World Youth Day

John Allen’s articles this week on WYD are fascinating! Here’s a sample.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Cologne, Germany

Anyone who has ever attended a World Youth Day knows there are at least three sociological sub-groups among the hundreds of thousands of young pilgrims.

First are the most committed Catholic youth, active in their parishes or in movements, deeply engaged in the prayer and sacramental life of the church, many considering vocations to the priesthood or religious life. These youth do not have to be persuaded to attend World Youth Day; most would walk over hot coals to be here. For example, I ran into a delegation from Southern California on its way to World Youth Day at the 9:00 am Sunday Mass at Santa Susanna in Rome last week. There was a young man in the group who had Fides Semper tattooed in green gothic lettering on the back of his neck. This, it turned out, was not a reference to the Marine Corps motto, but to his deep Catholic devotion.

Would you like to donate to NCR?

Your support keeps
this Web site running.
——————————————————————————–

Second are those youth more marginally involved with the church. They generally attend Mass, either because their parents insist upon it or because they have a vague sense that doing so is important. They often like their pastor or youth minister, and have found a circle of friends in a Catholic campus center or parish. For them, World Youth Day is an opportunity to explore the faith more deeply, and to meet Catholics like themselves from around the world. They may not know a great deal about the pope, but most of them feel that meeting him is a “peak moment.”

Read more NCR coverage of World Youth Day
Report #1: Picking up where John Paul II left off. Posted Aug. 18, 2:35 p.m.
Correspondent’s Notebook: Who attends World Youth Day?; Benedict arrives; Condolences to Taizé; WYD trivia and Americans in Cologne; Visa problems; Security issues; Comic relief. Posted Aug. 18, 2:35 p.m.

Third are those youth with virtually no involvement with the Catholic Church; some may in fact not even be Catholic. For most of these young people, World Youth Day is simply a great excuse to travel overseas. In some cases, they may be attending because mom and dad would pay for this, while they wouldn’t pop for tickets to Lollapalooza; in other cases, they may have friends in one of the first two groups who asked them to tag along. You can spy these kids, because during the morning catechetical sessions, for example, they’re often the ones outside eating ice cream and playing hacky sack.

The magic of John Paul II was that when he arrived for the vigil Saturday night, or the Mass Sunday morning, he basically had the attention of all three groups. As a result of the experience, at least some of the youth in the third group entered the second, and some in the second moved into the first. Perhaps the numbers weren’t great enough to offset the generalized Western trend towards secularization, but it was impressive nevertheless.

The test for Benedict XVI will be whether he can inspire and motivate, in his own way, but with something resembling the same effect.

Read more here.

Please browse my Amazon sales and eBay items!