GETTING HONEST WITH YOUNG CATHOLICS AT THE NEXT SYNOD OF BISHOPS

Last October, Pope Francis announced the topic for the next General Assembly of Catholic Bishops: “Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment.”  The Synod will be held in Rome in October 2018.

According to a Vatican statement, the topic is an “expression of the Church’s pastoral concern for the young,” and is in continuity with  findings of the two-fold synod on the family and the Pope’s controversial post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

The topic for the 2018 synod was chosen by the majority of members on the XIV Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops, the body charged with drawing up the theme of the next synod.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is the sole American in this council, which also includes Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Austria, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of South Africa, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of England and Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea.

The upcoming Synod aims to “accompany young people on their way of life towards maturity so that, through a process of discernment, they can discover their life project and realize it with joy, opening the encounter with God and with men, and actively participating in the building up of the Church and society.”

The fact is young adults are leaving the Church in alarming numbers.  The reasons for the defection are many and varied. 

Changes in life experience were generally identified as the major reason why young adults abandon an active practice of their faith.  More specifically, a move away from home (often to attend college) or the pursuit of a career and work schedule made attending Church difficult, if not impossible.

Oftentimes, young people find the attitudes of those who regularly attend Church to be judgmental and hypocritical.  A goodly number of young adults say they are disenchanted with their local Pastors and do not feel very connected with the spiritual and social life of their local parochial communities.

I believe that these are excuses and self-justifications which young adults use to justify their abandonment of the Catholic Faith. 

Rather, I believe that young people stop practicing the Faith because they do not have a first-hand appreciation and valuation of the Church within their families.   Most often, these young people have been raised in families in which the Church has no real meaning and in which the Catholic Faith was seldom, if not inconsistently, practiced.  The Church was not valued or relevant to them.  They had no personal attachment to the Church.  Abandonment of the ritual observances and doctrinal teachings of the Church was a natural progression to adulthood in a diverse and multi-cultural society.

The next Synod of Bishops needs to understand that the Church cannot establish ministries and programs which will contain these disaffected young people in a holding-tank with the distractions of social gatherings, beer and pizza parties. 

The Church needs to speak to young people frankly and honestly, sharing with them the fact that life will present them with stark choices between goodness and evil, between selflessness and selfishness, between sacrifice and self-gratification.  Their choices will define not only their character as human beings but their fidelity as disciples of Christ. 

If they are to be committed to the Lord and His Gospel, young people need to reminded that the pathway to that fidelity can only be found in the nourishment of their minds and hearts with the truth of the Gospel and the Grace of the Sacraments.