Gen Y priests and Baby Boomer priests

There is a great article by a young priest about the differences and shared concerns among generations of priests in the USA, in Commonweal, here.

A snippet to whet the appetite:

The following generation, the one before mine, was also dealing with a world very different from the one in which we live today. It came of age during or just after Vatican II. Vietnam was a war zone, and the sexual revolution was underway. A new age had dawned. For my first parish assignment, which lasted from 2003 to 2007, I was blessed to be placed with a pastor who was ordained in 1968. He entered the seminary before the council, was formed as the council was meeting, and ordained in one of the most turbulent years of the last century. His ordination class had thirty-three other men, only ten of whom remain in active ministry. I had some initial prejudices about living and working with a baby-boomer priest. After all, I was what people now call, in praise or disdain, a John Paul II priest. On paper we really were not supposed to get along. But we were both sons of Vatican II, and we were genuinely interested in learning about each other’s experiences of seminary formation. We also wanted to talk about our different understandings of the church, and about the direction in which we thought the church was heading. We also liked being priests, and since we were going to be housemates for the next four years, we made it work.

Our best conversations took place at the dinner table. My pastor recalled memorizing the Baltimore Catechism in grade school. I told him that I made collages about my feelings in religious-ed class. When he complained that his seminary formation had been too militaristic, I told him of my frustrations with a seminary formation that seemed too lax. When he spoke of the years he spent studying Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, I expressed embarrassment at not knowing how to chant the Pater Noster as I concelebrated Mass with Benedict XVI at World Youth Day a few years ago in Cologne. When my pastor expressed gratitude that the clerical dress code had been relaxed over the years, I said I thought it was important that the priest be a visible sign of the church, to remind the world that God is not dead. But when it came to the abuse scandals, we were on the same page-or at least in the same book. The scandals hit us both hard, though in different ways.

Hmmm...it strikes me that this is not just about the priesthood, but about those in Church leadership of all stripes. Feel free to comment here or in class.

A Preferential Option for Youth?

(obviously playing with the "preferential option for the poor" language)

A Preferential Option for Youth: John Coleman, SJ

... Hoge ended his book with a strong plea for a "preferential option for young adult Catholics." For such an option to be real and not just empty rhetoric, it needs to be translated into diocesan and parish budgets, ministerial personnel, imaginative programs. Resources and energies should be directed toward helping young adult Catholics feel wanted, welcomed and actively involved.

Being welcoming to young adults must mean more than hospitality at the parish level (they are not there, anyway!) but entail a vigorous outreach beyond the parish.. In the Hoge sample, young adult Catholics complained of the absence of programs and activities for single young adults.. Perhaps any given parish may lack resources for imaginative outreach programs, but a consortium of neighboring parishes or a diocese could pay for and sponsor them.

I am deeply disturbed by what seems the sheer complacency I see around me in dioceses on this issue.

More here.

Pew Forum Survey: Americans switching worship communities like a they're using a TV remote

OK, not quite that bad, but it is a disturbing picture of the American landscape:

From the New York Times (full article here):

WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.

For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not track religious affiliation.

The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”

More Catholic-specific material from a Catholic insider blog called Whispers in the Loggia:

The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.

The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.” [Ed. Note: that stacks up to roughly 27 million.]

Comments welcomed.

Just for fun: Youth ministry is like herding cats

The relationship between the Church and the University...?

You may have heard that Pope Benedict decided not to offer an invited lecture at Sapienza Universita in Rome (student population: 138,000!) due to some student unrest at that school (the majority of students wanted him to come, and apparently he will be "reinvited"). The text of the lecture was released anyway, and it's an interesting reflection on the Catholic notion of faith and reason working together toward a common goal: Truth. It ends like this:

And so let me go back to the initial point. What does the Pope have to do or say in a university? He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered. Beyond his ministry as Pastor of the Church and on the basis of the intrinsic nature of this pastoral ministry, it is his task to keep alive man’s responsiveness to the truth. Similarly he must again and always invite reason to seek out truth, goodness and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future.

...and an amusing (yet true) line, especially for your philosophy majors/minors...

Theology and philosophy are an odd couple; neither can be totally separated from the other and yet each must keep its own purpose and identity.

The whole lecture can be found here. Comments welcome.

p.s. We're going to have a major lecture on this general topic in April 2008, with a national speaker. More coming later....

"The Other 6"

Hi folks!
People are doing interesting things to encourage people to pray through online resources. I've mentioned Sacred Space before, which is Lectio Divina in interactive online format. Here's a new initiative from Loyola Communications, called "The Other 6: where does God bubble up in your life?" It challenges you to think of where God was present to you in your day, and where you felt needed to see God. Worth checking out:

The Other 6 (as in praying the other six days of the week beyond Sunday)

More on the project in this article at Busted Halo:

Food, water and shelter are universal needs that transcend borders, age, gender, race, class and religion. But a visit to www.Other6.com is enough to demonstrate that human beings hunger and thirst for something less tangible but more profound: the presence of God.

On any given day at the site, you’ll find a South African man seeking conversation and inspiration, or a grieving Chicagoan asking for strength following the recent deaths of three family members. They—and hundreds of other people—are finding hope, enlightenment and solace on Other6, an innovative web site launched by Loyola Press for people of all faiths who desire deeper meaning in their daily lives. Father Paul Campbell of the Jesuits’ Chicago Province says he modeled Other6 after the Examen of St. Ignatius Loyola, a daily spiritual reflection. “I wanted to capture the heart of the exercise and put it out on the Web,” he says....

Tell me what you think. Clever evangelization? Prayers and computers don't mix? What?