhaging young people. “Nones”—young people who profess no religious affiliation—are the fastest growing demographic, and a lot of them are coming out of the Church.
Our “theology of initiation” notwithstanding, Confirmation is de facto the sacrament of ecclesial exodus, no matter how much liturgists agonize over when to administer it or how to rack up “service hours” to show one’s “faith commitment.” Once upon a time, marriage served as a potential vector for bringing young people back into the Church. But with delayed marriage and a cultural endorsement of “marriage means anything two people want it to mean,” that sacramental moment is increasingly tenuous.
So, are we now pinning hopes on maybe when they bring the kid for baptism? Or, rather, “if?”
Let’s be honest. Plenty of parishes focus their catechetical attention on elementary school because, in most places, you have three sacraments to confer: First Confession, First Communion, and Confirmation. In lots of parishes, high school level, post-Confirmation catechesis pales next to the elementary offerings.
Then the young Catholic goes off to college. Many will go to state colleges or universities and, to be honest, I’m almost relieved at that. Many Catholic student unions, Newman Centers, and the Fellowship of Catholic University Students offer far more orthodox, if not more robust religious programs than many Catholic colleges or universities.
The problem, of course, is that there’s no institutional promotion of their work. Want to join the Catholic students? OK. Want to be a Satanist? We’re diverse and tolerant. While some Catholic groups might be more proactive, the burden still largely falls on the Catholic student to search them out.
Having worked at Catholic universities for a long time, I’ll voice disappointment. Catholicism is often on prominent display in recruitment literature. (Even Princeton probably gets more attention by putting pictures of its neo-Gothic chapel in the promo handouts). But, as the father of two children who just finished higher education, I’ve gone through my share of college tours where “student ambassadors,” after making the obligatory stop in the chapel, knowingly assure prospective students that “they have Mass here but nobody makes you go.”
In those Catholic institutions of higher education, the “mainstream” approach of the faculty that deals with Catholicism varies but is generally not robustly or clearly Catholic. The worse variants are “Departments of Religious Studies,” which make it clear that they treat “religion,” Catholicism being one species. But many “Departments of Theology” are no better. Often populated by dissenters who dress up their opposition to the Magisterium as “intellectual inquiry,” critics will be told that this is “theology,” not “catechesis.”
The dirty little secret is that religiously illiterate Catholics, most of whose “catechism” ended with Confirmation and the bishop’s questions they long ago forgot, are hardly in any position to “critically” engage in theological speculation. They will parrot their professor’s dissenting opinions. Should we be surprised? Considering that even private Catholic universities find the need to steer ever-larger blocs of incoming freshmen into remedial computational and writing classes, who really believes their “catechesis” has prepared them for “critical theological inquiry?”
I’m not the first person to write about the failure of the Catholic higher education system in the United States as part of the Church’s evangelizing mission. (Yes, Notre Dame, your task is to evangelize, not compete for U.S. News and World Report rankings.)
But I want to develop two other thoughts that we don’t focus enough on: the role of the college years in religious identity and the bishops’ failure to support that work with priests.
First, consider the role of the college years in religious identity. In the classic television drama “The Paper Chase,” Prof. Kingsfield would begin first-year classes at Harvard Law School with the memorable line: “You come in here with a skull full of mush. You leave thinking like a lawyer.”
I know some will debate whether the mush transformation process in colleges has broken down, but it does happen. There is a palpable difference between a late teenager, tentatively stepping on to campus as a freshman, and the college graduate ready in theory to swim in an adult world. There is a change of mindset.
When I was in college, the college president used to talk about the academic, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of college formation. He’d compare them to four wheels on a car.
College gives young people a more sophisticated view of the world and how it works. It helps them to stop acting like teenagers and start acting as young adults, as leaders. It widens their horizons. And it should deepen their spiritual lives.
How many colleges—including Catholic ones—neglect that last aspect?
If you have a car and inflate three wheels to 35 pounds of pressure and leave one at 15 pounds of pressure, that ride is going to be painful and bumpy. Eventually, you will get rid of the underinflated tire and replace it.
Why do we expect Catholic young people to “ride well” with a baccalaureate level view of genetics but shards of religious opinion fastened to catechism ideas they learned preparing for Confirmation or maybe even First Communion? They are going to jettison that underinflated tire and buy a new model. They’re likely to become “spiritual … but not religious,” believing that Jesus is just another great teacher or guru—not the Incarnate Word, the Savior of mankind, the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings.
Aware of that transitional moment, why is the clergy so absent from places of higher education? I’ve met no small number of bishops in my life who thought the idea that diocesan clergy should be in colleges and universities was, in the words of Tevye, “absurd, unheard of!” How many hesitate to spare a priest even for campus ministry? How often, when this is a time in young people’s lives that they need clerical contact, are “chaplaincies” held by students or Sister Wackadoodle? And by not having priests on faculty, how do we send the schizophrenic message, “learning over there and there’s this thing we do over here?” That is frankly bizarre for a Church committed to faith and reason.
But we have done it that way for generations.
Given the marginal contact young people get from the institutional Church just when their adult religious identities are crystallizing, are we surprised that, instead of the Catholic symphony, WYD is apparently gearing up for Marvelous Mantovani Easy Listening elevator music? That’s been our institutional repertoire long before Bishop Aguiar.
So, instead of decrying the “watering down” of WYD, shouldn’t we instead use the moment to re-examine what we’ve been doing—and maybe why we’re bleeding—young people? Because I would rather convert them than lose them.
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