Youth not asking ‘Is there space?’ but ‘Why bother?’

Aug 18, 2023

For an entire generation of young people — some of them misfits and some cool kids, some convinced Catholics but also plenty of folks on the fence and free-spirited seekers — Pope Francis at the recent World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon, Portugal, had a clear answer: “Yes, there is room for all of you in the Catholic Church.”

“There is space in the Church for everyone... Everyone, everyone, everyone!”

What does it mean to reiterate that there is room for everyone in the Church?

In a time when everyone gives their opinion and no one listens, when so many try to appear as something they are not, there is no message more attractive and revolutionary than what the Pope is reminding us of: God loves us just as we are, always forgives us, awaits us with open arms, and extends His mercy.

The invitation which the “rejuvenised” Pope Francis reiterated “among the young,” influenced by their enthusiasm, is the key to evangelisation today.

What else do we need if not someone to embrace us as we are, making us feel special, wanted, loved, and forgiven? What else do we need if not to be assured? There is room for you too, regardless of your circumstances.

It’s reasonable to wonder, however, if that was really the question today’s youth are asking about the Catholic Church.

There’s a great deal of evidence – much of it gathered by Vatican outfits — to suggest that the true question young people today have isn’t so much, “Is there space for me in the Church?” as it is, “Why bother?”

The great insight of Pope St John Paul II in instituting and boosting World Youth Day was twofold.

In an age that insisted with increasing volume and consistency on the idea that Christianity’s time had come and gone, that the power of Christianity as a cultural force was on the wane and that the civilisation Christianity had helped build and sustain for well over a thousand years finally was ready to shed the baggage of ancient faith, John Paul II called young people to bet it all on Christ in the Church.

“Enthusiasm is brief,” John Paul II told the roughly one million young people gathered in Buenos Aires on Palm Sunday of 1987, the first really big World Youth Day. “Let yourselves be embraced by the mystery of the Son of Man, by the mystery of Christ who died and rose from the dead. Let yourselves be embraced by the Paschal Mystery!”

In an age for which the clash of great systems was the order of the day, and disorder in the soul was everywhere palpable, John Paul II called on young people to seek the victory beyond history, won before the foundation of the world: “In Him,” said Pope St John Paul II, “is the victory that triumphs in the world, the definitive victory of man.”

That was powerful, heady stuff.

Since then, WYD has taken on a life of its own. It has developed a culture of its own, tending sometimes and in some ways toward attempts to baptise the cult of youth that is a hallmark of civilisational malaise, but at the same time, and in other ways, standing in stalwart opposition to the cultural dismissal of Christianity as a force for good.

Francis may have been answering the wrong question — or fighting the last war — with his insistence on there being space for everyone in the Church, but he certainly keyed into a subtle cultural undertone in his closing August 6 homily for WYD, which happened to be the Solemnity of the Transfiguration.

“Listen to Jesus,” he said. “Otherwise, even if we set out with good intentions along paths that seem to be of love, in the end those paths will be seen as selfishness disguised as love.”

That’s what taking people seriously sounds like. Paradoxically, it is of a piece with Francis’ core message to young people at his first World Youth Day in Rio, when he called on them to “make a mess” or “stir up a ruckus” — Hagan lio! — in Rio and beyond.

The spectacle, the sound and the stir of a million-odd young people, will speak for itself to a world that understands little besides numbers, but the sound of those young people listening to the divine teacher could break through the technological din of daily humdrum.

“Be careful of selfishness disguised as love!” Francis warned. “Listen to Jesus, for He will show you which paths are those of love.”

“Listen to Him,” Francis said.

There’s an answer to the question, “Why bother?” — Crux/ Vatican News