World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, was yet another reminder for the Church to honour its commitments towards young people to listen to their hopes, challenges and questions.
The final document of the Synod of Bishops on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment in 2018 stated that the Church must get better at listening to young people, taking their questions seriously, recognising them as full members of the Church, patiently walking with them and offering guidance as they discern the best way to live their faith.
WYD Lisbon could well be summed up as a fifth year anniversary celebration of Christus Vivit. “Listening is an encounter in freedom, which requires humility, patience, willingness to understand and a commitment to working out responses in a new way,” the document stated.
Five years later, Pope Francis travelled to Lisbon, particularly listening to sexual abuse survivors, Ukrainian pilgrims, university students, young people suffering from illness.
Looking at the celebration of the Lisbon WYD, America, the Jesuit review magazine published an editorial on “Four ways the Catholic Church can actually listen to young people.” The authors focus on the theme of Synodal Church where the young people are accompanied and attended without prejudices.
Listening is an encounter in freedom, which requires humility, patience, willingness to understand and a commitment to working out responses in a new way
Stop generalising: The first principle to remember is not to generalise young people as a unified bloc. The Church can take several steps to actively listen and engage with young people, but must avoid speaking of “young people” as if they all share a common perspective on or experience of Church.
Some of them might be drawn to traditional liturgies while some others feel at home in serving the community, engaging in charity works, while some might find deep meaning in both.
Millions of young people, already active in the Church, are eager for their gifts to be accepted and appreciated.
It is crucial to promote meaningful conversations and interactions between different generations within the Church. This exchange of ideas and experiences can help bridge the generation gap, promote mutual understanding, and ensure that young people feel valued and heard within the Church community.
Empathise with the young in distress: There are young Catholics who feel hurt and alienated by the Church’s teaching on sexuality and others who see its countercultural witness as a bulwark in a destabilising, relativistic world.
It is crucial to promote meaningful conversations and interactions between different generations within the Church. This exchange of ideas and experiences can help bridge the generation gap, promote mutual understanding, and ensure that young people feel valued and heard within the Church community
There are hundreds of thousands more who have not set foot in a church since their baptism or confirmation. There are also young people fighting in or fleeing from the war in Ukraine; young migrants risking their lives in the Mediterranean and on the Rio Grande; and others struggling in refugee camps across the Middle East and Africa.
To listen to all these young voices will require a new way of being Church, a Church that accompanies its people and is attuned to their hopes, doubts and lived experiences. The Church must admit its failures and offer something different.
The working document for the synod says that a synodal Church is one that “seeks to widen the scope of communion, but which must come to terms with the contradictions, limits and wounds of history.”
Own up one’s failures and be honest: Most young Catholics today have known only a Church marred by the sexual abuse scandal. Church leaders must be forthright with young Catholics about past failures and transparent in their ongoing efforts to hold accountable those who covered up abuse.
To be credible in the eyes of the young, Catholics should be honest about our shortcomings but unafraid to go against the grain of an increasingly flattened, materialistic world.
To listen to all these young voices will require a new way of being Church, a Church that accompanies its people and is attuned to their hopes, doubts and lived experiences. The Church must admit its failures and offer something different
For young people to show up at the table, the Church must convince them that they are speaking with adults who have their best interests at heart. We should ask ourselves: Have we failed to offer something different to these young people who are not finding community in parishes? Have we been bold enough in searching for new models of relationship? In a society marked by deep polarisation, have Catholics too often indulged in those divides instead of seeking to be agents of reconciliation?
In his book God Is Young, Pope Francis writes: “Adolescents seek confrontation, they ask questions, they challenge everything, they look for answers. I can’t stress enough how important it is to question everything.”
But he has also said that the Church cannot think “she is young because she accepts everything the world offers her, thinking that she is renewed because she sets her message aside and acts like everybody else.”
Can the Church teaching be aligned with modern values? Young people want to see Church teaching, especially where it relates to women, LGBT people and divorced Catholics, better aligned with more modern values. The Church needs to actively address the issues and challenges that young people face in today’s world.
For young people to show up at the table, the Church must convince them that they are speaking with adults who have their best interests at heart
By acknowledging and engaging with these issues, the Church can demonstrate its commitment to understanding and supporting young people, ultimately fostering a stronger connection between the Church and the younger generation. Serious discernment will be needed to find our way forward, and that will require the wisdom from within the Church, because the Holy Spirit may be working through their voices.
Involve young people in decision-making processes: There are small steps we can take today, like making sure young people are invited to serve on parish councils—and that parish meetings accommodate the schedules of working adults and young parents—that could foster greater involvement among young people.
To truly listen to young people, the Church should actively involve them in decision-making processes at various levels. For the first time in history, laypeople will have the right to vote in a synod, and among the voting members are college students and men and women in their 20s and 30s.
By including young voices in these discussions, the Church can benefit from their unique insights and experiences, leading to more relevant and inclusive decision-making.
Young people will always be among us, and as Pope Francis said at his first World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, they are sometimes called to “make a mess.” The Church’s job is not to clean up after them but to harness their restless, creative energy in service of the kingdom.
It is essential for the Church to actively seek out opportunities to listen to young people, provide platforms for their voices, involve them in decision-making, foster intergenerational dialogue, and address their specific concerns.
By taking these steps, the Church can create a more inclusive and responsive environment that truly values the perspectives and contributions of young people.
