SPECIAL REPORT

Youth in Formation
Four Scholars at Fordham Confront the Catholic Teen Dilemma
by Matthew G. Alderman

u t , w h y did Jesus get whacked? quoted the pert, red-jacketed woman on the stage. Laughter rang out in the long, low hall as veteran youth minister Margaret McCarty recalled a question from a bafed teen shed once heard in catechism class. Young people want to know the faith, she explained, and need an environment where an adult wont grin at theological terminology that is more The Sopranos than the Nicene Creed. Fordhams Pope Auditorium was packed with twenty-something youth leaders from Long Island, timid college students, mossy academic types, and a handful of black-suited priests. Next to me in the nosebleed seats, a gangly youth in a yarmulke emphatically scribbled notes. The evenings topic: Catholic Teenagers: Faith at Risk? Virtually nobody under eighteen showed up.

Smith explained that the National Study conducted nearly 3,000 parentchild phone interviews, with follow-up as the respondents grew older, supplemented by 267 personal interviews with teens in 45 states. As far as Catholicism is concerned, the results were appalling. When the seventeen interviewers nally compared notes, Smith recalled, we all . . . looked at each other and said, What is up with the Catholic teenagers? In nearly all sociological measures of religious strength, Catholics fared poorly, showing a thin connection to the age-old faith, both in their lives and in their imaginations. Mormons did the best, while Jews proved even more lax than Catholics. The study divides believing teens into four groups: the devoted, the regulars, the sporadic, and the disengaged. Catholic teens are most likely to be sporadic and least likely to be devoted. Of Catholic teens surveyed:
85% believe in God 71% have made First Communion 64% think that God is involved in their lives 62% pray alone at least once a week 40% attend Mass about once a week 40% went to Confession in the last year 23% are in at least one service or mission project

results depict not mass apostasy but the fruits of simple ignorance. On f irst seeing the numbers, McCarty had been struck by the difference between the reports subjects and her own charges: Where did they nd all these bewildered teens? The problem is not the fervent core, but the invisible millions who dont show up at Mass. Smith said one unique aspect of Catholicism distorted the study: Fallenaway Catholics self-identify with Catholicism more than lapsed members of other denominations identify with their former churches. As a consequence, their inclusion may have unduly darkened the studys ndings, at least in comparison with other bodies.

Modeling Parents
However f lawed, the statistics still cannot be explained away. A critical problem area is parental involvement in the spiritual lives of their children. For many Catholic teens, there isnt any, but there should be. Whatever facades teens put up, they listen to their parents. We will get what we are, encapsulated Smith. What parents model in the home, their children will practice in their own lives. This issue goes back to the spiritual formation of todays parents. Davidson, a sociologist of religion, remarked that even in the much-idolized 1950s, Catholic teenagers were more likely to be playing basketball in the parish gym than they were to attend Lenten liturgies. A comparison of the report with similar information from the last fty years shows a downward trend in faith just barely starting to turn around. Todays teens may be doing slightly better than their immediate predecessors. Davidson chalked this up to the traumatic shift that occurred in the 1960s as certain interpretations of the Second Vatican Council became prevalent in the United States. For instance, a breakdown by generation of those who go to confession at least yearly reveals this pattern:
40% of todays teens go 39% of the post-Vatican II generation went

Alarming Findings
McCarty, founder of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, was one of the evenings four panelists, brought together by the universitys Center on Religion and Culture. They had come to discuss the alarming findings presented in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith, principal investigator of the National Study on Youth and Religion and director of Notre Dames Center for the Sociology of Religion. Purdues James Davidson, Alison Donohue of Regis High School campus ministry, and Smith himself were present. Notre Dame president emeritus Fr. Edward Monk Malloy, C.S.C., acted as moderator.

Most apparent to the speakers was the need for basic catechesis. Teens need content, Smith remarked: They may rework it, they may reject it, they may do anything. . . . At least they have something to work with. The studys

54

touchstone | apr il 2007

 40% of the Vatican II generation went 58% of the pre-Vatican II generation went

Believing Problem

Oddly absent from the discussions was the idea that a misunderstanding of Vatican IIwhat Pope Benedict XVI calls the hermeneutic of discontinuitymay have aided the chronological slide. Indeed, the growing interest in Catholic tradition among some older teens and young adults was touched on only obliquely and almost dismissively. This was surprising, considering the documentation of this trend in Colleen Carrolls The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. McCarty welcomed an interest in older customs when pursued with knowledge and in the right spirit. Donohue thought such cultural divides irrelevant, saying, Teenagers are more innocent [in regard to the] polarizations, liberal, conservative. . . . I have to discipline myself not to put them in a category based on something quite innocent that they might remark. She took great pains to underline the nontraditional nature of the Catholicism her students practice. Adult preconceptions of the faith may hinder its passage to the young, she explained. For her teens, the faith depends on relationships and community. They are often syncretistic in their faith and prefer it to be grounded in experience rather than obligation. She seemed to welcome this generational malleability as proof of Catholicisms strength. Smith, by contrast, spoke of the vague faith of the young as non-Christian moralistic, therapeutic deism essentially the feeling that Gods out there, we should be nice to each other, and we should be happy. The problem with this, as McCarty pointed out, is that there is absolutely no Christian dogma in this generic, cross-denominational way of practicing religion. What solution do the panelists propose? Parental involvement remains key, McCarty explained. Our parents cant teach what they do not know, and we need to help parents express their own

heres a disconnect between them and the institutional church, says sociologist James A. Davidson of Purdue University, describing the Millennial Generation of Catholics born after 1979. And when they get older, they are not going to be like the Catholics of previous generations. They are going to be the Catholics they are now. One of the authors of a new book, American Catholics Today, he adds that belonging is not a problem; they feel comfortable calling the church home. And I dont think serving is a problem. Its the believing thats the problem. According to their study, which

used data from Gallup surveys, only 37 percent of this generation of Catholics believe homosexual acts always wrong, and only 21 percent think premarital sexual activity always wrong. Only 7 percent thought opposition to abortion a core Catholic teaching. The Millennial Generation makes up 9 percent of the Catholic Church in America.
The data is taken from Nancy Frazier OBriens Sociologists see strong identity, less commitment in young Catholics, published by the Catholic News Service, February 7, 2007.

David Mills

religious faith and identity. Adults must know their faith if they are to pass it on to their children. Davidson pointed out that a detailed knowledge of doctrine is not necessarily as important as a basic emphasis on the central place of the faith in family life. To achieve this, he said, the church must reach out to young Catholic parents, both those active in parish life and those outside of it. Malloy stressed that adult mentorship is essential in preventing peer leadership from becoming shared ignorance. It also gives teens something they can return home to after whizbang events like World Youth Day.

Centering on Christ
What aspects of religion initially attract teens must also be discerned. As Davidson remarked, Many young people dont want to start with Bible study or learning. They want to start with behavior and engagement and participation. With the proper guidance . . . they can be brought from that beginning point to a greater understanding of what the faith is all about and what it represents cognitively and intellectually.

The goal, McCarty said, is to bring together head, hands, and heart: headmost certainly teach them about what we believe; heartlets encourage them to develop a relationship with the person of Jesus; and handswhich is why mission trips are so important in this day and age. In the end, this synthesis centered on Christ as the one who workswho transcends left, right, and center, preconciliar, conciliar, and post-conciliar viewpoints. If, in the end, after all the mission trips and catechesis, we can show our teens the face of Christ, in all its compassion and charity, then we will have the greatest answer to the very serious and solemn question of why indeed Jesus had to get whacked.
Matthew G. Alderman is a freelance writer, liturgical artist, and contributor to several blogs, including www.thenewliturgicalmovement. blogspot.com and www.holywhapping.blogspot. com. He was recently named an assistant editor for Dappled Things, an online literary magazine for young Catholic writers. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he lives in Manhattan, where he works in the eld of architecture and attends the Catholic Church of Our Saviour.

apr il 200 7 | t ouc hs t one

55