On the challenges facing young people as they return home to their parishes from World Youth Day
Pope Francis is very keen to underline the fact that World Youth Day is not just a day – it has to be a process around discernment and it has to be a process that continues when the kids go home. That formation has to continue otherwise it simply becomes one event. One of the criticisms some people have of World Youth Day is that it’s just like this rock concert – you enjoy it but then you go home.
The challenge there is to the older people and there were lots of older leaders and Irish bishops there – 12 Irish bishops; the largest delegation of Irish bishops that have ever been at a World Youth Day so I think they deserve a lot of kudos for that.
The big choice facing the bishops now is how they build on World Youth Day. They are acutely aware of this. Not a single bishop I was speaking to on the Sunday night was unaware of this challenge. Yes, they were enlivened and overjoyed by the event and enjoyed spending time with the pilgrims and I would say that what was most important for the bishops was to actually sleep out in the campsite at night with the young pilgrims and hear their concerns.
The huge challenge is to try and bring these people together in the local parishes to evangelise one another and the vast majority of young people who weren’t there.
On the difficulties young people are currently confronted with in society
These young people are exposed to social media in a way that just didn’t exist when I was young. I can say speaking with young people on the periphery of it, it really made me feel that they experience challenges and difficulties that were not part of my generation or not consciously part of my generation.
Speaking to young people who have already lost friends to suicide and young people who are acutely aware of friends or family members of theirs who are self-harming, I would say that there was a realisation there that social media can be a bad thing and it was one of the things that the organisers were trying to emphasise as well. The call for young people is to live authentically and live beyond the virtual world and build actual relationships.
On World Youth Day as a profound learning experience
One of the things some of the Irish pilgrims said to me coming home in the airport was that they never knew that there were so many Catholics in the world all from varying backgrounds and ethnicities. Groups passing each other on the streets would want to sign each other’s flags and ask where the groups were from and try to connect online.
These are young people that are presumably going to keep in touch online but there’s no doubt as well from what they expressed to me that there are challenges living in that virtual world as well because they don’t have any sense of privacy.
On the implications of ‘todos, todos, todos’
You could really tell that when Pope Francis was saying that the Church has to find a place for everyone: ‘Todos, todos, todos’, that it was really resonating with people. Many of the young people who were at World Youth Day, let’s be honest, have tenuous links to the Church – some are not frequent Mass goers nor have some people been brought up in the faith.
It was very interesting to talk to some young men who were on the pilgrimage who were baptised but raised as functional atheists. Now they find themselves going to university for the first time discovering that you can have a personal relationship with Jesus and that is something that you can build in your life and will provide meaning and value.
The Pope’s inclusive message is a difficult one but it is a vital one because we don’t have the homogenous society in the Church that we had in the past. Belief in God is no longer axiomatic – it’s one option among others. The culture I grew up in, even if people didn’t go to Church regularly they still believed in God. That’s not an unchallenged conviction nowadays and these young people are living this daily.
On the value of young peoples’ input in the Church
I would say this is actually where older people like me need not be too arrogant as well because we can learn so much from those younger people. Sometimes we think in the Church that we have so much truth and we need to get it out to all of these young people who don’t have the truth when we actually need to hear the truth of their lives.
We need to respond to what the truth of their lives is and their challenges and what is keeping them away from engaging in their faith life. It’s a huge challenge for us here as well. Maybe we need to redefine what engaging with your faith life is. Maybe it’s not the mould that we’ve set or had in this country for the last hundred years. Maybe we need to find fresh expressions of the Church for them.
On young people not necessarily practising faith but unconsciously adopting Christian values
One of the things I found really interesting was a lot of the Church’s social action, which is a necessary part of the gospel and is something we pride ourselves on and is an important work on the part of the Church, young people don’t really see that as the work of the Church – they see it as something quite separate. They’d rather create an ethical society or something sustainable – they don’t see these things as Christian values but rather wider values.
Now you might say that this is a success of the Church because we’ve inculcated those values in society. On the relationship between the ideals of young people and the Church I would say young people are not at an age where they’re looking for this deep, deep meaning or that they’re questing after truth but I think they are questing after goodness and something beautiful and I think that’s what the Church can give them.
First and foremost, this has got to be the example of meeting other good young people and having healthy relationships because something that came across at World Youth Day was just how unhealthy many relationships are among young people now because they are mediated by social media and that creates so much toxicity and tension.
People are looking at the fake lives of others on Instagram and imagining if only they could be like that person, then I would be happy. We need to help them create the sense that they can find a place for themselves within society and within the Church but this is something that has got to be at their own pace.
I think that’s something Pope Francis was very keen on emphasising that you cannot just come and say to people that here’s the Church, here’s this huge treasure of truth – come to it, embrace it and your life will be perfect. You’ve got to kind of meet people where they’re at.
That’s where it calls for a lot of creativity from the Church to try and get out of itself. You know that image that the Pope is always using: “Not of Jesus outside the Church knocking to get in but inside the Church knocking to get out”.
Michael Kelly is editor of The Irish Catholic newspaper.
