Young people and the future of the Church
Alessandro Special, Vatican City 01/31/2013
To learn to communicate with young people today, the Church not only needs to change its methods of communication and to embrace more modern forms of language, but must firstly learn to interpret the culture of the new generations.
According to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Pontifical Council for Culture has dedicated the upcoming meeting to “emerging young cultures.” “If we do not get to know the cultural context in which young people live today, the Church’s pastoral programme risks giving answers to questions that do not exist.”
The event’s two-day meeting schedule – 7-9 February – begins with an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, followed by concert put on by Christian punk rock band The Sun and a conference with sociologist David Le Breton.
The plenary session will go on to address themes such as digital languages and their effect on young people who have been born into these, the “emotional alphabet” of new generations and the possibilities for overcoming the “low birth rate” of faith in the modern world.
The sensitivity of young people, their “pragmatic individualism” and their search for pleasure and amusement, the frequent lack of cultural and moral references that were once taken for granted must not, according to Ravasi, lead us to look at new generations with pessimism. “In a way, they pull down the shades to exclude themselves partly because we excluded them with our corruption and incoherence, with temporary work, unemployment and marginalisation,” he explained.
“All I had to do was listen to an Amy Winehouse CD to get immediate proof of this. And yet, from these musically and thematically torn-up lyrics a question emerges that is common to us all,” Ravasi said. This question must not frighten us because, as the delegate of the Vatican dicastery, Mgr. Carlos Alberto de Pinho explained, “the Church has not had a predefined artistic style” or “a predefined language.”
"The fact that young people are “different” is not all negative as hidden within it are seeds of fertility and authenticity.” “For example, many young people choose to get involved in voluntary work,” many are “passionate about music, sport and friendship, which is a way of saying that humans do not just live off bread.” There is a “spiritual originality, sincerity and freedom hidden beneath a surface of apparent indifference.”
Contentious issues such as sex, homosexuality and the priesthood remain as they are in direct contrast with Catholic Church doctrine. (...) before we can go on to explain Christianity’s proposal which is destined to always remain “countercultural” to some extent.