Dating 101 at a Catholic College

Many young Catholics find more than truth on campus—they may just find a future spouse! Faithful Catholic colleges are uniquely positioned to promote healthy and holy relationships between men and women, while teaching the fullness of truth about marriage and sexuality.

Through courses like Theology of the Body, campus speakers who discuss Catholic marriage and family, and respectful policies like single-sex dorms, many Catholic colleges take seriously their mission of Christian formation. Graduates of these colleges are bright lights in a culture that often distorts the true meaning of relationships.

It’s no secret that courtship on college campuses has been replaced by a rampant hook-up culture. But Jason Evert, a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, encourages students to “Keep it chaste both emotionally and physically. In other words, if you’re single, don’t pretend like you’re dating. If you’re dating, don’t behave like you’re married.”

Evert, who is a popular speaker on chastity, also suggests that young adults work on perfecting themselves rather than finding the “perfect person.” He encourages them to take an inventory of their interior lives and “root out all the things that would be toxic to a future marriage, such as porn, alcoholism, self-absorption, anger, etc.”

Cecilia Pigg—a graduate of Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., another faithful Catholic college recommended in The Newman Guide—thinks that students need to be reminded to actually “ask people out on dates.” “If you are asked out by someone, say yes,” she says. “It’s just a date. Dates are opportunities for growth.”

Her only caveat is that she suggests freshmen avoid dating someone exclusively. “If you are both still interested sophomore year, go for it. But most people change a lot freshman year, and it is better to be single and navigate life and yourself without the added pressure of a relationship,” Pigg explains.

While a student at Benedictine, Pigg discerned her vocation to marriage during spiritual direction, and she met her husband Ryan on campus. Now she serves as the editor of CatholicMatch.com.

Another couple credits their faithful Catholic education with influencing their marriage for the better. Andrew and Michelle Ouellette recall that Northeast Catholic College in Warner, N.H., provided them with “wonderful teachers and thought-provoking texts, particularly senior year Theology,” which gave them “solid reasons for living a truly Catholic marriage.” They also have the “memories of the ups and downs, struggles and triumphs, amusing and tragic experiences we shared as classmates and friends” as a basis for their relationship.

A graduate from The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, N.H, says that prayer and study helped him discern his vocation.

“If it were not for the demanding education at Thomas More College, I would not have been able to see that I had so great a need to practice the self-discipline and sacrifice necessary for loving one’s spouse. It was in Rome where I discovered that God was not calling me to the priesthood, and it took almost a year of reading St. Benedict’s Rule (a text I was introduced to through Thomas More College’s curriculum) for me to learn that I was not to be a monk either. Shortly after this decision my wife and I began courting,” he explained.

For students up for a challenge to make the most of dating while in college, he suggests: “wake up before the sun, never trust yourself, put all your trust in God, and pray Thomas More’s Psalm of Detachment every day.”

On Saint Valentine’s Day, young people are presented many images of romance that can be selfish and even self-destructive. May all young Catholics learn that true love consists in respect, self-sacrifice, and joy in doing God’s will, and never settle for anything less.

Catholic High Schoolers Give Extraordinary Witness at March for Life

Some of the nation’s best Catholic high schools will be displaying their strong Catholic faith by joining the March for Life in Washington, D.C., this Friday.

These are schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society and our Catholic Education Honor Roll. They agree to uphold key principles of Catholic identity, and participation in the March for Life is an excellent way of witnessing to human dignity and teaching a Christian worldview.

Many of the school groups are traveling significant distances to make it to this year’s March, including The Atonement Academy in San Antonio, Texas; Everest Collegiate High School and Academy in Clarkston, Michigan; Bishop Thomas K. Gorman High School in Tyler, Texas; John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette, Louisiana; The Lyceum in South Euclid, Ohio; St. Francis Xavier High School in Appleton, Wisconsin; St. James Academy in Lenexa, Kans.; St. Joseph High School in South Bend, Indiana and West Catholic High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan

These schools make the most of their time in D.C. St. Francis Xavier, for instance, has an impressive agenda! Students will attend the pro-life youth rally and Mass before the March, visit and celebrate Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, visit the Holocaust Museum (a great pro-life activity), celebrate Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, visit the St. John Paul II National Shrine, pray outside of a Planned Parenthood center, participate in Eucharistic adoration and confession, and share their experiences and impressions during small-group sessions and talks. On the way home, they will stop at Mundelein Seminary for Mass, a tour and breakfast sponsored by the Diocese of Green Bay Vocations Office.

Students in the Schola Cantorum at The Lyceum will sing Palestrina’s Missa Brevis during an Extraordinary Form Mass at St. Dominic’s Church in D.C. before the March. They too will visit the Holocaust Museum and President George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

In addition to several sites in D.C., John Paul the Great Academy makes its long journey from Louisiana a pilgrimage, stopping along the way at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama; the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland; and the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Shrine in Emmitsburg.

Students from schools closer to Washington are able to participate more easily, and their numbers are impressive. More than 250 students from Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, Virginia, will be marching this year, after attending the pro-life rally and Mass with Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Arlington Diocese that morning.

Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Virginia, is closing its doors on Friday to allow a group of more than 150 students and chaperones to attend the March in person – and many more are with them in spirit. As part of their “March for Me Initiative,” students from the school’s Pro-Life Club visited parishes in the area and solicited names of parishioners unable to attend the March. The students carry the names with them and pray for their intentions while marching.Other schools may not make it to the March for Life in Washington, but that doesn’t stop them from attending other pro-life events around the country. Students from St. Anne Catholic School in Rock Hill, South Carolina, partnered with the parish youth group to attend last weekend’s March and Rally in Columbia, South Carolina. And in Spring, Texas, Frassati Catholic High School’s Culture of Life Club will sponsor a daylong pilgrimage to the Texas Rally for Life in Austin on Jan. 26.

Faithful Catholic schools play no small part in the renewal of our culture, especially when they bear witness to the dignity of all human life. The sacrifice and witness of these students and their families is an inspiration and blessing.

This article was first published at The National Catholic Register.

Faithful Catholic Colleges Join March for Life

Faithful Catholic colleges give witness to the dignity of human life all year long—but this Friday, January 18, will be special.  Students, faculty, staff and presidents from colleges recommended in The Newman Guide will be leaders once again at this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C.

“It would be a tragedy if an institution that spent so much time studying the humanities failed to stand and defend the dignity of all human life,” explained Dr. William Fahey, president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, N.H. He said that the College’s participation in the March for Life “is intrinsic to our Catholic mission.”

Dr. Fahey is one of several Catholic college presidents who will march against abortion. He will be joined by Ave Maria University President Jim Towey, Belmont Abbey College President Dr. Bill Thierfelder, Benedictine College President Stephen Minnis, Christendom College President Dr. Timothy O’Donnell, Franciscan University of Steubenville President Fr. Sean Sheridan, TOR, Northeast Catholic College President Dr. George Harne, University of Mary President Msgr. James Shea, and University of St. Thomas (Houston) President Dr. Richard Ludwick.

Catholic families are grateful for the witness of these presidents and the hundreds of students who join them. These students make great sacrifices—including long bus rides, braving cold temperatures, and sleeping on the floors of church halls—to peacefully protest abortion.

“It pains me to know that there were babies who were not able to take their first breath. Babies who were not able to say their first words or take their first steps,” said Dalton Guinn, a senior accounting major at the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D.

“We are committed to something bigger than ourselves,” he said. “We are motivated to fight for the right to life. We care enough to stop our busy lives as students, drop anything and take a 30-hour bus ride to Washington, D.C., to make it known that what is happening is wrong and change is in order.”

The University of Mary will be traveling more than 1,000 miles from Bismarck, N.D., to attend the March for Life. Other long-distance travelers include marchers from Ave Maria University of Ave Maria, Fla., Benedictine College of Atchison, Kan., and University of St. Thomas (UST) of Houston, Tex.  Ave Maria will be bringing approximately 50 students, and Benedictine College and University of Mary will each be bringing more than 200 students.

Sr. Theresa Marie Chau Nguyen, O.P., an assistant professor of theology at UST, said that she was a “regular Marcher” during her time as a student at The Catholic University of America and now is “delighted” to be returning with 27 “enthusiastic UST students.”

Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C., will send about 100 students, faculty, staff… and monks!  About half of this group will be going to Washington, D.C., a day early to make a pilgrimage to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine.

Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., has always closed its campus on the day of the March so that the entire student body and members of the faculty and staff can attend.  Other Catholic colleges that cancel classes during the March include The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, and Northeast Catholic College in Warner, N.H.

Catholic University and Franciscan University of Steubenville have a huge representation at the March, with more than 500 students from each university.  For high school and church groups traveling from across the country, many are provided with food and lodging by Catholic University and Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md.

One Mount student, Elizabeth O’Hare, who will travel with more than 200 students and seminarian to the March, shared how the “strong Catholic foundation” at the University has enabled her “to grow in relationship with the Lord and His One True Church” while also convicting her on the “beauty and sacredness of all human life.”

Even more Newman Guide-recommended institutions, including DeSales University in Center Valley, Penn., and Walsh University in Canton, Ohio, will be attending the March. Both will be sending around 50 students.  Holy Apostles in Cromwell, Conn., is bringing nearly 100 students, seminarians, religious, faculty and staff.  Additionally, students and staff from Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Barry’s Bay, Ontario, are also making the trip to the March.

Newman Guide colleges located on the other side of the country—including Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyo., and John Paul the Great Catholic University in Escondido, Calif.—will participate in the West Coast Walk for Life on January 26.

How Some Faithful Catholic Colleges are Fighting Pornography

At The Catholic Herald, Newman Guide programs director Kelly Salomon shows how some faithful Catholic colleges are taking positive steps to combat pornography:

Pornography shouldn’t be part of a Catholic college experience. That’s obvious to many Catholic parents: in an age when even Starbucks, McDonald’s and Tumblr have moved to block wi-fi access to pornography, you would hope the country’s more than 200 Catholic colleges would be leading the way.

It’s not clear how many colleges have installed a web filter: at Notre Dame, students petitioned for one, but administrators are still making up their minds. Nevertheless, according to The Cardinal Newman Society’s evaluation of faithful Catholic colleges recommended in The Newman Guide, several not only block pornography but work hard to encourage chastity on campus.

Continue reading at The Catholic Herald. 

After Synod, Faithful Schools Ready to Lead

Over at Catholic World Report, check out this article on the great value of faithful Catholic schools as an example of true “accompaniment”—a key theme during October’s Synod on Young People.

The Newman Society’s own Dr. Denise Donohue, associate director of K-12 education programs and manager of the Catholic Education Honor Roll, writes:

…I’ve had a firsthand look at the exemplary schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Honor Roll, and they are truly forming young people in love and the Faith. These schools lead young people to holiness and grow the Church through innovative programs, clear doctrine and bold witness to Christ. They accompany youth, day in and day out, seeking not just to hang out with the young but to lead and inspire them to greatness.

Faithful Catholic schools “present them with the tradition,” that is, they offer a compelling and lived Catholic understanding of man, God and the world. This is necessary, so that students can compare the truth as presented in the Gospels and Catholic tradition to the values, beliefs, and attitudes in contemporary culture. Only then can they make a free decision as to which path they will follow. Authentic accompaniment in these schools is particularly effective at evangelizing, nurturing and leading our youth. …

Dr. Donohue highlights Honor Roll schools including Academy of Our Lady in Marrero, La.; Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver, Colo.; Detroit Central Catholic High School in Michigan; Frassati Catholic High School in Spring, Tex.; Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, Md.; and Notre Dame Regional High School in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Read more here at Catholic World Report.

Teenager with hands in prayer

College Student to Synod Organizers: Don’t Listen to Me!

Even as the bishops attending this month’s Youth Synod in Rome strive mightily to demonstrate that they hear the wishes and concerns of young people, I was surprised when a Catholic college student told me that he doesn’t much care if the Church listens to him.

Isaac Cross first heard about the Youth Synod when he was asked to participate in the preparatory survey. One of the opening questions has stuck with him: “As a young person, do you feel that the Church listens to you?”

Isaac didn’t like the question.

“What really matters is if I listen to the Church and learn from its wisdom,” he told me. “The Church is built upon thousands of years of tradition and doctrine, and I have especially found at college how striving to understand that doctrine of the Church is a vital means of strengthening [one’s] faith.”

Isaac is a student at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, which is recommended in The Newman Guide for its strong Catholic identity. So he’s serious about the Faith and his need for authentic Catholic education.

“Saint John Paul II always called upon the youth to lead the charge of evangelization, but many bishops and priests misinterpreted that idea and started to look toward the youth for guidance in forming the traditions and liturgy of the Church,” Isaac said. “Young Catholics have vitality, which is what St. John Paul saw as so important for spreading the faith, but being young myself, I can tell you we do not have wisdom.”

Providing youth with an education and formation in the truths of the Church is so important, especially given the scandals facing the Church today.

“Without understanding the true foundations of the faith and recognizing the divine source of Catholicism, many young men and women will not be able to distinguish between the corrupt men in the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Church itself,” he said.

Thousands of young people who attend faithfully Catholic colleges across the country are being formed in the truths of the Faith. In my experience, many of them share Isaac’s humility and fidelity. They know that they don’t have all the answers, and they look to the Church to teach them.

It may be helpful to the Synod fathers to know what young people are thinking. But it’s far more important that young people know what the Church is teaching. We all need some of whatever Isaac is getting at his faithful Catholic college.

This article was first published at the National Catholic Register.

7 Key Things Lacking in Youth Synod

Yesterday the Vatican convened its first session of the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. But judging from the working document that will guide the month-long meeting, seven key things essential for its success are lacking.

Instead of guiding young people along the narrow but rewarding path of Christianity, the Synod working document seems to favor “accompanying” young Catholics on the wide, treacherous pathways of secular culture.

Below are seven essentials that appear to be lacking at the outset of the Synod. Faithful Catholics will be praying that the bishops can steer the Synod back to the Church’s familiar and sure pathways that lead young people to Christ.

1. Credibility

Under the circumstances, there is something simply offensive about Catholic bishops gathering to discuss how they can appeal to young people to stay in the Church. Meanwhile, the crisis of clergy sex abuse and poor judgment and corruption among certain bishops remains unresolved.

Restoring credibility among Catholic families and young people will require years of effort. But transparency from the Vatican regarding Archbishop Viganò’s claims would be a good start, instead of the Synod’s apparent approach of befriending young people by softening moral judgment.

2. Truth

Astonishingly, the Synod’s working document places little emphasis on teaching young people the Truth of Christ—the liturgy, traditions, and doctrines that are the great treasures of the Church. Instead, it focuses on guiding them by personal example and nonjudgmental companionship.

Pope Benedict rightly lamented the “educational crisis” among young people who despair because they do not know Christ and His teachings. We cannot soft-pedal the Truth of the Gospel and leave young people drowning in the relativism of “liquid modernity.”

First and foremost, youth need Truth!

3. Confidence

The Synod organizers seem to lack confidence in young people today, doubting that they would respond positively to appeals to reason. Instead of teaching Truth and moral precepts, the Synod document promotes the subjective experience of a mentor to attract youth.

We need to be bold in calling on young people to study the Faith and make it their own. Many will respond to this call. To be advocates of beauty, seekers of truth, and architects of freedom is a task and adventure worthy of their youthful restlessness and idealism. They are looking for answers.

The simple fact is, our Catholic Faith is not subjective. We can’t abandon young people to the influence and temptation of relativism. Without binding truth claims, our teaching is not Catholic.

4. Courage

The Synod document encourages frank discussions with young people about sexuality, but it lacks a sense of alarm about the moral crisis among our youth and avoids confrontation with the popular culture. The Synod organizers seem comfortable with accommodating the culture’s erroneous assumptions about sexuality and has adopted the culture’s language of identity, instead of reminding young people that we all have one orientation as children of God, to and through Him Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

The lives of many young Catholics have become fragmented, incoherent, and indifferent to truth and meaning. The Church needs to stand strong against today’s culture of dissent and radical autonomy, which corrupts the souls of our youth. That includes rooting out scandal in Catholic universities and removing the “Catholic” label from the worst offenders!

5. Formation

The Synod document uses the term “formation,” but it rarely speaks of morality, God’s commandments, and the development of virtues and moral discipline in young people. It warns against appearing “authoritative” or “hyperprotective” but not against permissiveness, which is the real problem today in many of the Church’s schools, colleges, and youth programs.

Young people today need formation—which is harder but much more rewarding than simple companionship—to develop into saints and even martyrs. We encourage the bishops to observe the students at America’s most faithful Catholic colleges (which are recommended in our Newman Guide) or talk to the growing numbers of Catholic families who have deliberately chosen schools and homeschool programs that offer serious formation in mind, body, and spirit.

6. Family

The Synod working document acknowledges the importance of families in faith formation, but parents and families have had a minor role in the Synod’s deliberations, despite the fact that they are the key to reaching young people. Good parents have unique insight as to what young people need to stay strong in the Faith.

Despite the alarming fact that the Church is losing young people, there are places where the Faith is being handed down successfully, and where young people are on fire for Christ and the Church’s timeless mission of saving souls. These families aren’t hiding! They are readily found in parishes with traditional devotions, in families who pray the Rosary together, in homeschools and lay-run Catholic classical schools, and in families who sacrifice everything to send their children to Newman Guide colleges. The Synod could learn much from the very people who are doing it well today.

7. Catholic Education

All this points to a key solution for the bishops: the renewal of an authentic Catholic education, genuinely forming youth and upholding the Faith of good Catholic families. Catholic education is critical to the Church’s evangelization of young people and deserves to be the primary emphasis of the Youth Synod.

Instead, Catholic education gets weak attention in the Synod working document, which overly focuses on it as a means for addressing the world’s problems from a humanistic standpoint. The document places too little emphasis on Catholic education’s role in evangelizing young people and leading them to Heaven.

The working document’s brief section on catechesis is helpful, but this too falls short of embracing the full promise of Catholic education: the formation of the human person, the development of a Christian worldview, an experience of Christian community, and a daily encounter with Christ in prayer and Sacrament.

The Synod fathers would be wise to renew the Church’s commitment to authentic, faithful Catholic education. For decades, weak Catholic schools, colleges, and youth programs have failed to deeply form young people in knowledge of the Faith, tradition, moral discipline, virtue, and wisdom. Such formation should be a top priority for the Synod.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that the Church has every tool it needs to reach young people, and it has two thousand years of experience leading people, young and old, to Christ in very different cultures and historical realities. Catholicism works. We don’t need “new” and softer approaches; to the contrary, we need greater commitment to educating and forming young people well. We hope and pray that the Synod fathers will take heed and avoid the easy temptation to simply flow with the times.

Editorial: Youth Synod Goes Forward, Seemingly Headed on a Wide and Dangerous Path

It’s underway. Despite Archbishop Chaput’s call for a delay or cancellation—which the Newman Society supported—the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment is proceeding in Rome.

We have grave concerns that too many Synod organizers and gadflies with the ears of powerful officials are using it to advance their agenda to dilute Church teachings and, instead of calling young people to join the Church on the narrow path to Christ, are plotting to have the Church move to meet them on the secular world’s easy, wide path.

How so? By seemingly discarding centuries of wisdom about formation and how to evangelize young people under the guise of offering a listening ear, “meeting them where they are,” and attention to “practical realities,” which would appear to be code for giving in to worldly concerns.

But isn’t that precisely what has brought about today’s crisis in the Church?

Accompanying young people down the secular world’s wide path is not the way to God. Permissiveness and dependence on human relationships is tempting, but it is treacherous and full of deceivers, thieves, and (yes) predators who strive to ruin souls. Young people don’t need the Church to walk with them on this dangerous path, they need to the Church to show them the way to Christ!

Christ’s way is the narrow path. It is Truth, and it is hard, except for God’s grace and mercy. A formation that gives young people the tools, knowledge, and moral discipline to help carry the Cross is the true path of holiness.

Synod organizers don’t seem to believe this is possible today. But they only need look at thriving parishes with traditional devotions, the growing Catholic homeschool movement, the examples of faithful Catholic schools like those recognized by the Society’s Catholic Education Honor Roll, and, of course, the counter-cultural Newman Guide colleges that take their Catholic identity seriously.

These places prove that the traditional way of forming young people works! This is precisely why The Newman Society proposes faithful Catholic education as the best response to the “contemporary ‘crisis of truth’ [that] is rooted in a ‘crisis of faith,’” as Pope Benedict explained to American Catholic educators 10 years ago.

It is a shame that the organizers of the Synod ignore this success.

Bad Timing, Bad Direction

And it’s hard to imagine a worse time for the world’s bishops to gather for a Synod on Young People.

Too many Church leaders have demonstrated an appalling lack of concern for the safety of children and young adults from predator priests and bishops. How do the Synod fathers assure parents, educators, youth ministers, and others that they speak with authority—the authority of Christ—if key Synod participants and even Pope Francis himself will not respond forthrightly and decisively to the scandals and accusations that have rocked the Faithful?

Moreover, as The Cardinal Newman Society and others like the intrepid Robert Royal have warned for months, the Synod organizers seem disinterested in taking the necessary steps to bring the authentic Truth of our Faith to young people.

Our reports on the Youth Synod’s preparatory documents have exposed serious flaws in the Synod organizers’ favored approaches of attending to youthful desires and permissive “accompaniment.”

But even a cursory glance at the Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, for the Synod exposes a social-progressive mindset that clouds the importance of Christian formation. The document seems more about “taking care of young people” than teaching them Truth.

The “realities” for young people that are considered by the Synod’s working document include globalization and diversity, social and economic inequalities, war and violence, injustice and exploitation, jobs and unemployment, intergenerational relationships, digital media, sports and entertainment, immigration, and so on.

To the extent that sexuality is discussed, there is no sense of crisis. Instead, the document seeks more “practical” conversation about fundamental teachings on sexuality.

Education gets far too little attention. When it is discussed, it is primarily in the secular context of academics and career, not with the mission of evangelization.

Narrow Path Forward

We hope that some of the faithful bishops attending the Synod, and there are a number of them, are able to redirect the discussions and outcome. But assuming that not much good will come out of it regarding effectively leading young people away from the secular world’s siren call, families—in partnership with faithful educators and trusted priests and bishops—must go all-in on the renewal of Catholic education.

A renewal of Catholic education—by which we mean the Christian formation of young people in the home and in schools—is critical to the renewal of the Church’s mission of evangelization.

The disastrous results of prior generations’ rebellion against authority and moral discipline—against Truth itself—have reached a culmination in the horrific scandals among so many unfaithful priests and bishops. At least, we hope and pray this is the turning point.

Now is the time when our message of fidelity and responsible formation can resonate. It is for this reason that now—in our 25th anniversary year—the Newman Society is refocusing and redoubling our efforts on recognizing faithful Catholic education and holding it out as a model for the Church.

By setting more and more young Catholics on the narrow path, the true Way of Christ, we will once again see the heroism and the holiness of the saints. And by their example, and by the sacrifice of true educators, and with God’s grace, we will see the renewal of the Church and Catholic life.

Youth Need Truth! A Better Way for the Synod

The Vatican’s “working document” that will guide the discussions and directions of October’s Synod on Young People is flawed.1 It puts tremendous emphasis on personal experience and accompaniment as the primary means for reaching young people today. But what young people most need—what, deep down, they most desire—is the Truth of Christ boldly proclaimed. And what the Church desperately needs to help young people is a thorough renewal of faithful Catholic education as its primary means of evangelization.

There is little sense in this working document of the important role that strong and faithful education—whether in schools, parishes, or homes—should play in teaching truth and virtue to young people. Instead, there is great danger that the Synod will continue the now commonplace tendency of too many Church leaders and programs to soft-pedal the Truth of the Gospel and leave young people lost and drowning in the relativism of “liquid modernity.”

The Synod on Young People will fail if the Synod fathers do not confront the common culture that champions radical autonomy and a false concept of freedom that satisfies desire and a thirst for power instead of conforming to reality. The lives of many youth have become fragmented, incoherent, and indifferent to truth and meaning. The Church must address this crisis head-on, confident that—underneath this culturally sanctioned indifference—every person knows that truth is what they were made for. At their core, youth need truth, and youth want truth!

Confidently Proclaim Truth    

The Catechism reminds us, “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to Himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”2 In other words, the game is rigged in our favor, if we can break through the anesthetizing effects of many elements of modern life. Even though the common culture seems to have the upper hand at the moment, we need not cower in despair. Instead, we need to take our advantage and teach the truth boldly.3 “Man tends by nature toward the truth,” but he is also “obliged to honor and bear witness to it.” The Good News, confidently proclaimed, is what the youth need to hear—and to what we are obliged to give witness!

Some parts of the synod document assist toward this end, but its meager and disjointed musings on the critical issue of truth need more robust development. This is even more necessary amid the crisis of the age, in which the dictatorship of relativism has entranced and enslaved so many people, young and old. The document’s main reflection on truth is limited to two paragraphs (out of more than 200), and they merit scrutiny. Here is the first:

54. With varying degrees of intensity, many countries in the world are dealing with “fake news”, i.e. the uncontrollable spreading of fake information through (digital and other) mass media and the growing difficulty of distinguishing it from real news. In the public debate, truth and reasoning seem to have lost their power of persuasion. This is why the term “post-truth” was coined. As one [bishops’ conference] points out, “in social networks and digital media there is no hierarchy of truth.”

This short section is titled “New Inquiring Paradigms and the Search for Truth.” However, neither the youth nor the modern Church has discovered any new paradigms in the search for truth. We can relax, go about the hard work of every age before us, and join them in the grand conversation, unburdened by any special enlightenment tied to youth or the modern age.

The section unhelpfully clouds the philosophical and theological pursuit of truth with the shallow political reality of “fake news” in “public debate.” The paragraph ends with a more helpful notion of this age being “post-truth” and lacking a “hierarchy of truth.” Unfortunately, these insights are just left hanging, without reflection, resolution, or guidance, as if there is nothing we can or should be doing about them other than to acknowledge them and silently surrender.

This seems to be pattern in other parts of the sprawling 61-page document: stumbling articulation of a challenge (often using the language and lens of sociology), acceptance of the situation as an irrefutable reality to which we must submit, and a sense that the youth are a superior foreign species beyond our ability to educate, rather than our children requiring confident teaching and parenting.4

Young People Want Truth

We see this unfold in the second paragraph:

55. Young people are particularly exposed to this climate, because of their communication habits, and of their need to be accompanied to ultimately find their way. In the world of post-truth, the sentence, “Christ is the Truth which makes the Church different from any other worldly group with which we may identify”, that [the pre-synodal meeting] uses, inevitably ends up having a different significance compared to earlier ages. It is not a matter of giving up the most precious hallmark of Christianity to conform to the spirit of the world, nor is this what young people are asking for, but we do need to find a way to convey the Christian message in changed cultural circumstances. In line with biblical tradition, the recognition that truth has a relational basis is a good thing: human beings discover truth once they experience it from God, the only one who is truly reliable and trustworthy. This truth must be testified to and practiced and not just corroborated and demonstrated, something the young people of the [the pre-synodal meeting] realize: “The personal stories of Church members are effective ways of evangelizing, as personal experiences cannot be placed in question.”

To unpack what is disconcerting about this paragraph, first consider the quote from the pre-synodal meeting that is cited in the second sentence above. The pre-synodal meeting was intended to gather the input of young people. The full paragraph from the meeting report is as follows:

All the more, the Church draws the attention of young people by being rooted in Jesus Christ. Christ is the Truth which makes the Church different from any other worldly group with which we may identify. Therefore, we ask that the Church continue to proclaim the joy of the Gospel with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.5

Contrary to the conclusions drawn by the authors of the working document, there is no indication in this quote that young people today need the Church to abandon past methods of evangelization. They ask the Church to “continue to proclaim” truth. There is no suggestion that the statement, “Christ is the Truth,” has any “different significance compared to earlier ages.”

If we accept the guidance in the working document, we might falsely conclude that Saint John Paul II’s inspiring World Youth Day VI message (the very theme was “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”) is incapable of resonating with this generation:

Jesus Christ meets the men and women of every age, including our own, with the same words: ‘You will know the truth and the truth will make you free’ (Jn 8:32). These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about the human being and the world. Today also, even after two thousand years, we see Christ as the one who brings men and women freedom based on truth…6

In fact, this message still speaks—perhaps even especially—to this generation. As the darkness increases, so does the brightness of these words.

Young People are Capable of Reason

Paragraph 55 of the working document states that “truth has a relational basis,” and we only discover it when we “experience it from God.” This leads to the problematic advice to primarily evangelize with personal experiences, “since they cannot be called into question”—as if calling things into question was a bad idea or inimical to evangelization or to the pursuit of truth!

The advice relates to the pre-synodal meeting report, where the participants state, “We also desire to see a Church that is empathetic and reaches out to those struggling on the margins, the persecuted and the poor. An attractive Church is a relational Church.” But that is far from suggesting—as the working document appears to do—that a relational approach to evangelization is the primary approach worth pursuing in this “post-truth” age.

In fact, youth need and want so much more. In the pre-synodal meeting report, young people call for the use of “modern communication and expression” to proclaim truth with “answers which are not watered-down, or which utilize pre-fabricated formulations.” The Church, they say, should frankly address gender and sexuality issues and “dialogue with the scientific community.” So young people want, as they have always wanted in every age, the use of contemporary tools of communication, forms of expression, and topics of discussion. But this does not—as the working document argues—alter the “significance” of the Christian message to young people today or suggest changes to the Church’s approaches to evangelization. Instead, young people need and even want the Church to continue to appeal to reason and to explain Catholic teachings—not to retreat from Catholic education, but to better help today’s youth know and understand truth.

We can and must do more than just share personal opinion and experience; we must share truth itself. In Catholic philosophy, truth has an ontological (reality-based) nature. A primarily relational basis for knowledge is the seed of relativism, by which truth is seen as a social construct or based on a relationship of power.

The working document does not itself embrace relativism, but it does read as if the authors have lost confidence in this generation’s response to appeals to reason, which abandons young people to the influence and temptation of relativism. It is false to claim that we need to experience truth to know it. We know many truths by reason, revelation, and trust in the wisdom of others: we will die; Washington crossed the Delaware River; there are atoms; murder is wrong; a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same location; there is the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The crisis of this age persists because the secular world limits truth to personal experience and denies our ability to make binding truth claims on others. This denial of the ontological basis of truth is not Christian.

The Synod’s approach, then, risks giving into the post-truth world, rather than rescuing our youth from it. The Church has a remedy and way out. It is the same remedy that we have always had, if we only remain faithful to it.

Restore Conviction, Renew Education

Catholic thinking, as philosopher Curtis Hancock reminds us, holds that when our senses are in good condition and functioning properly under normal circumstances, and when our reason is functioning honestly and clearly, we can come to know reality and have the ability to make true judgments about reality. We know that through study, reflection, experimentation, argument, and discussion—and especially divine revelation—we can know real things about the world, Man, and God. Of course we must share our personal compelling stories of conversion and belief; they are among the most powerful means of persuasion to be sure. But we must not surrender reason or objective truth in the process. This is precisely what the common culture already demands of our youth.

St. John Paul II, in addressing this crisis of truth, noted that:

The greatest challenge to Catholic education in the United States today, and the greatest contribution that authentically Catholic education can make to American culture, is to restore to that culture the conviction that human beings can grasp the truth of things, and in grasping that truth can know their duties to God, to themselves and their neighbors. In meeting that challenge, the Catholic educator will hear an echo of Christ’s words: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). The contemporary world urgently needs the service of educational institutions which uphold and teach that truth is “that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.”7

Contrast this with the working document’s brief section on catechesis (paragraphs 190-193), which indicates no apparent concern about “the educational crisis” that Pope Benedict XVI so often lamented, describing it to American educators as a “‘crisis of truth’ rooted in a ‘crisis of faith.’”8 9 The “religious illiteracy” of young Catholics and the exodus of young people from the Catholic Church are alarming, yet the working document makes no call for extensive, much-improved catechetical instruction. Instead, it claims that catechesis has a bad reputation among many young people as “compulsory and unchosen,” invites a review of catechetical programs with respect to their “validity for new generations,” and encourages “experience-based” as well as “content-based” catechesis.

The entire working document says little about Catholic education, as if the truths of our faith are not the keys to human happiness. To the extent that Catholic education is mentioned, the document fails to emphasize its traditional role as the Church’s primary means of evangelization. The document repeats Pope Francis’ ambiguous warning “not to proselytize” in Catholic schools, which was first made in 2015 and provoked some controversy—yet still, no clarification is offered.

This is no way to go forward with a Synod on Young People, especially amid the scandals in the Church and the secular assault on Christianity. We must be ready to restore conviction and actively uphold the truth. Modern culture is not infallible, and our youth are not oracles; both are subject to confusion and manipulation. Our job is to help young people find their way.

If we only tell youth what they already know or believe as driven by the common culture and their limited experience, they will rightly ignore us, because we have nothing new to say or different to offer. To effectively reach them, we must be faithful and authentic in making radical truth claims. Since the youth are wired to be bold, we must be bold; since youth is daring, we must be daring. They are attracted to misunderstood underdogs like us, as long as we are personally authentic and proud about who we are. It is radical and appealing to stand athwart this culture and proclaim that there are truths that exist, that hold true in all times and places, and that we must bear witness to for the good of all.

Many idealistic Catholic youth, eager to help change a world they know is in absolute shambles, will respond to this call. Because their world is already a mess, they do not need our permission or encouragement to make it messier. We can authentically challenge them to be more. To be advocates of beauty, seekers of truth, and architects of freedom is a task and adventure worthy of their properly oriented youthful restlessness and idealism. They are looking for answers, not confirmation of their confusion. They know the world they live in. They know it does not satisfy. It was not made to satisfy.

We, however, can play to our strengths by renewing faithful Catholic education and formation. We can embrace the human reality, “Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”

October’s Synod on Young People must reject dependency on experience as the primary means of knowing and learning, and instead strengthen the Church’s appeal to youth by reason and divine revelation. Young people, like all of us, need our Holy Mother Church to boldly and confidently proclaim the Gospel. Youth need truth.

 

 

 

Authentic Accompaniment: A Better Way for the Synod

The working document guiding the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment focuses on encouraging adults to accompany youth as they face new experiences and challenges. Regrettably, its accompaniment/discernment model falls short in three respects:

  1. it downplays the role of the adult,
  2. it downplays Church teaching and objective truth (reality), and
  3. it is overly fearful of rejection by young people.

As the bishops prepare to discuss the best ways to accompany youth in their October synod, they may benefit from the following insights from Monsignor Luigi Giussani, a modern master on the accompaniment of youth.

Accompaniment Properly Understood

Giussani (1922-2005) influenced the last three popes, especially through his teaching on the pedagogy of encounter and accompaniment. Giussani was a Catholic priest in Italy who was both a high school and seminary teacher as well as the founder of the influential Communion and Liberation movement. Pope Saint John Paul II named him Honorary Prelate to His Holiness. Cardinal Ratzinger, two months before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, presided over Giussani’s funeral Mass with more than 40,000 people in attendance. Although Pope Francis never personally met Giussani, he said of him, “For many years now his writings have inspired me to reflect and have helped me to pray. They have taught me to be a better Christian.”1

Giussani’s impact on these three popes is in part due to his insight that relationship and witness are among the best ways to stimulate the youth to commit to Christ. Giussani also emphasizes that the way to break through the cynicism and despair facing youth is to offer them an education that speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart, as God made it, and with an eye on the transcendent. He warns that errant cultural influences and the teen’s own impulsivity and impatience might obscure Nature’s original reality, power, and beauty. This rejection of reality, he warns, can then allow the teen to be fooled into creating his own standards and thus be at the mercy of whims and outside forces.

Giussani’s solution is to ensure that Catholic teachers and ministers act as stabilizing witnesses of a lived Catholic worldview and culture. This interpretive framework helps provide meaning to all reality and gets young people to commit to Christ as they progress into ever greater autonomy and authentic freedom based in truth.

His process works like this:

  1. The adult correctly sets up a proposal of a total meaning of reality via a Catholic “tradition” or worldview that is coherent and lived by the adult. This is the best way of providing certainty to the young person.
  2. The adult stimulates the young person to confront and personally commit to the verification of the proposal in his own life and test it against reality. This is the best way of ensuring free and true conviction.

In presenting this Catholic worldview in word and deed, the adult must not be indecisive, indifferent, neutral, or hesitant but offer it simply, clearly, and naturally, in full knowledge that the adolescent may still exercise his freedom to reject what he is offered. This is what Giussani calls “the risk of education.”2

Adult Guidance and Discipline

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, remarked in January that the Vatican seeks “a new relationship between the Church and young people, based on a paradigm of responsibility exempt from any paternalism.”3 Paternalism seems to be used here as a pejorative term referencing any attempt to limit a person’s autonomy to promote their good.

For an adult, paternalism is usually inappropriate, but by its nature youth is a time when responsibility is not yet fully developed. Providing young people with structure and rules while they grow in freedom and responsibility is something that teachers, coaches, and parents do all the time, as they strengthen young people for success in academics, athletics, and adult life. To abandon the Church’s role as mother and leave youth to their own designs is just abandoning them to other forces.4 Youth will get those standards and ends from somewhere.

Giussani reminds those who work with young people that youth can be fooled into thinking they have created their own standards, when in fact they are at the mercy of their desires, whether by prejudices dictated by youthful narrowness or ignorance or by outside forces leading them to harm. Freedom requires the use of guiding standards and a clear understanding of proper ends. The role of Catholic mentors is to present and live another way, so as to provide the youth with compelling options counter to the world.

The Synod’s working document describes a mentor in part as “a confidant without judgment” who “should not lead young people as passive followers but walk alongside them” (132).

However, “a confidant without judgment” is a role better played by a young person’s casual friend than by a mentor. Lack of input by adults in the life of youth may be interpreted as approval or indifference to a situation, precisely when the adults’ gifts and wisdom are most needed and even expected. The adult must discern the best way to help the mentee grow in the truth. That need not preclude offering definitive guidance in the right place and time, and even definitive judgment.

It is also helpful to remember that “following” is not necessarily passive. Graduate students follow the guidance of professors in conducting their own research, and professional athletes follow their coaches. Radical autonomy is rare, even in adult life. Adults often need to follow other adults on the path to greater health, holiness, and wisdom. Caring guides walk beside, before, or even behind those they lead, depending on the situation at hand.

Clear Church Teaching

From the get-go, the synod document seems so intent on emphasizing the need to meet youth where they are, that the more important reality of “where do youth ultimately need to be?” goes unstated.

It is a best practice to start with the end in mind; in this case, the goal is for young people to be free and intentional disciples. The document, however, simply emphasizes a generic three-step discernment process—1. Recognize, 2. Interpret, 3. Choose—and the document itself is structured this way. But without clarifying a specific end, the process could be used in driver’s training or in career training, as much as in spiritual direction. Instead, a spiritual discernment process always needs to keep the goal of salvation in Christ clear and compelling, while acknowledging that salvation cannot be forced and can be freely rejected.

Earlier we saw how the document suggests adults walk beside and not judge youth, and in other places the document advises that mentors “do” rather than “say.” Specifically it tells adults “to realize they are a model that can influence others through what they are, rather than for what they do or suggest” (130, emphasis added). But this is not a “rather than” situation; it requires “both and.” It may be that the mentor is the instrument the Holy Spirit has sent to speak the words of eternal life to the young person. That must not be preemptively ruled out.

Self-imposed silence of God’s Word in the face of the real needs of youth could be akin to the story of the Good Samaritan, where the righteous pass by thinking, “Surely God or someone else will tend this wounded soul.” St. Paul explicitly exhorts us to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). Vatican II states, “nor is it enough to carry out an apostolate by way of example… they are to announce Christ to their non-Christian fellow-citizens by word and examples and to aid them toward the full reception of Christ.”5 Adults should ensure that the young have the truths of the faith and God’s Word before them. The youth have a right to know what we know and believe what we believe, which sometimes entails hearing the Word directly from us. Who else will tell them, if not us?

In other places the document seems to take a Rogerian non-directive and hands-off approach to discernment.6 Such an approach discourages offering clear guidance and, by extension, clear Church teaching or Gospel truth. It views discernment as:

a pastoral instrument, that is able to identify liveable pathways today’s young people can follow, and to provide guidance and suggestions for the mission that are not ready-made, but are the fruit of a journey that enables us to follow the Spirit. A pathway that is structured in this way invites us to open and not to close, to ask questions without suggesting pre-defined answers, to point to alternatives and probe opportunities. (2)

Perhaps if we did not know the meaning or end of life, the salvific role of Christ, and the moral teachings of the Church, this approach might make unqualified sense. But we know that the door is closed to many things, not the least of which are “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness” (Mk 22) and everything else which defiles us. Each of these has a pre-defined answer with no alternative or opportunity other than the clear call to repentance and holiness.

Adults must be sure and stable guides to youth. We must provide and model real answers from a Christian world-view, otherwise we have no business assisting them in the discernment process. Giussani emphasizes that an adult working with youth must present the truth which inspires him and then step back behind its overshadowing presence and be a living witness of love. This is often the key that will engrave the teacher in the student’s memory and engender feelings of fondness from the student.

Patience Without Fear of Rejection

The mentor puts himself at emotional risk in working with the youth. It is only natural and human for the mentor to hope and expect that the youth will respond with fondness to him or her as a person. And it is only natural and human to hope and expect that once the truth is laid out before the youth and clearly modeled in the person of the mentor, the student will “get it.” But in fact, the young person must be free to reject it all—and that rejection may be humiliating and hurtful to the adult.

For Giussani, it is precisely the risk of confrontation and rejection that helps create the young person’s personality in his authentic relationship to all things; it is here that he develops his freedom. The reality of rejection provides a real and clear inflection point: the point of risk and freedom.

This risk of rejection by youth is at the heart of accompaniment; we should not give in at the end and surrender truth to avoid being hurt or abandoned by the youth. Like the father of the prodigal son, we remain sadly behind, hoping for a return after the loving seeds of truth have been planted. The father neither follows the prodigal into the peripheries with enabling moneybags nor, as Anthony Esolen has observed, does he allow the son to re-enter his home unrepentant with alcohol and whores in tow.7 Rather, the father waits patiently hoping for a free return to the fullness of truth and life.

Compare such Gospel confidence and acceptance of youthful rejection to the Synod document, which worries that if we don’t let youth do what they want, in their way, and without comment, then we must either be “unbending judges” or “hyperprotective parents” who are responsible for driving them away:

…the Church “is brought into being” with young people, by allowing them to be true protagonists without telling them “it has always been done this way”… They expect to be accompanied not by an unbending judge, nor by a fearful and hyperprotective parent who generates dependence, but by someone who is not afraid of his weakness and is able to make the treasure it holds within, like an earthen vessel, shine. Otherwise, they will ultimately turn elsewhere, especially at a time when there is no shortage of alternatives. (142)

Again, the synod document seems to suggest a lesser role for adults; after all, the youth are the “true protagonists,” so it is supposedly necessary to shrink our role in the hopes they might decide to stay with us. But by definition a protagonist is simply a leading character, not the only character. In any good story the leading character will confront challenging realities presented by others that result either in growing in freedom and virtue or falling into vice and ruin. Adults must play their part, even if it risks ruin.

We have to at some point risk rejection and make “The Ask”: to speak the words of Christ, “Come follow Me.” We must lovingly show them that Christ and His Church present a different way—a path out of contemporary shallowness and despair. We enter their world, no matter what world they are in, to show them the beauty and wonder of God’s world and point the way to Christ. We accompany them, sometimes by their side, sometimes leading them, but always in word and example, pointing the way to truth and proposing meaning, so that they might come to love Him, know Him, and—in their own turn—share Him with the world, even at great risk.