THE Advent Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Bathersby (CL 2/12/2001) singled out the power of Christ’s vision to especially attract young people. The Advent Letter and the synod both have unfinished business differentiating a Church that is eternally young from a mere Church of young people. We risk misdirecting our energies.
To build a Church of young people requires us to be energetic about building a Church that is always young. If young people are to feel at home they must have a spirited Church.
Do we treat young people as if they represented some superior segment of Church membership? There is no doubt that they must be addressed where they are “at”. But must we define success solely by the response of young people?
We have a remarkable Catholic school system, but there is evidence of low level Church affiliation even during school years. The seeds of the problem were being sown at least in the 1950s. The problem was masked by the school system and the school system has been unable to reverse the trends.
Young people were and are restless because their elders were and are restless in the Church. The problem is not age related. The culprits are the essentials. They are doctrine and scriptural interpretation.
In a recent article in The Courier-Mail (R. Brunton 24/11/01), the journalist related his experiences as an anthropologist in Vanuatu to argue that fundamentalist sects achieved more converts than the Catholic missionaries because they gave people definite teaching. He noted that the island people were not put off by the rigid discipline of these sects.
He went on to question the place of those religious who supported ‘Womenspace’. He indicated that their alternatives represented disloyalty to a unified vision and required them to consider leaving the Church. He inferred that the relative decline in Australian Church attendance would be reversed by a conversion experience as made by the Vanuatu people.
Australian Christians have generations of Christian experience and respond to Christianity differently. Australians are putting out the “tried and rejected sign” not the “it’s too much discipline sign”.
That sort of change is by analogy akin to an ongoing “adolescence”. Transition often involves challenge, ambiguity, sometimes mistakes, but certainly it involves experimentation.
The adolescents of today are tomorrow’s leaders. Adolescence is not a sign of disloyalty and its “darkness” requires faith rather than rejects faith.
Jesus was crucified to give certainty. Jesus himself lived with ambiguity but his faith delivered to his life an unambiguous direction.
When we crucify the nuns of “Womenspace” are we crucifying prophets or pretenders? To a Church that strives to remain young they appear as prophets.
People want a youthful, adolescent and searching Church, one in which they participate. In the past, many issues were sorted out behind the closed doors of the clerical establishment. Participation requires access to information and topics must be free of taboos and censorship.
Adolescence is a harrowing time for child and parent. A youthful Church is not necessarily a comfortable place to live in. I think that Jesus would agree that “… Life wasn’t meant to be easy but it was meant to be enjoyed…”
Christ’s Church wasn’t meant to be a sanctuary from the world. It was meant to be a home to grow up in, but a home with a difference. Living in the Holy Spirit it is a home that does not grow “old” even when it’s residents’ age.
VINCENT HODGE Paddington, Qld
