Young and Catholic: Variations and Challenges, Essay Example

Introduction

In an argot fully adopted by the Catholic church, adherents born after 1981 are known as ‘millennials’. Not surprisingly, the church has been devoting a great deal of attention to how loyal these millennials are to the church, and how they view church policy in modern times; the future of the church itself is at stake.

Generally speaking, the Catholic church is not alone in facing these issues. Virtually every recent survey taken with regard to all religious affiliations of young people reveals the same trend: “Fully one-in-four members of the Millennial generation…are unaffiliated with any particular faith” (Pew Forum). This same, 2010 survey reveals that one-in-five people under the age of thirty claim to have abandoned the faith in which they were raised. The Catholic element in these findings is consistent with those of other faiths. No examination of where young people stand in regard to the Catholicism they either grew up with, left, or embraced can be fairly made without acknowledging the reality that young people of all faiths today are dramatically fewer in number than in generations past.

By virtue of both its scope and history, however, the Catholic church faces unique challenges in maintaining a young following. Public scandals, shifting moralities, and the unwillingness of the church itself to accommodate modern views have driven away many young Catholics, while simultaneously holding onto a core of ardent followers who particularly value the traditional, unyielding postures of Catholicism.

Practices and Viewpoints of Young Catholics

Millennial Catholics who choose to continue following the Catholic church appear to do so in one of two ways: they either confess themselves to be Catholic, but do not actively attend church, or they are highly committed and markedly conservative in their leanings. The latter is the vocal, core minority; the former are those raised within the church, not especially interested in anything actually concerning it, and who merely accept being identified with it. “Is it common for young Catholics to become inactive some time after confirmation? Yes” (Johnson, et al. “Young Adult Catholics”).

Younger Catholics tend to view the church as do older Catholics, as a bulwark of existence and the grand structure of their faith. The pivotal difference is that the millennials are far less tolerant of the established church policies. This is, again, common to most faiths in today’s world; the radically increased levels of communication and sophistication are creating schisms not unlike the historical one of  “leaving home” and exploring the world. “We suspect…that transitions of young Catholics from a rural to an urban environment would lead to leaving the church” (Kotre 175). As the Catholic faith continues to hold to policies many young people find archaic and/or unjust in light of today’s social consciousness, they are doubly encouraged to leave the church.

Similarly, devout young Catholics remain so because of the same reasons driving away their peers. This minority welcomes an insistence on Catholic form and the ideologies rooted in centuries of tradition, and particularly in regard to modern sexual practices. “Small and growing numbers of young Catholics…are embracing the countercultural view of reproduction and contraception that is articulated most publicly by Catholic leaders” (Carroll 146).

Challenges for Church and Young Adherent

In a sense, the wide gulf between indifferent and zealous young Catholics creates an insoluble dilemma for the church. To gain youthful support, it must bend rigid policies, but that would alienate the truly devoted minority. Both factions, ironically, interpret Catholicism in the manner suitable for their needs. The zealous millennials are harsher in their strictures than even the church would endorse, while the “lapsed” young Catholics do not bother to keep pace with what is occurring in the church. Each side, indifferent or passionate, is never at a loss to support its position, and the Catholic church itself becomes less clearly understood.

A third component, and the one from which most who leave the faith belong, is made up of those young Catholics who are distressed by the church’s failure to respond to modern issues effectively, from abortion rights to pedophilia scandals in the church itself. These Catholics want to remain active in the faith, but are morally swayed otherwise. “Young people have trouble with the church precisely as an institution. They disagree with official church teaching on homosexuality and other issues of sexuality and gender” (Rausch 61). Consequently, many continue to identify themselves as Catholics, but maintain only private relationships with God and do not attend services, except on specific occasions.

What would induce young Catholics to either return to the church or stay within it would be, as a vast number of discontented and/or indifferent young Catholics believe, a long-overdue review of church policy in regard to crucial issues. The church need not reverse itself, necessarily, but it must accept that the world has changed substantially since its policies were forged, and that many of its followers seek only an acknowledgment of this. Today’s world may not be more honest than it once was, but it is certainly more tolerant of mistakes. The young “sinner” of today is at a loss as to how to interpret his own errors; society tells him one thing, and his church dictates another. The Catholic church must, at the very least, embrace the fact of this conflict and see it as the desire to be helped that it is.

By altering itself to take in modern life, even somewhat, the Catholic church is actually well-placed to remain the enormous presence it has always been, and not least because of the same circumstance that keeps even indifferent young Catholics at least nominally within it: its recognized persistence within the person once indoctrinated. The church has always enjoyed an extraordinary hold on its followers, by means of majesty, history, and other elements, and even the youngest, most liberal-minded Catholics would be glad to remain in their church, if that church would meet them halfway.

Works Cited

Carroll, C. The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Chicago, IL: Loyola Press, 2004. Print.

Kotre, J. N. The View from the Border: Why Catholics Leave the Church and Why They Stay. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009. Print.

Rausch, T. P. Educating for Faith and Justice: Catholic Higher Education Today. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010. Print.

“Religion among the Millennials.” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, February 17, November 30, 2010. <http://pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx#attendance>

Johnson, M., Hoge, D. R., Dinges, W., and Gonzalez, J. L. “Young Adult Catholics.” America, The National Catholic Weekly, March 27, 1999. November 30, 2010. <http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10913>