“When we adults refuse to acknowledge some evident reality, you tell us frankly: ‘Can’t you see this?’ Some of you who are a bit more forthright might even say to us: ‘Don’t you see that nobody is listening to you any more, or believes what you have to say?’”
The Pope added that “Some, in fact, expressly ask to be left in peace, because they feel the presence of the Church is annoying or even irritating.”
The Pope’s address during an ecumenical meeting at Tallinn, Estonia, on the final day of his recent visit to the Baltic States, presents the Church with an analysis of how young people (and probably not only the young) feel about the Church, as well as with a challenge to remedy the situation.
This analysis and challenge should be the cornerstone of the agenda of the 15th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops inaugurated by the Pope last Wednesday focusing on the theme ‘Young people, the faith and vocational discernment’. Besides the 266 bishops, attending and contributing to the Synod, there will be some 300 people between the ages of 16 and 29. For the first time there are two bishops from mainland China.
Although titled an “ordinary assembly” this synod is anything but “ordinary”. The Church is passing through tumultuous not ordinary times. The clerical sex abuse is probably the greatest crisis the Church has faced since the Reformation. Like the mythological Hydra, it keeps on growing new heads that continuously undermine the Church’s credibility with young and old alike.
Then there is the continuous sabotage of Pope Francis and his reformist agenda by ultra-conservatives. The two letters published by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò directly attacking the Pope’s credibility on the sex abuse scandal is ample evidence.
The bishops at the Synod face all this while discussing today’s youths and their multi-faceted existence. Many describe themselves as spiritual but not as religious. They want community but do not feel that the Church provides the type of community they want. For many the Church is more like an outdated bureaucratic establishment than a community. Instead of a hub of creativity and freshness they feel the Church is unimaginative and stale.
Faced by this reality, many in the Church have given up on young people, considering them to be both the natives as well as the vanguard of a secularised world. They point towards their non-observance of the Church’s sexual morality as the proof that the present generation is one that has lost all values.
If the Church cannot attract and keep young people, it has no present and no future
This is not so. Sensitive towards situations of injustice and inequality, these are two values championed by many young people. Add to that their concern about the environment, care for future generations, their anxiety about climate change, the generosity shown in voluntary work and their will to challenge a status quo built on exploitation of the weak. The resulting cocktail is one rich in values not devoid of them.
However, I hasten to add that young people are not a monolith. Perhaps the description I penned does more justice to young people in what is called the West than in other parts of the world.
Discussing young people and the Christian faith was never an easy subject but it is more difficult today. Pope Francis acknowledged this when in Tallinn he said that many are outraged at the Church and that they feel that the Church is not significant to their existence.
I don’t know the solution for the problems the Church has with young people. What I know is that if the Church cannot attract and keep young people, it has no present and no future. And because I believe not only that the Church has a future but that the Church is the future, I have no doubt that there is a way forward. So the basic challenge is not whether the Catholic Church will survive this age of scandal and secularism but what form the Church will survive in.
In Tallinn the Pope spoke of the form he would like to see: a more transparent, welcoming, honest and inviting Church. During a March 2018 seminar in preparation for the Synod he spoke of a Church that is not afraid to risk and break free of the logic of ‘it has always been done this way’. He described this attitude as “a sweet poison that tranquillises the soul”.
His drive for a more decentralised Church, the marginalisation of those he describes as the “doctors of the law” and a new evangelisation stressing God’s love, mercy and compassion, are part of the risks he is taking.
Last Wednesday at the inaugural Mass Francis went a step further. He prayed for a Church able to dream and hope to broaden “our horizons, expand our hearts and transform those frames of mind that today paralyse, separate and alienate us from young people”.
If this dream comes true perhaps young people will start listening.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece