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Left Behind: The Catholic Edition
Are you there Catholicism? It’s me, Elizabeth.
I moved to Chicago for grad school five months ago and will pack up my bags and head out just four months from today. My time here is really more of an extended vacation –one involving several student loans and one absurdly small living space. Ahh, grad school...
I am determined to make the most of my precious time left in the Windy City in spite of this region’s merciless coldness. In search of an on-the-ground view of Chicago’s religious landscape, I recently plunged into Chicagoan and On Faith blogger Eboo Patel’s autobiography, Acts of Faith.
Eboo is one part dynamic visionary and one part dogged pragmatist. He has a view of the world as it should be, but is undeterred by the weight of the work that must be done. I’ve circled and highlighted and starred the heck out of his spiritual memoir –my notes sprawled all over his book. From the depths of Chicago’s deep freeze, a tiny part of my soul is thawing.
It is a fitting testimony to the strength of interfaith relations that —just as Eboo was compelled to re-examine his Muslim faith after the witness of Catholics –his perspective has given me insight into my own religion.
This passage on Eboo’s time at his local YMCA as a boy struck me as an essential insight for modern Catholicism:
The YMCA’s secret is simple; it stems from a genuine love of young people. The conventional wisdom is that young people are scrambling for their place in the world. The YMCA knows that, deep down, young people need more than just a place. A place is too passive, and because the scheme of things is constantly shifting, it’s also too fleeting. It’s not a place young people need so much as a role, an opportunity to be powerful, a chance to shape their world. And so the YMCA nudges them in the direction of leadership –14 year olds in charge of 10 year olds at camp, college students coaching high school basketball teams.
In his Interfaith Youth Core, Eboo has taken these principles and engaged a young audience with the assertion that they must take responsibility for their world by purposefully participating in it.
This sense of communal accountability, before God and to one another, while at the heart of the Catholic faith, is lost in practice. In my experience, young Catholics are dropped off at Confirmation and picked back up at Marriage. A lifetime worth of moral decision making and vocational discerning takes place in those ‘Odyssey Years’ as David Brooks has called them. But if you’re not a saint, and not considering the priesthood (or ineligible for it), it’s far too easy to get lost in the shuffle. I threw myself at parishes, taught religious education for years, served as a lector, altar server and RCIA sponsor. But there was no system in place to connect me to the larger parish community. Without an interest in a lifetime of celibacy and lacking a family of my own, I was treated as an aimless free radical. But mostly, I was ignored.
The Mormon Church gets it. Its foundation rests on the employment of the energy of its youth, passing young people from one age-appropriate youth group to the next and channeling their idealism towards service and mission work. At its best, that strategy builds healthy, intentional and charitable human beings. There is no Catholic equivalent. That is a tragedy.
I do hope that holy young people will choose to serve the church through holy orders and consecrated religious life. But if they continue to choose to remain laymen, there must be a vigorous, wholesome, Catholic response to my generation’s spiritual hunger. Take a look at the church’s own statistics. The future of the church is at stake.
Any takers?
By
Elizabeth Tenety
|
February 12, 2008; 1:50 AM ET
| Category:
Campus Catholic
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Posted by: Spiderman2 | February 14, 2008 7:25 AM
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((((( H*i*L*L*A*R*Y ---- CLINTON For 1st Woman PREZ 2009 & Bill for 1st MAN Yea! ))))))))))))
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN!
Better a CLINTON than a McCAIN! Thank You HUMATE>
Posted by: Anonymous | February 12, 2008 6:27 PM
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I guess I don't get it. How can you be a lector, RCIA sponsor, religious education teacher etc. and NOT feel connected to the parish community? What would the SYSTEM look like?
The complaint I hear as I work in parish ministry as a professional is that once someone volunteers for something we never let them go, we overwork them until they are wrung out.
Doing parish ministry would be a lot easier and more fun if everyone would take on some aspect of parish life - but the vast majority sit on the sidelines, look the other way when they see you / me coming toward them to ask them to help . . .
Posted by: Peter | February 12, 2008 2:57 PM
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Apostle Paul said "Faith comes by hearing the word of God". It is best that one should read the Bible and learn from it directly instead of getting it from false churches like Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism, etc.
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. (Isaiah 55:2)