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Wednesday, August 11, 1993     Page: 1A QUICK WORDS: VOICES OF FUTURE
CATHOLIC GENERATIONS CALL FOR CHANGE

Voices of future Catholic generations call for change
   
From Staff and Wire Reports
    Sixteen-year-old Marie Gilles teaches catechism to third-graders. After her
prom, she didn’t run to the beach with her classmates — she caught three
hours of sleep and then went to MassBut Gilles doesn’t attend the youth group
at her local parish in Connecticut. She goes with her boyfriend to his
conservative Protestant church, where there is a youth pastor who doesn’t look
down on teens, she says.
   
“When I go, he tells us we’re important. We’re just as important as adults.
That’s what I would expect from my church, but I’m not getting it.”
   
“Jesus was teaching in the temple at 12. Why can’t … people realize we
have something to say, too?”
   
Gilles is part of a new generation of American Catholic youth — a
generation from around the world that Pope John Paul II will meet at World
Youth Day from Aug. 11 to 15 in Denver.
   
More than 200,000 young Roman Catholics from 70 countries will be in Denver
for the festivities including 217 local people, most of them high school
students from 45 parishes in the Diocese of Scranton. They boarded a bus in
Scranton at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning to get to their 10 a.m. flight out of
Newark, N.J.
   
“If I were going, I’d feel special because not everybody gets to meet the
Pope. I mean, wouldn’t you?” said Sa’Ray Harden, 13, of Pringle.
   
Harden’s lucky, though — she’ll learn what it was like at World Youth Day
because her brother Matt, 15, is there with a group from St. Mary’s of the
Immaculate Conception Church in Wilkes-Barre.
   
And if the pontiff views U.S. Catholics as a particularly contentious lot,
unwilling to toe Rome’s line, wait until he meets their sons and daughters.
   
They were raised entirely in the post-Vatican II church. They are
unfamiliar with the Latin Mass, or the days before parish councils or
laypeople were able to serve as church administrators or distribute Communion.
   
Polls show nearly 30 percent of U.S. teens say they are Catholic, and 4 in
5 Catholic teens say religion is fairly or very important in their lives.
   
But that does not mean they are satisfied. In interviews, Catholic
teenagers around the country — rural youth in Indiana, suburban teens in New
Orleans, an Hispanic-Anglo youth group in Orlando, Fla., and high school
students in Connecticut — said they wanted their own place in parish life.
   
“Youth want to be part of something. If it’s not in sight what they can do,
they’ll stick to their own thing,” says Rafael L. Rodriguez, 18, who teaches a
fourth-grade religious education class and ushers at the Spanish Mass at St.
John Vianney Church in Orlando.
   
This is not the church of the future, says the Rev. Leonard C. Wenke,
executive director of the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry.
   
“This is the young church today,” Wenke said. “Young people are looking for
their place in the church community. And we miss the boat if we expect them
simply to come to church.”
   
Indeed, while adult Catholics are more likely than Protestants to attend
church on Sunday, Catholic teens are slightly less likely to go than
Protestant youths. And in a 1988 Gallup Poll, 47 percent of Protestant teens
said they were involved in a church youth group, compared with 18 percent of
Catholics.
   
But authorities like Wenke say this is not evidence of a lack of interest
in Catholicism — it is an indicator that youth want more from their church.
   
Unlike their parents and grandparents, who were apt to confine themselves
to roles such as altar servers, these Catholic teens are catechists, lectors,
ushers, Eucharistic ministers and even members of parish councils.
   
They are not fidgeting in church basements during hour-long lectures by
religion teachers, but are going off on retreats to discuss among themselves
issues such as abortion, euthanasia and alcohol and drug abuse.
   
Sitting in the youth center at St. Andrew’s Parish in suburban New Orleans,
Ryan Helm, 17, said Mass becomes more meaningful when youths make the banners,
select the readings, serve as ushers and sing in the choir.
   
“Let youth get more involved in the service,” he said. “Let us have a
little more part of it, and maybe we’ll get more out of it.”
   
Lacey Hemard, 14, quickly adds, “And maybe you’ll have more people there
when they’re older.”
   
For most of these teenagers, church teachings are not an obstacle. In a
1991 Gallup Poll, three-quarters of Catholic teens said they tried to follow
the teachings of their religion. Only 6 percent expressed strong opposition to
church teachings in general.
   
In a study of teens at a Catholic high school in the Southwest, sociologist
Patrick McNamara of the University of New Mexico found that while they might
disagree with teachings on contraception and premarital sex, many supported
the church’s call for social justice on issues such as the nuclear arms race,
racism, the economy and even abortion.
   
In Connecticut, Anne Starkey, 15, urged the church to take a stronger stand
in opposition to abortion. “I just baby-sit with little children. When I see
them. I think it’s terrible that they die for no reasons. It’s really sad,”
she said, beginning to cry.
   
But they don’t want to be dictated to — they want to be involved and their
individual consciences to be respected. If Catholic leaders tell teens what to
do, said McNamara, “These kids will just take the on-off button, and turn it
to off real quick.”
   
“Everybody tells us that: Just say no. Just another person telling us is
not going to make much of a difference,” said Jamie Puderer, 15, one of the
teens in the youth center at St. Andrew’s.
   
“The best thing my priest ever said to me: `The church teaches a lot of
things, but don’t worry about what the church teaches,’ ” said Tom Wellman,
17, of Connorsville, Ind.
   
These teens “will remain Catholic, but they will remain Catholic on their
own terms,” says sociologist Andrew Greeley. “The Vatican’s style of just
laying down rules without listening just doesn’t work in this country.”
   
Nonetheless, multitudes of young Catholics want to join the pontiff in
Denver — the same pope who, during his last visit to America, in 1987, told
U.S. bishops it was “a grave error” to consider dissent from the Holy See
compatible with being a good Catholic.
   
Organizers originally planned for 60,000 young people from the United
States, but twice that number have registered, according to Sister Mary Ann
Walsh. Half of those attending are between the ages of 13 to 17.
   
And it wasn’t a matter of beating the bushes for bodies, she said: “Young
people said to bishops: `We want to go, can you arrange it?’ ”
   
What teens and youth ministry leaders say the convocation in Denver can do
is give Catholic youth, who may look around the parish on a given Sunday and
see only about 30 people their age, a sense of hope.
   
“One of the things World Youth Day is going to say better than anything
else: that they are not alone, that there are hundreds and thousands of people
that have the same beliefs they do,” said Paul Henderson, a youth specialist
for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “That is one of the most awesome experiences
of an event like this.”
   
It’s not always easy to be a religious youth. “We get a lot of flak from
people our age: `Why do you go to church?’ `Oh, isn’t church so boring?’ ”
said Catherine Mulligan, a student at East Catholic High School in Manchester,
Conn. “There’s a real lack of respect to all religion.”
   
Although it sometimes seems to 16-year-old Ann Munchel that “Catholic
bashing is the favorite activity” in the Indiana farming community she lives
in, “I don’t think I would change religions — I think — for anything.”
   
When a friend was killed in a car accident, she said the only thing she
could do was pray and cry. Now an uncle is battling cancer.
   
“My religion is something I really need to lean on right now,” she said.
   
That kind of faith is a tonic to any church. And if youthful faith is to be
encouraged, said Johnny Otto, 16, of Indianapolis, older Catholics must show
some patience with the young church.
   
“When you make your own decisions, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes,
but you’re going to come back eventually,” said Otto. “I think they should let
you find your own path back.”