I have again today fallen on what is a very familiar rant in my mind. It concerns me and my youthful co-religionists, and it concerns a very bad display of reasoning in those whose mission it is to guide us through this transitory period of youth. No doubt these are sincere in their attempts to guide, and in many cases it may be due to ignorance rather than illogic that they fail; in any case, it is my intention to point them to the problem, that they might sooner find the solution.
Here is my thesis, and it sounds like a paradox: young Catholics have left the Church because certain Church officials have tried to be "relevant" to young Catholics. It would be truer to say that certain officials watered down Catholicism, or that they became "Catholic-lite", or a million other things that all inevitably suggest that they failed in their devotion and zeal for the Faith, and thus failed in their mission to give those gifts to us. But let us restrict ourselves to this affirming statement: that the Catholic Faith is now relevant to the youth. Even at first glance, it would seem a contradiction to suppose that the Church is now relevant for the first time in many centuries precisely when the entire Catholic world is seized of the desperate and obvious fact that the youth of today care nothing for the Church. And when, in contrast, the dusty, stodgy, stiff, and cramped conspiracy of old men that was the pre-Vatican II Church seemed to have no problem setting fire to the hearts and minds of many young men and women of its day; at least, of course, a sufficient number to fill the priesthood and the convents. Most modern spectators will place the blame on our society; and they'll find no argument from me there. But they will suggest instead that the youth-relevant liturgy, homilies, music, and youth groups have done much to staunch the wounds caused by secularism, and that it is merely by an unhappy accident that these things coincide with the attrition of young Catholics. It is not true; it is by cause and not by accident that these things occur in tandem, and I will take it on myself to try to demonstrate the link.
Let us begin with two analogies. First, suppose a master builder decided that wood-working and construction were not appealing to young people; indeed, most of them lived in houses and used furniture daily, and yet never paused to consider these wonders. We might say that it was obvious they took such things for granted, but that such things were still very necessary to them; that they were merely foolish in ignoring the house to focus on the toys. But suppose rather that our master builder decides to try his hand at building electronic devices instead, supposing them to have youthful appeal; and that in this crowded and fickle market, it was seen that he had not many customers, and his former customers, loyal though they be, found themselves without a use for his new trade. Again, suppose that Michelangelo or some such Renaissance artist were living in our time rather than his own. Now, we know that he worked many artistic wonders under the patronage of the Church, and that in this capacity, the bishops and popes had a influence on his work. But suppose those bishops felt that realistic painting was tired, or that marble did not appeal to Modern youth, and preferred to give their patronage to Catholic filmmakers, or television producers, or video game designers instead. Those treasures of Renaissance art would be sacrificed for fleeting and fast-forgotten pieces in ephemeral media, lost on the older generation and dated to the next generation, forgotten before effective in the furious pace of the technological world. The Pieta discarded for the Passion of the Christ; an immortal monument for a two-hour film.
Obviously these analogies are contrived, but they serve to show two important truths about the situation. First, the Church is like the master builder; she has ever been the only thing able to build a solid home for Man. And when she clouds this vocation, even for a moment and only in spirit, with a desire to attract people with shiny new things, she will appear to falter. She ought not worry and fuss over being appealing; better to wait for the obstinate youth to experience poverty and homelessness, so that he might begin to appreciate his Home. Second, the Church has her patronage, and her choice of artists. Surely it is not unreasonable to expect her to spend her resources on ancient and immortal art, and not squander it on quickly-broken toys; even more, it must not be unreasonable to imagine that she would win more hearts and minds with the beauty of the art than with the shine of the toys.
I have placed a strong emphasis on competition in both these analogies, because I feel personally that this is the motivation of many "relevant" innovations: they are trying to compete with Protestants, and with the world. This demonstrates a most puzzling ignorance of the mental condition of most young men and women. It seems to me that everyone who has been young knows that youth is a time of transition and uncertainty; it seems evident that we are looking for a place in the world; an identity; a home. And the world cannot offer it to us. We have already sickened of the despair of Modern philosophies; we have wearied of the emptiness of Post-Modern diversions; we are gripped by metaphysical doubts and wonder at their meanings. I once thought I was shamefully alone in having ever given thought to suicide, but the same feeling has since been affirmed by so many of my friends that I now believe it must be nearly universal in our generation. We come to the Church, as all men ever have, because we are fleeing from those worldly terrors. The last thing we ever want is something that even appears like it wants to imitate the trappings of that dying world; heaven knows we don't want it to compete with individualistic creeds or worldly negations. Consciously or unconsciously, every man or woman, young or old, who considers the Catholic Faith does so because he or she desires the Catholic philosophy; we may desire it for one of thousand different reasons -- one of the thousand ways it differs from any other philosophy -- yet it is always the same philosophy that is desired. We come looking for the praise of life, and living, and love, and the value of each human soul, against the despair of loneliness and suicide; for the unchanging and infallibly certain doctrines, against the soul-rending doubts of relativism; for the strict moral laws, against the confusion and regret of libertinism; for the experience of God, against our small, selfish lives.
So, as an open request to all who sit in positions of authority and decision-making in Catholic parishes, let me propose the following things as effective at attracting and keeping young Catholics. We don't want contemporary Protestant worship-music, or evangelical sermons; if we wanted them, we would attend Protestant churches, since they will always be better at them. We don't want vague and feel-good homilies, loosely inviting us to love and personal relationships with God; again, we could get this in any contemporary Protestant service. We don't want youth groups that are merely social organizations, without theology or moral exhortation; we can be social in school and secular groups. We want hard, honest, definitive, and uncompromising doctrinal statements; we want theological discussions on the Trinity and the Incarnation, and the thousand other Catholic mysteries that are deeper than all Modern sophistries; we want moral imperatives; we need penance, and want to be driven to the confessional; we want Latin, reverent liturgy, beautiful hymns, transcendent art and statues, and all the other things that engage the senses and tell us we're in the presence of the eternal. Most of all, we want to bow before God and celebrate the mystery that He comes to us, even into our very bodies, in the Eucharist. And we want a Home, something that gives us an identity and a culture. In short, we want everything the Moderns think old-fashioned, because everything the Moderns know about the human person is so terribly backwards.
So my plea to all Catholics is that we stop trying so hard to be relevant to the world. The Church already has what every man and woman on earth is really seeking; in the great phrase of Chesterton, the Church is the natural home of the human spirit. Our only mission, as the stewards of this great Truth, is to guard and protect it, and share it with all the world. We do that first and foremost by not being ashamed of what we have, and by not assuming that our beliefs are out-of-date or out-of-touch with anyone. We do it by being mirrors of the Church, as the Church is the mirror of the loving face of Christ.
On the subject of youth in the Church, I am reminded of the essay of Chesterton called "Shocking the Modernists." In it, he observes the strange ignorance of the Anglican Church of his day as they tried to adapt to bring in young people. I don't think Chesterton would have ever believed it if you had told him that within a century the Catholic Church would be attempting some of the same experiments. Mater Dei, ora pro nobis.
I once read a paragraph in a daily paper, about a notable outburst among the most advanced intellects in the Church of England, which bears witness to the promptitude with which such triumphs are appreciated. Under the two headlines of "Youth Finds Church a Bore," and "A Girl Tells Clergy," the paragraph, or rather series of paragraphs was arranged in a suitably sensational way as follows:
"Youth finds church a bore--and stays away from it. This contention, put forward by a girl of eighteen from the platform at Girton College, Cambridge, yesterday, made the elderly delegates to the Modern Churchman's Conference sit up sharply in their seats.
"The speaker was the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain. Her most telling passage was this: 'I don't think public worship has any attraction whatsoever for the young. Religion is supposed to express God through truth and beauty, we are told, but in this age of specialisation people turn to science, art and philosophy to satisfy those needs'."
I wonder what her least telling passage was.
Of course the fun really begins with the astounding and staggering effect produced by the original thunderbolt of thought "Youth Finds Church a Bore," on all those admittedly elderly delegates who were sufficiently ancient to be described as Modern Churchmen. Dr. Major leapt to his feet with a howl; Dean Inge bounced up to the ceiling like a ball. Dr. Rashdall uttered one piercing shriek and fainted; for not one of these venerable doctors, in all their long experience of the Modernist Movement, had ever heard one human being articulate with human lips the star-staggering blasphemy that youth finds church a bore. Not one of them had ever heard so much as a rumour of young people yawning during a sermon; to none had any voice dared to whisper that little boys have been known to catch flies or dig penknives into pews during Divine service; not one of them had ever in his life heard a baby begin to squeal in church; none had ever listened to the hideous slander that youths and maidens in church had been known to look at each other instead of keeping their eyes fixed rigidly on the lectern (for nobody in the church of a Modern Churchman would condescend to look at the altar); none of them ever knew before that there had ever been any friction between the fits and moods of youth and the routine of religion. Never, until the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain made this stupendous discovery in modern psychology, had they even thought of the possibility that a long religious service might be rather a bore to a boy.
But yet, even about that discovery, it seems as if there might be more to be said. Some of the elderly Modern Churchmen have been schoolmasters. It seems just possible that some of them had discovered that the Sixth Book of the Aeneid can be a bore to a boy. But in those cases it was not invariably assumed that the boy was right and the poet was wrong. It was not taken for granted that the boredom of the boy in itself proves that Virgil is a bad poet; still less did anyone ever propose that a simplified and modernised version of Virgil must be substituted for the old one. Nobody proposed that passages from Kipling about the British Empire should be substituted for the more austere salutations of Virgil to the Roman Empire, because such education would be more modern, compact and convenient to a truly National Church. Nobody proposed that a really smart and snappy up-to-date description of the Derby, taken from an evening paper, should be regarded as a complete substitute for that thundering line in which the very earth shakes with the horsehoofs of the charioteers. And, if I may venture to hint a disagreement with the Prophetess of Girton College, Cambridge, I think it will be found that the same argument applies even to the substitutes that she herself proposes. She says that people turn to science, art and philosophy. Will she swear by the Death of Nelson, or whatever oath binds the daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain, that no science student ever shirks or plays truant in a science school? It will be vain for her to swear any such thing in the case of an art school; for I have been to an art school myself, and I can assure her that there were quite as many art students who found application to art a bore as there could possibly be divinity students who found divinity a bore. As for young philosophers, I have known a good many of them; at an age when nearly all of them were much more fond of philosophising than of learning philosophy. And I might hint that there are other young agitators, of the sort that seem to agitate so strangely the Modern Churchmen and the modern newspapers, who seem to have a certain spirited and spontaneous preference for saying things rather than for thinking what they are saying. Is it really necessary that we should toil through all this tiresome repetition about the perfectly obvious difficulty of getting young people to work when they naturally want to play, before we even begin to discuss the mature problem of the relation of doctrine to the mind? It is perfectly natural that the boy should find the church a bore. But why are we bound to treat what is natural as something actually superior to what is supernatural; as something which is not even merely supernatural, but is in the exact sense super-supernatural?
G.K. Chesterton, from "Shocking the Modernists" from The Well and the Shallows (1935)
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