Just days ahead of World Youth Day, a poll by social networking giant MySpace brands the Catholic Church “out of touch” with young Australians.
As you can imagine, the online poll which found that 77 per cent of the 14-24 set felt the church was out of touch with them, was reprinted breathlessly all over the continent even as Sheperd One landed in Sydney.
More than half (53 per cent) also said they would not participate in World Youth Day events because of the church’s stance on sexuality. 89 per cent overall rejected the Catholic Church’s teaching that they should remain virgins until they married.
This story about the “out of touch” Pope often came in the same newspaper which reported that thousands of pilgrims surrounded the airport just to get a glimpse of the Pontiff.
Pope Benedict is the only man in the world who can receive this kind of crowd and be called “out of touch.”
But I’m not sure being out of touch is such a bad thing, anyway. Because only something which stands outside of one can possibly be “out of touch.” I think the problem with so many churches is that they couldn’t possibly be out of touch because they are only an amalgamation or a reflection of one’s own desires and wants. They can’t call us out of ourselves. They can’t inspire us to be better.
I am reminded of a piece I recently read on a critics view of James Joyce.
THE LATE and rightly lamented James Simmons wrote perhaps the best critique of James Joyce in his poem The Catholic Church’s Revenge on James Joyce, writes Fintan O’Toole.
He accused the great novelist as having reproduced the very thing he had rebelled against by creating, in opposition to the church’s authoritarian majesty, “a towering Gothic prose cathedral”.
This “most democratic of writers”, Simmons argued, had ended up making his own church: “So the people cower/ coming near his creation and sidle in, astounded,/ and wait for official experts to show them round it.”
I think that in many ways, many of us create our own churches. We create our own personal towering spires to inspire us, our own gargoyles to frighten us, and our rituals and traditions to comfort us. But in the end, it is just us. And although these individually sized Churches have the advantage of never being out of touch with their creators they fail to inform, inspire, frighten or even comfort in any real sense.
The Catholic Church exists to be “in touch” with its Creator as well but the Church’s creator has the advantage of being God. The Church does not exist to be “in touch” with the 18-29 year old demographic.
The Church is not a democracy. It is so far besides the point to ask whether the Church is in touch or out of touch. The proper question would be “in touch with Whom?” As long as the Church is in touch with God, that’s the Church I want to belong to. When we ask if the Church is “out of touch” what we are actually asking is if truth is out of touch. It may very well be but that answer is an indictment of ourselves and not of the Church.
July 14, 2008 at 5:51 am
You will get an amen to that.
July 14, 2008 at 8:12 am
Excellent post!
July 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Well and truly said!
As a public-school teacher (evil, wicked, godless, satanic, predatory, America-hating, gay-promoting, blah, blah, blah public-school teacher) I observe daily that the observant Catholic kids are the most together emotionally and intellectually.
— Mack
July 14, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Your perspective is totally in touch with reality, and that’s above and beyond what the Call To Apostasy and FutileChurch crowds can ever hope to offer. Couple this post with the one earlier on the August “Conference of Cosmic Crapola” and the difference is crystal clear.
July 14, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I am an occasional reader of this blog and many others with differing viewpoints. I take pride in being informed from all sides. I don’t take as gospel the word of one side of an argument and often find myself comfortably in the middle.
No matter what you may say, the Catholic Church is just not relevant to the lives of most young people. As a Catholic I have mixed feelings about this.
I don’t want a completely secular world nor do I want a pope-headed theocracy.
I believe the Church would benefit greatly from looking once again at its tenets as it did for Vatican II. Many of the priests I knew well and attended many dinners with at Fordham would agree with me.
If the Church keeps simply saying the same thing over and over again, it loses its effect and that’s why so many people of my generation feel that while the Church’s doctrine on sexuality may have had relevance in the past, it has not grown with the times.
I fear for the Church. I honestly do. The Church’s views on love and charity and social justice are amazing and even revolutionary, when viewed correctly.
But the hangup on sex must evolve into a relic of the past.
Listen, the Church held many things in the past such as believing the Earth was the center of the Universe that it has now discarded as irrelevant.
The Church needs to take a long look in the mirror. And I think posts like yours only ingrain the Church even more in generations past.
July 14, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Anonymous said:
If the Church keeps simply saying the same thing over and over again, it loses its effect and that’s why so many people of my generation feel that while the Church’s doctrine on sexuality may have had relevance in the past, it has not grown with the times.
Regretable as it is, this statement shows how out of touch the writer is with his faith, and not how out of touch the Church is with it’s followers. The idea that sexuality is about PERSONAL rights to pleasure is purely a selfish one. It’s not about US, it’s about HIM. Anything we do which does not give Glory unto him is pointless. And having sex because it feels good, or it makes our partner feel good, is not glorifying God, it’s glorifying us, which is the root of selfishness and the root of sin.
It tok me over 40 years to learn that, and sadly I had to learn it on my own because the enlightened parishes I grew up with stopped preaching it. God be praised true teaching is coming back under Pope Benedict. All Thanks and Praise be to God.
July 14, 2008 at 4:36 pm
To Anonymous –
So you want to be able to have sex whenever and with whomever you choose and not have to be made to feel guilty about it? So you and your ilk think it should be the Church who changes and not yourselves? Are you really serious?
My dear, you need prayers not permission.
July 14, 2008 at 4:41 pm
God be praised indeed.
Dear anonymous, have you read the documents of Vatican II. If you actually take the time to read the documents of Vatican II, you will find the glory and the beauty within those documents expressing and presenting Herself to a secular world quite enlightening. They are fine documents explaining how to engage the world of today with the Church’s timeless teachings. Nothing has changed.
July 14, 2008 at 6:04 pm
No ecclessial community in this country has striven to be more “in touch” than the Episcopal Church yet that institution leads Protestant churches in declining membership. To this day, however, Episcopal Church leadership and their Anglican counterparts abroad insist even more innovation must be embraced if their institutions are to survive.
One wishes liberal Catholics, like Anonymous above, would note the irony of this situation and reconsider their prescriptions for the Holy Catholic Church. They do not, however, and more’s the pity. Thanks be to God for our Holy Father.
July 14, 2008 at 7:20 pm
anon~
as a memeber of the 18-29 crowd (just turned 23 last week!) i have to disagree with you. i’m a pretty typical 20-something and the Church and the faith couldn’t be more relevant to my life. it took me a while to fully see what she was saying and how it applied to me, but once i did, i was changed forever. the Church’s teachings cut me to the heart and inspire me to be better. in a culture where we are continuously inundated with sex, how can the Church’s teachings on sexuality not be relevant? because the Church isn’t saying what everyone else is saying. the Church provides a radical, life-changing, out of the ordinary teaching on the beauty of human sexuality and the meaning behind it.
every 14-29 year old dreams him/herself radical, life-changing, out of the ordinary, but few really are because they allow themselves to get caught up in the same old stuff. this “hang up on sex” is what is hanging up most of our generation! we fail to be extraordinary and free when we shackle ourselves to personal truths that don’t align with Truth.
i’m going to venture to say that most of the people myspace polled don’t know the full extent of the Church’s teachings on anything and go off of personal opinion and snippets of the whole truth. most people don’t take the time to look past the “remain virgins until marriage” to the why, the beauty of who we are, and the meaning of our sexuality.
i’ve read most of Vatican II’s documents, and, judging by your comment, you haven’t. it’s so sad for a generation who says they are so informed, to really not be as informed as they think.
July 14, 2008 at 7:46 pm
frucsciante! Fantastic reply.
Anon – your comment has, at its heart, a contradiction: in your own words, “But the hangup on sex must evolve into a relic of the past.”
You imply that it’s the Church that is thus hung up; in fact, it is the zeitgeist. The Church’s reply is to tell the world not to be so hung up on having so much sex with so many different people, but to embrace chastity.
Virtue transforms lives, and thus the world – and that’s evolution. The Church has been in favor of such an evolution since its founding. Being “in touch” and “relevant” means being tied down to the present age, and when it passes away, it takes the “in touch” crowd with it. It is in fact the surest way to become a relic of the past.
Here’s to hoping that you’ll get unstuck and start evolving with the rest of us.
July 14, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Anyone who would consider attending multiple dinners with dissent-spewing Jesuits from Fordham U. is both out of touch and touched!