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Cover story -
Essay Church leaders must bless, empower the new generation
By TOM BEAUDOIN
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
After working with thousands of
young Catholics in the United States and Europe the last few years, the single
most important lesson I have learned is not about young Catholics, but about
their elders. It has become clear to me that Vatican II provided a definitive
and empowering blessing--a de facto laying on of hands -- for an entire
generation of lay and ordained Catholics.
Almost to a person, those over 50 today stake much of their
Catholic identity on their relationship to the council and its reception in the
past three decades -- whether pro, con or both. Vatican II uncorked a
wellspring of generativity for a church that might otherwise have atrophied if
the spirit and gifts of a generation had not been endorsed and challenged. With
the aging of the Baby Boomers, we are again confronted with the need for a
widespread endorsement of generativity in the church. It is time for church
leaders to lay hands on a new generation of Catholics.
We can look to the council as inspiration for the sending
forth of an entire generation to live a genuinely new day for the church,
but we cannot hope to repeat or simply rehearse the councils dynamism
today, 35 years later. But in the absence of a Vatican III in the near future,
how will we ritualize the transition of our church from the Vatican II
to the post-Vatican II era? How will we mark this transition as an institution?
By intention or by default?
Now is the time for Catholics in the United States and around the
world to realize that the first fruits of the Jubilee may indeed be the
Spirits gift of attending to the generativity of the church in the 21st
century, the Spirits presence in intergenerational mentoring of the
Catholic vision, the Spirits solace in intergenerational conversation and
even reconciliation. Let Catholic leaders be bold to harvest these first fruits
of the Jubilee, truly fostering (in the words of the U.S. bishops) a
passion for renewal in the ministry of adult faith formation. Let
us make 2001-02 a decisive time of regeneration, as we challenge ourselves and
younger generations with the authentic invitation: Young Catholics,
claim your church!
Claim Your Church would have three broad goals: (1)
blessing and empowering young Catholics to take rightful, active responsibility
for their faith and their church; (2) intergenerational dialogue and
reconciliation among pre-Vatican II, Vatican II, and post-Vatican II Catholics;
(3) embracing the fundamentals of a global Catholic Christian identity. All of
these goals would serve the overarching purpose of the generativity of the
church.
As this invitation is proclaimed to young Catholics around the
globe, I imagine Young Catholics, Claim Your Church! taking many
forms in the United States:
The Catholic Common Ground Initiative would sponsor a major
outreach toward and integration of young adults into the church, including
inculturation of Vatican II teachings into the languages and forms of life of
post-Vatican II generations.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops would
facilitate a series of institutes in several major urban areas, consisting of
workshops, speakers, and liturgies for thousands of young Catholics in their
20s and 30s across the United States. All young Catholics, practicing and
nonpracticing, will be enthusiastically invited. Special invitation will be
made to those young Catholics whose vocation is lay ministry or theology.
Special sessions will be held to support and further educate those lay young
adults called to church leadership positions, particularly in pastoral
ministry. And groups of young theologians will be encouraged to meet together
here, building solidarity with each other, enriching their theology from the
concrete experiences of their peers, and beginning what we hope will be a
career-long dialogue with church leaders. Bishops will be present to attend to
the words and hearts of young adults in extended listening sessions, and to
teach in their turn as well. With bishops present to listen and to instruct,
this may be a genuinely new opportunity to offer what John Paul II (in
Catechesi Tradendae), referencing Paul VI, has called not a monologue
but a dialogue of salvation in which each person feels
respected in his or her most basic dignity, the dignity of one who is seeking
God. Or, in the words of the U.S. Bishops Sons and Daughters
of the Light, a dialogue that welcomes challenges from the young
adult to the church and from the church to the young adult, so that each may
grow in discipleship.
During these institutes, American Catholic leaders would be
present throughout, expressing solidarity, challenge and exhortation to young
adults, and frank, respectful conversations would predominate. At the
concluding Mass, a team of bishops, priests, religious and lay representatives
of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the local diocese or the
archdiocese would formally welcome a new generation to servant leadership in
the American church. Not only are hands extended in blessing of the
post-Vatican II generations, but opportunities to enroll for continued
formation in leadership, Catholic identity and Catholic teachings are
available. This could be the first major opportunity for catechists and
religious educators to reach out to young adults since this cohort was in grade
school.
Shortly thereafter, parishes, campus ministries and
military chaplaincies around the United States hold daylong Claim Your
Church gatherings, inviting 20- and 30-somethings to pray, worship, work,
find spiritual cohesion with each other and, in dialogue with local and
national Catholic leaders, to teach the church and learn from it. The
invitation to Claim Your Church will be made authentic by
opportunities to join small faith communities, to enroll in new adult education
offerings organized by catechists and religious educators, to sign up for
spiritual direction from a list of directors provided by the local church, to
declare ones interest in contributing to various ministries, to
explicitly renew ones commitment to tithe a portion of time, talent and
treasure, and perhaps even to help renew a young adult ministry at ones
local church.
Aware that such reformation of the churchs attitudes
toward young adult Catholics must be ongoing, churches, Catholic organizations
and religious orders would assist in sponsoring days of renewal, recommitment,
and continued conversion on the anniversaries of particular churches
Claim Your Church celebration.
Inspired by the renewed trust and spirit of goodwill
between the generations, and sensing the spiritually persuasive power of an
authentic blessing given to a new generation of stewards of Catholic
Christianity, bishops conferences and local churches in other countries
around the world would do the same. Thus, the first fruits of the Jubilee are
realized worldwide.
Young Catholics, Claim Your Church! would find
its official endorsement by the entire Catholic church with the pope at World
Youth Day 2002. Here, the words of John Paul II (in his 1994 Apostolic Letter
Tertio Millennio Adveniente) will be recalled: The future of the
world and the church belongs to the younger generation.
Christ expects
great things from young people. Because of this, young adults in
every situation, in every region of the world, do not cease to put questions to
Christ: They meet him and they keep searching for him in order to question him
further.
As the pope invites young Catholics to claim their church, to
appropriate their faith more fully, to risk taking on all the riches and all
the difficulties of the Catholic Christian tradition, more young adults than
ever before are made aware that they may become Catholic Christians in a way
fully faithful to the gospel and fully contemporary. Thousands consider Vatican
IIs call to full, conscious and active participation for the
first time. In this gathering, we may even be graced to hear an echo of the
words with which John Paul II bequeathed a new generation to the church, in his
Homily on the Mount of the Beatitudes (Origins, April
6). Now, at the dawn of the third millenium, he entreated, it
is your turn.
It is your turn, he continued, to go out into
the world to preach the message of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.
O, Lord Jesus, he prayed, you have made these
young people your friends: Keep them forever close to you!
The first fruits of the Jubilee: To bless and be blessed, to
empower and be emboldened, to invite and lay claim. To lay on hands. This is a
dream for intergenerational reconciliation, a plea for the sense of the young
faithful to be heard again, a prayer for the generativity of Roman Catholic
Christianity.
Tom Beaudoin is a doctoral candidate at Boston College and the
author of Virtual Faith. He gratefully acknowledges Fr. Patrick Brennan
and Jeremy Langford for the conversational genesis of this article.
National Catholic Reporter, October 6,
2000
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