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Challenges and Opportunities by audrey laporte vest
T
he future vitality of the Catholic Church lies in its young people. Yet anyone who has been paying attention knows that the worshippers at most weekend liturgies are typically a graying congregation. Many people in their twenties and thirties do not attend Mass on a regular basis. Even fewer take active leadership roles in the parish. The obvious conclusion is that young adult Catholics are not
committed to the Church. If this is true, what are the implications for the future of the Catholic Church in America? Who are today’s young adult Catholics? How do they actually live their Catholicism? Do they go to Mass on Sunday? Are they alienated from the Church? How do they respond to the Church’s moral teachings? Do they take the popes’ statements seriously? Are they leaving for other denominations in significant numbers? Seeking answers to these and other
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questions, a team of sociologists conducted a national survey of more than eight hundred women and men between the ages of twenty and thirtynine. Their findings, based on questionnaires and followed by telephone and personal interviews, were published in Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice by Dean R. Hoge, William D. Dinges, Mary Johnson, S.N.D. de N., and Juan L. Gonzales, Jr. (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). One of the authors’ most striking conclusions is that the leadership of the Catholic Church needs to establish a “preferential option” for this population, a dynamic and sustained outreach. “Resources and energies should be directed toward helping young adult Catholics feel wanted,
welcomed, and actively involved in the life of the Church,” they write. “If religion in general is on the decline in America, as some observers claim, it is not due to the dying of the old but the inability of the Church to retain these young adult Catholics,” according to coauthor William D. Dinges. “Church leadership must accept that young adult Catholics are not Catholic in the same way that previous generations have been Catholic. The book should be a flashing yellow light, a warning, that many serious issues need to be addressed if the Church is not to lose this generation.” In an interview with Liguorian, Dinges, an associate professor of Religious Studies in the School of Religion at The Catholic University of America, outlined some of the major
in this issue
Young Adult Catholics
C
atholics today who have a personal memory of Mass in Latin sometimes experience a “wake-up call” when they consider that the Second Vatican Council, that watershed event that sought to breathe new life into the Church, closed its sessions over forty years ago. What this lapse of time means, among other things, is that there are now Catholic adults who have lived their entire lives after the Council. If our formative experiences of religion happen during youth and adolescence, it is important to ask how the formation of young adults today differs from that of their parents or grandparents. In addition to the developments within the Church—mass in the vernacular with the priest facing the congregation; a new embrace of religious freedom and ecumenism; a nuanced engagement with the modern world—there were developments in the United States and around the world. The decade from 1965 to 1975 was the era of the cold war and the conflict in Vietnam; the sexual revolution; the scandal of Watergate; and the conflicts between government and universities. During this same era, adolescence and young adulthood were redefined by both cultural and economic forces. Many young adults experienced a greater degree of freedom than their parents had known in their youth. The ensuing decade, from 1976 to 1986, saw even more change. Catholics born during this period have memories of only one pope, the late John Paul II. His agility in utilizing the media showed many young people a willingness to engage the world they lived in, a world of acceleration of communication and information. His presence at the several World Youth Days too showed young Catholics the face of a man seeking to persuade them to challenge the impersonal forces of the market-driven world. For these rising “John Paul II Catholics”—many of whom are in college now—the late pope represents a benchmark of authentic discipleship in the world. Catholics whose memories stretch back to earlier popes—Paul VI and John XXIII especially—often find themselves bewildered by what they see as contradictory messages from young adults. On the one hand, there are those who seem disengaged from the Church, a large group which surveys describe as “spiritual, but not religious.” On the other hand, there are those whom the theologian William Portier describes as “evangelical Catholics,” a smaller group who, following the example of the late pope, are energized by their Catholic faith even amidst what they perceive as a sometimes hostile cultural milieu. This, our seventh issue of C21 Resources, takes up the challenge of helping discern the challenges for the Church as it reaches out to young adult Catholics. We begin with survey data of both white and Hispanic young adults in the United States. Next, we include autobiographical pieces from three young adults today, pieces which reflect the different routes that young Catholics have taken in their religious formation. From there, we engage the voices of two mature Catholic thinkers speaking to their younger brothers and sisters in faith. The final five pieces suggest ways forward in the Church’s mission to young adults today. —The Editors
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C21 RESOURCES
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