In order to approach this question realistically, we must face the fact that the world that our young people inhabit is very different from that of our younger days, writes Fr Frank Moloney, leading scripture scholar, currently Provincial of the Australian Salesians.

As they respond to that world, and live according to its unwritten rules, they differ from us in their attitudes on many issues of life – and the Catholic Church and a possible vocation to the priesthood and the religious life are among those issues. Let me open these reflections with a very brief, and necessarily superficial, analysis of the context within which our young people live and attempt to discern the direction their lives might take.

For all the ridicule that we might heap upon the term “postmodern,” we live and attempt to live the Catholic tradition in a postmodern world. What does that mean? Perhaps the best way to describe the postmodern world is to point to its most obvious sacramental sign: the Personal Computer. The written word, once so sacred and firmly fixed upon the page, comes and goes with a few key-strokes. By means of the Internet and a few good search engines you can move swiftly from the daily newspapers, breaking news, the latest sports results, the Vatican Museum, to hard pornography, and so on. We correspond by instant email contact. This collapsible vision of any number of worlds is on the desk in my office, and in the bedrooms of the young people whom we are subjecting to scrutiny. There is a huge gap opening up between the lives that we lived as adolescents and young adults, and our present young people. We were able to claim adhesion to an external form of life marked by regularity and time-tested practices underpinned by never-changing truths. Let me say from the outset that an increasing number of young people who are entering seminaries and religious communities are yearning for that external form of life marked by regularity and time-tested practices, undergirded by never-changing truths. They are attracted by religious garb, vestments, solemn liturgies and the return to the Latin Mass. Be aware, however, that the priest and religious of the future must give their lives to an increasingly fragmented world in which regularity, time-tested practices, and a universal adhesion to never-changing truths are not recognised. In my opinion, this is a dangerous situation that calls for careful monitoring as many could be damaged – both the potential priest/religious and the people of God whom they wish to serve – if there is no strong awarenesss and subsequent intellectual and social formation in tune with out fragmented world.

Contemporary western society is marked by high mobility, a fracturing of previously sacred barriers and a seeming relativisation of all that was once regarded as permanent and sacred. As Phyllis A. Tickle reports in her important recent book, God-Talk in America: “When my contemporaries and I closed the doors of our mothers’ houses behind us, we locked ourselves out of five hundred years of human habits and entered into disjuncture.” We must accept this as a given. It is what was called by Gaudium et Spes“as a sign of the times,” to be accepted and responded to creatively. This is not a simple task. It would be easier to wring our hands in disgust over the loss of the past and tremble with fear for the future, and many of us are doing just that. But the tradition we belong to – in its richest manifestations – tells us to “be of good cheer, I have conquered the world” (John 16:33).

A partial reflection on the young

Would I be telling you anything new if I were to say that there is no longer a prevailing sense of religion or adherence to a belief system among young people? This does not mean that there is no religion. We are living through a period of transition from adherence to traditional religion to a non-tradition bound religiosity sometimes referred to as “popular religion.” Young people look at the world with increasing uncertainty. No traditional value system or life perspective is unshakeable. You are probably finding that this applies to both the young and their parents and teachers in our contemporary world, and certainly to Australian society. There is less generation conflict because there is no clearly defined crisis among more recent generations. There is only a search for an identity which is unavailable – all have their own truth.

Young people cherish a deep distrust of the “great truths.” They look upon these as they would consider hair growth medications for balding men: if a medication had proved effective, then all the others would have disappeared from the market place. Rather than surrender themselves to one meaningful tradition, life-style or fashion, they combine fragments of an ever-incomplete and temporary fashion into an unfinished whole – a collage identity. Perhaps the most outstanding symbol of this “collage” is the widespread use of Christian symbols, especially the cross, but also others, in fashions and body-marking.

If I may conclude this brief analysis with a citation from an important article, written by Richard Eckersley, with the title “Values and Visions. Youth and the failure of modern Western culture”:

Young people, who are establishing their identities, values and beliefs, lack a social and spiritual context, a set of clear reference points, to help them make sense of life and their place in the world. They have no ideal to believe in, nothing to convince them to subordinate their own personal interests to a higher common goal. Our culture offers little beyond self-interest to believe in and to live for.

Thus modern Western culture is increasingly failing to meet the basic requirements of any culture, which are to provide people with a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose and so a sense of personal identity, worth and security; a measure of confidence or certainty about what the future holds for them, and a framework of moral values to guide their conduct.

In painting the broad picture, one would have to admit that there is a severe breakdown between traditional Catholic faith and practice and contemporary young people. This is particularly clear in the areas of both sexual ethics and adherence to creeds. To ask that they limit sexual activity to one partner, and only after marriage, and for unconditional intellectual commitment to a man who is also divine, and a God who is three in one and one in three, is to ask the seemingly impossible. Often even serious young people cannot agree with one or other teaching of the Church, and thus detach themselves from all of them. A further serious and widespread problem is the heavy use of alcohol among the young, and the widespread use of recreational drugs. To ask today’s young people to commit themselves forever to a life of celibate chastity, especially when the Church is plagued by the problem of clerical and religious sexual abuse, is to ask the even more difficult.

Yet if postmodernity is marked by a freedom which makes everything possible, there are – as was powerfully exemplified by the Days in the Diocese and the World Youth Day experience, either in person or via the media – many young people for whom Jesus Christ and some form of adhesion to a Church remains important.

Heart vs. head

My own experience with many of these young people teaches me that what I have said about adhesion to the great and central doctrines of Catholicism, and the moral choices that we also regard as an integral part of a Catholic life, applies to many of those whose joy and spontaneity delighted us all during their days in the various dioceses and in Sydney at World Youth Day. One of the most important differences between these young people and our generation is that they are not Catholics by birth. Don’t get me wrong. Many of them were born into Catholic families. However, that is not what determines their adhesion to Catholicism or their participation in WYD. Indeed, while many were born into Catholic families and were baptised Catholics, it does not mean much. Their parents are not practising, and often they baptised their children so that they would eventually get them into a Catholic school. What you must recognize is that this bleak description applies to the majority of young Australian Catholics. This is why I am able to say that the young people who nowadays manifest an enthusiastic adhesion to the Church, and who think about a vocation to the priesthood or the religious life are not Catholics by birth, but by conversion. They are who and what they are because they want to be. Many of them, after years somewhat distant from Catholic institutions, have come back to their own understanding and practice of their faith through conversion. This is not always the case, but even those who have remained firm in their faith and practice all their young lives, have their own way of living that faith. In my opinion, the challenge the Catholic Church has to face in order to capture the imagination, and eventually the lives, of our young people, is to lessen the rigidity of its institutional face, and become facilitators of conversion.

“The experience of WYD was one of joy, of a great community across the nations of young people who celebrated together, of well prepared liturgies and catechetical sessions in the parishes.“

For centuries Catholic principles and practice were “taught.” We heard them and accepted them intellectually. As the years went by we attempted to make them part of our life-style. We began with the head – principles – and gradually attempted to allow these principles to determine our experience and our hearts. We had mixed success, but we always had a sense of what was right or wrong, true or false, because the notions were clear in our minds. This process has now been reversed. Young people will not simply accept principles as such. They do not start with their heads, but with their hearts. They must experience first. Gradually, on the basis of experience, they may come to develop a set of principles which are born from experience.

This is the challenge that the Church must face. We must soak up that experience, and attempt to regenerate it over and over again in our various communities – families, schools, youth activities, and especially in the parish communities, many of which are regularly served with poorly prepared liturgies, weak homilies, and where there is little or no interest in the strange new world of the young. The experience of WYD was one of joy, of a great community across the nations of young people who celebrated together, of well-prepared liturgies and catechetical sessions in the parishes. Will they find this when they return to their dioceses and parishes? How can we best continue that WYD experience of faith and joy, generating a conversion that makes for an experience of wholeness and belonging?

We must lead our young people to conversion, and we will only do this if we are able to appeal to their experience. I have no blue-print on how we should do this. Might I suggest that we are not to “teach” about the God of Jesus Christ, but show how our restless response to a God who is love touches our lives. It is our experience of God which will be “caught not taught.” In the same way, it is the unconditional sharing of all that we are and all that we have that will touch hearts and may initiate a process of conversion. Our young people will ask, “What makes practising Catholics different?” If there is no difference, then we have a problem. We have more of a problem if our practising Catholics are elderly, stodgy, and lacking in joy and an ability to take a few risks. The answer must be seen and experienced in the way we live and love, not with high-sounding words or with Latin liturgies and vestments that smack of the Constantinian era.

Law vs. joy

As I said above, there are some who are very much attracted to the more solemn and formal face of the Church. That certainly has its place, and young people know how to enjoy it, as we saw at the Papal Mass. But it remains much more important that we preach the Gospel at all times. But we are living in a Catholic era when we are groaning under the weight of liturgical laws that control what we wear, what we must do at every turn, and everything else, down to the washing and drying of the utensils! This does not attract most young people … even though I must accept that it has a strong attraction for some, and they are the bulk of the people nowadays entering seminaries and religious communities.

One of the most telling comments made to me by some of our young people in Sydney was – “Hey, Father, know what is great about this? With all these other people here who love God and want to live as Jesus lived, joyfully loving and serving God in others, I find that maybe this way of living is not odd!” Or, as Andrew Denton put it, WYD was like the Olympic Games without the drugs, and they loved it. Half a million young people from all over the world affirmed one another: it is OK to love God and Jesus Christ, and to love one another. However, as we are all aware, there were many millions of young people who would go down in a census as belonging to the Catholic Church who were not in Sydney, and they will continue to regard that half a million as having “lost it”, as they themselves sink more deeply into culture that is a success-oriented, individual-focused, and often alcohol and drug supported.

The Challenge

In the face of this sketch of the challenge we face, a cringe would be in order. In the light of our present resources, where are we to go from our present established and well-tried ways which are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the majority of young people? The words of Jeremiah come quickly to our lips: “Ah, Lord God! I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth” (Jer 1:6). This is not the time for fear, as such a reaction will only lead into a retreat to a position defending the established and successful ways of the past. We are no longer living in the past, but in the present, as we prepare for the future. No doubt there are many who wonder why the numbers who choose the priesthood or the religious life are decreasing, while the age of those who remain is increasing, and the so many obvious difficulties reflected in the increasing absence of Religious in schools and hospitals, and the ageing and the scarcity of the clergy who serve in our parishes. As we imagine and even develop strategies to cope with or overcome these difficulties, we must start from two basic premises, about which there should be no doubt.

1. The presence of the Catholic Church is the work of the Lord. While not ignoring the important freedom which we all have to say yes or no to his designs, the ongoing presence of Catholicity, and the quality of that presence, depend upon God.
2. The Church is essentially missionary. To turn in on ourselves in an act of self-preservation is an act of self-obliteration.

Do you really believe in those two premises? If so, on the basis of these premises we can confidently go ahead in the knowledge that – no matter what might be said from higher ecclesiastical authority – the apparent success or failure of recruitment drives to get every kid to Sunday Mass or to fill the seminaries is not the measure of the relevance of contemporary Catholicism. It is the Lord’s work. He calls, and he always has and always will call. The summons to “walk behind Jesus” which opened the ministry of Jesus himself (see Mark 1:16-20) and has gone on through the ages will not cease in the face of our present difficulties. Whether we like it or not, things are changing and will continue to change at perhaps an even more rapid rate. This can be distressing and disorienting, but such are the ways of God who always breaks open the comforts of a closed religious system. Jesus’ conflicts with the Jewish leadership in the Gospels is not in any way a rejection of Judaism. It is a rejection of those who, in his time, had settled comfortably into a closed religious system. Such difficulties, disorientation and pain are a call to greater faith in the One whose work we are doing, and to whose mysterious presence we witness. Trust and have confidence: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Breaking new ground

The present perplexities are new to us. Where we are today has come from an immediate past of considerable strength, to speak in strictly human terms. One only needs to look at the evidence of the fine apostolic initiatives and the extensive properties which marked hopes for future development that have been abandoned and sold off to have an idea of where we were, and where we are now. But the buildings and the properties are only the more visible – and perhaps the least important – part of the story! In this new situation of poverty and weakness, we cannot be too sure where we are to go. It makes me think of a moving remark made to me by my elderly Mother some 15 years ago. She was 83 at the time, and we had just taken Dad to the hospital for the first time. He was 89. They had been married 54 years, and this was to be the first night my Mum and Dad had not been under the same roof over those 54 years. Mum frankly admitted: “With most problems in life, you can look back and remember how you managed the last time such things happened to you. With old age, this is impossible. You have never been there before!”

Exactly: we have never been here before! It is here that we are touching the Lord’s way of summoning us all to greater faith in him, to a greater witnessing to the wonders of his ways, and to a deeper trust in the God who alone controls our future. Perhaps the major obstacles we have to face are our hidden or not-so-hidden agendas concerning the future. Naturally, if we have already made up our minds about the shape of the future, then any unexpected surprise that the Lord sends in the present may be hard to cope with. We want things to be the way we want them to be. This is not God’s way, and it never has been. A deeper openness to the mystery of God’s future will make the pains of the present less damaging. To trace God’s hand in the rapid and bewildering changes that are going on around us is a problem for many people, not only religious. We live in a world which has been educated to believe that it is the master of its own destiny … and which thus finds it difficult to cope with the great mysteries of suffering, death, love, hope and the fact that both young and old still dream dreams. Our problem is that they dream dreams that are different from ours. But, in the end God will be God and his presence among us and among the young will not disappear.

Prophets from the young and for the young

Some of the signs of the times indicate there is a renewed openness to the transcendent among the young. WYD was spectacular evidence of that, but if Catholicism is to be relevant in today’s world, it is up to us to grasp the nettle courageously. But to do this it must – paradoxically – boldly commit itself to the following of Jesus into what is ultimately a counter-cultural movement. Adopting biblical language, Catholicism is looking for prophets who will come from the young and speak to us, and – equally important – prophets from our generation who will be close to the young, and speak to them. What does that mean? A contemporary scholar has written of prophecy as follows: “This is the paradigm I suggest for the prophetic imagination. A royal consciousness committed to achievable satiation. An alternative prophetic consciousness devoted to the pathos and passion of covenanting”. As the financial world around us collapses, let us see our perplexities within the context of this broader crisis. We are faced – day by day – by a world that denies itself nothing as it strains for achievable satiation. This has led to the near-collapse of the world’s financial system. The prophet stands against this, and strives to put first things first – to passionately allow God to be God, and to see our place in the world as part of his presence among us as Lord and Saviour.

In the light of these words, Jesus of Nazareth was obviously a prophet, and those who claim to be his followers are also called to a life of prophecy. To speak eloquently to this confused and confusing situation, prophets of our time must live the perennial values that point to the One who is loved beyond all things. But this must be lived at a new depth and with greater courage. My experience is that there is a growing number of young Catholic people out there who are prepared to accept the challenge to a passionate dedication to God, to question a world of fellow young people “committed to achievable satiation.” There are prophets among the young, and we shared our lives with many of them during the WYD experience.

What of our role? Can these young people look to us – long-standing believers in the Catholic tradition – and see prophets among us? The challenge of our age is to a continual conversion of the heart, an ever-deepening intimacy with God in private, community and liturgical prayer, a visible experience of generous loving and being loved within our Catholic communities. These fundamental features of the Catholic life are fundamental because they are rooted in the life of Jesus the prophet, and built upon his Gospel. They must now be lived out in a new and courageously single-minded fidelity to our commitment to our particular charismatic form of life within the Church, single, married, professional, tradesman or woman, religious man or woman, Bishop, Cardinal or Priest. We are called to be the signs and bearers of God’s love among young people who – when looking at us for inspiration and leadership – often wonder just what we stand for. Like Jesus of Nazareth, but in our own time, we are called to be the prophets of the Lord for the twenty-first century, calling everyone, but especially our young people, to look beyond the limitations of their own achievements, their own particular historical moment, and the tragic breakdown of our contemporary Australian “youth culture,” if it can be called that.

Encouragement needed

Let me say a word about the increasing numbers of very conservative young men and women who seem to form the majority of those who are interested in the Priesthood and the Religious Life. There are many from my generation, who grew into Priests and Religious in the shadow of the Second Vatican Council and its challenges, who react very negatively to this tendency. That attitude is to be avoided. As I have already mentioned, many of these young (and not so young) people have made the step into the religious and priestly life of the Church as the result of some form of what might be called a “religious experience.” This is not always the case; some come from traditional Catholic families, and wish to become priests or religious as part of that tradition. However, it can be generalised with a certain amont of scientifically proven evidence, that many of these young people see the Church as a solid rock of immovable truth and certainty, under whose mantle the chaos of the presence time can be avoided. Inevitably, these young people are attracted to what I would call “the trappings” of the Catholic Church: an intellectual dogmatism that allows no debate, no fresh ideas and challenges, the religious habit, the clerical collar, the black suit, the priest’s cassock, the vestments, the incense, solemn liturgies. We often speak of them as “sacristy priests” or “bells and smells” vocations. I am sure that some of you know such people, and may even have them in your family.

Such young people are to be encouraged and supported. However, they must go through a solid critical education, and be led to another transforming experience. Let me list some of the issues that must be faced with this increasing number of young people:

• They must be well tested by the psychological sciences, especially in the area of their potential socio-sexual strengths and weaknesses. Many of them – subconsciously – are attracted to the Church because it offers them a sacred haven where they suspect they will not have to go through the pain and suffering, and well as the joys and blessings, of an everyday Catholic married life, with children and the need to support a family within a sometimes hostile world. To them, the “certainty” of their beliefs, the clothing that sets them apart, the “inner sanctum” of the altar onto which no lay person can set foot, a life of celibacy where the issue of intimacy can be shelved, can be very attractive. This can be read as God’s call.
• It may well be God’s call, but they must shed all ideas of being a people set apart. That is language used in the Bible to speak of the consecrated situation of all the baptised, not just of priests and religious (see 1 Peter 2:9). A priest and a religious must be a person of great generosity, prepared to give every living moment of the lives to hard work in the service of the Lord and the Church. They must also have a deep concern for the poor and the suffering. One of the problems with some of the newer movements within the Catholic Church is that they seem to have very little interest in the poor. The traditional religious orders who have dedicated their lives to those situations are still in the forefront, despite the decrease in numbers and the ageing. Unfortunately, many of the newer movements demonstrate a tendency to jockey for privileged positions, for the most attractive settings, for work among the wealthy, and for hierarchical promotion. This was not the mission of Jesus Christ, nor should it be of his Church, and its priests and religious.

I hope that I am being clear on this issue. There are many conservative young people attracted to the priesthood and the religious life. This is a good thing. But through a serious and critical formation process they must learn to become followers of Jesus Christ “who came not to be served, but to serve, and to lay down his life for many” (Mark 10:45). If this does not happen, then the problems associated with sexual abuse will continue, the homosexual culture within ministry will increase, and priests and religious will continue to be considered an elite in the church, rather than the servants of the servants of God – first of all by themselves, and then by the People of God who will continue to abandon a local church and its practices that no longer speaks to them and their day-to-day challenges.

Conclusion

Who Jesus Christ is, and what he asks from all who claim to be responding to his call to “follow” (see Mark 1:16-20) cannot be controlled or contained by any religion, any culture or any history. This is especially the case for those whose public ministry is seen as a “following” of Jesus Christ, as priests and religious. The life and teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth stand as our perennial challenge. Through commitment, lived within the Church of Jesus Christ, we are called to strive – against all the tendencies for what has been achieved – to transform our world, as Jesus strove to transform his. We must follow the demands of many of our committed young people, and start to do something: working hard for social justice, working for the poor and oppressed, and even sharing our wealth with them. Words come easily … but deeds create life-giving and prophetic experiences.

Above all, if we want a future, we must accept and allow ourselves to be challenged by the world of the young. It is there that the transformation must take place. Jesus’ life story tells us that it will cost us no less than everything. It is my belief that our young people will respond to this challenge. How they will do it (which may be very different to how we would do it) when they will do it (which may be very different when we would like them to do it) is something that is in God’s hands.

Frank Moloney SDB