The facts speak loud and clear. Ten years ago Mass attendance stood at 52.6 per cent of the population. Of these, only about 35 per cent were young people aged 15 to 25, according to the 2005 Mass attendance census. What would the situation be today? Is it worth asking?
Decrying secularism, materialism, individualism or simply today’s moral and religious decadence is simply not enough to move forward. The centre of our concern should not be Mass attendance for its own sake. Jesus did not die to fill churches with people but to fill people with life. He died so that they may “have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10). His concern was people’s true wellbeing, not just religious practice.
More importantly than in religious practice, the real generation gap today is in the statistically proven higher level of inner distress, anxiety and dysfunction manifested in our drug, alcohol, teenage pregnancy and self-harm problems increasingly widespread among children and young people.
Yet I am convinced that our young generation is no less capable than other generations of being inspired and attracted by what is good, just and beautiful. Neither are they less capable of embracing true life-giving values. What we should question is the kind of life we grown-ups, both as a society and within the Church, are offering them and pressing them into.
Let me stick to the Church side of this responsibility. The Church has been entrusted with the mission of announcing the Good News – the Gospel – to all. Without minimising the importance of religious practices, especially the Eucharist, we cannot help asking if these are indeed the life-giving experiences Jesus wanted them to be.
How can young people experience the life Jesus offers when the language, gestures, symbolism and rituals used in Church ceremonies, including the Mass, are incomprehensible and simply outlandish. Vatican II had the courage to drop Latin and start using the people’s language. Respecting people mattered more than respecting Latin, so that they could at least start understanding the words. More than half a century later, how are we helping people understand the meaning of those words?
Today communication is all about interaction and personal experience. Why are our liturgical gatherings too often routine events where people listen passively to strictly controlled, regimented prayers and prescribed responses?
Ours is a society where respect for the uniqueness of each person is constantly invoked, even if not always honoured. Yet our religious celebrations remain essentially collective. How can a young person find his or her true place in a collectivity? In a society where young people, no less than older ones, often suffer from a deep and devastating loneliness, can they find in the Church a community where they can really belong?
Young people today are now used to a free, personal, creative self-expression. This is their way of life. How can a rigidly programmed liturgy, where creativity is seen as a threat, and personal expression needs to be pre-programmed and well vetted, be a life-giving space for a young person?
Our society is marked by superficiality and hollow showiness. ‘What you see is what you get’ seems to be the golden rule.
Too often, significant and holy moments in life’s journey such as birth, adolescence, marriage and togetherness are reduced to expensive shows. Baptisms, First Holy Communions and Confirmations as well as theatre-like church weddings are indeed special and holy moments that can easily get hijacked by the partying and lavish dressing up. Form risks not only to dominate but also to destroy substance. Are our pageant-processions and village feasts not exposed to the same danger?
The Church will win credibility among young people if it is courageous enough to rediscover and live up to its own mission and identity. It will offer them the life they are so thirsty for if it fearlessly but lovingly offers them a warm home, not just an artistically decorated cold temple; a fellowship, not just a congregation; a celebration of life-giving joy, not just a boringly stiff celebration of incomprehensible words and gestures.
The Church will become the Good News in a world of bad news if it is seen more as a welcoming heart rather than a forbidding set of challenging moral injunctions that are either unfairly misconstrued or judgementally applied.
Yes, young people may still go to church, but only if they experience the joy of experiencing Christ in a Church that is fully alive.
pchetcuti@gmail.com
Fr Paul Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.