But I walked away with hope, thanks to speaker Ellen Koneck, executive director of Commonweal magazine, who was frank and honest but also insightful and upbeat about the future of our faith.

Her April 14 keynote, subtitled "The Context and the Concerns of Young Catholics," kicked off a weekend-long gathering co-sponsored by the Catholic Common Ground Initiative and the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union.

"There is no reason to fret. The Holy Spirit is always creative," said Koneck, who is herself a millennial and formerly worked for Springtide Research Institute, which focuses on young people ages 13-25.

Koneck acknowledged what we already know about millennials and Generation Z: They don't trust institutions, skepticism is their default attitude, and they are leaving or never joining churches at higher rates than ever.

Yet even among the unaffiliated or "nones": 19% attend religious gatherings at least once a month; 38% say they are religious and 60% say they are at least slightly spiritual.

But even these questions about religious gatherings and "religious" and "spiritual" don't acknowledge that these and subsequent generations are "doing religion" differently, if they are doing it at all, Koneck said.

"Stats about disaffiliation are great for hand-wringing, but not that helpful for understanding young people," she said.

While religious institutions are understandably concerned about membership and attendance numbers, "membership is not a particularly meaningful metric for understanding a young person's beliefs or relationship to God or others," she said.

She also noted that concern about polarization in the church ignores the more pertinent issue of alienation among young people. In fact, polarized Catholics on the left and the right actually have much in common in that they care about the church — whereas many young people are already out the door.

"Polarization is a sign of passion, that the church is worth fighting for," she said.

When young people leave the church, "it must be received as a witness," Koneck said. "This is the work of our generation, of our generations," she said, to "roll up our sleeves" to address both polarization and alienation in the church.

During the Q&A, I followed up on Koneck's point about membership not being the metric, while noting that data about beliefs and practices also were not high for young people. If these things are not the metric, what is?

She didn't skip a beat with her answer: "Relationships." Continue reading

• Heidi Schlumpf is NCR executive editor.

Only 8% of respondents ages 13-25 who are affiliated with a religious group say they have a trusted religious leader they could turn to if needed.

In contrast, 45% said they could turn to a close adult friend, 35% to a grandparent, and 17% to a teacher, according to the study by Springtide Research Institute.

Informed by more than 150 interviews with study participants, the study's report released Oct. 20, titled "The State of Religion and Young People," proposes a new model for youth ministers to build personal connections, encouraging them to practice listening, transparency, integrity, care and expertise, the five dimensions of what it calls "relational authority."

Data from the 10,516 surveys conducted for the study also indicates that young people who have more adult mentors are more likely to feel a sense of meaning and purpose, and less likely to be lonely.

The study argues that close, trusting mentor-mentee relationships are key to mitigating isolation among youths and having lasting influence in their lives.

One respondent, Felicia, 19, said in her interview, "When I think of belonging, I think of being cared for and having someone show any type of genuine interest in how my life is going."

"We want to help those who care about young people to care better, and that requires a really clear understanding of the issues and challenges that young people are facing," said Josh Packard, the executive director of Springtide, which grew out of the team from St. Mary's Press that created 2018's "Going, Going Gone" survey on young Catholics leaving the church.

Michael Bayer, a former member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' National Advisory Team on Young Adult Ministry, told NCR he believes the church will only succeed in engaging more young people if parishes hire trained youth ministers who can train laypeople in the art of accompaniment, laid out in Pope Francis's encyclical Christus Vivit, the post-synodal document after the 2018 synod on young people.

"All the best practitioners I know are huge proponents of relational ministry and not programmatic ministry," he said.

"The challenge is that the majority of Catholic parishes and dioceses in the United States are not well-equipped to train people for relational ministry."

This is partly because Catholic ecclesiology emphasizes the sacraments above all else, he said, which can mean practically that parishes and dioceses with limited resources pour money into sacramental celebrations and ensuring that priests are available, instead of investing "financially, materially and temporally" in training people to do long-term relational ministry.

"It's really easy to pack a group of high schoolers up on a bus and take them to a one-day rally; it's really hard to train the adults and young adults of your parish to provide ongoing, one-on-one and small group mentorship and accompaniment over the course of their high school years," Bayer said.

Parishes or dioceses that have hired professionals who can train laypeople in relational ministry have been successful, Bayer said, citing Patrick Rivera's work as director of young adult ministries in the San Diego Diocese, which has one of the highest percentages of parishes with active young adult groups.

"Bishop [Robert] McElroy invested in full-time professional staff who could go out and could train young adults to do this, and you see the results," he said. Continue reading

'Your strength is not in numbers, nor does your might depend upon the powerful, but you are the God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, the supporter of the weak, the protector of those in despair, the savior of those without hope. Please, please, God of my father, God of the heritage of Israel, Master of heaven and earth, Creator of the waters, King of all you have created, hear my prayer.'—Judith 9:11-12

"What do you want me to do for you?" He replied, "Lord, please let me see."—Luke 18:41

There's something about the desperate confidence of Judith's prayer that resonates with me on such a deep level. Here is a woman with no earthly reason for hope, whose home is besieged by the world's most powerful army, whose future holds the promise only of suffering and death.

She knows there is no way out, nothing to be done to save her people. And still she volunteers for the job because she knows that while she is powerless, she serves an all-powerful God.

So she takes it on herself to do the impossible. And then she prays. She prays from the darkness to a God who can bring light.

She knows that the God of Israel is a wonder-worker with a heart for the helpless and she begs him to do what she knows he can do: save his people.

It's a powerful moment of faith, and one that is not unrewarded — read the book to get to know one of the greatest heroines of the ancient world.

I'm struck by the eloquence and the passion of her prayer. Time and again I've flipped to this page, praying for miraculous deliverance in a hopeless situation. I remind myself who God is, how he loves, what he's capable of, and I plead with him to hear my prayer. Continue reading

• Meg Hunter-Kilmer is a cradle Catholic and a revert, brought back to the fold by a grace-filled confession and the supreme logic of Catholic doctrine.

As I was thinking about this, I found myself almost immediately coming up with a list of the opposite.

I could readily come up with a list of traits that contributed to unsuccessful youth ministries.

I call these Fatal Flaws and I identified five of them. I wanted to share them with you to see what you think. I'm curious what you would add.

Fatal Flaw #1: Agenda Is Greater Than Relationship

I'm convinced that the relationships we make with students have to be seen as more than the vehicle for accomplishing our agenda.

I believe that the Christ-centreed relationships we make with students are just as important as the knowledge of God they gain through our ministries. Continue reading.

Andy Blanks is the co-founder of youthministry360, a ministry committed to equipping youth workers through resources, training, community, and networking. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama in the USA.

Source: Church Leaders

Image: Church Leaders

Many have chosen to avoid romantic relationships during college entirely in favour of "hooking up," no strings attached.

As they (and their male partners) describe it, money and status matter; but they don't just happen-they are the result of hard work.

If you want to become the head of the World Bank, you have to put in the hours. Relationships, therefore, become an afterthought at best.

The theory is that anyone can find a partner later in life and have a couple of kids.

This situation is troubling-but not because these women want to "put themselves first." It is important to have a good sense of one's identity and needs before giving that self to another.

The problem is that they seem so miserable while doing it.

Much like the sex had by the characters on Lena Dunham's HBO series, "Girls," the sex described by the Penn undergrads in the story sounds sort of grim; less like sex and more like work.

One woman describes the man she regularly sleeps with this way: "We don't really like each other in person, sober. We literally can't sit down and have coffee." Talking about their hookup she sounds bored, like the oldest 19 year old in the world: "[W]e watched TV, had sex, and went to sleep."

One woman said, "I have to be drunk in order to enjoy it" and reported being barked at to "get down on [her] knees" and thinking, "I'll just do it...it will be over soon enough."

Because the sex occurs outside of committed relationships and alcohol is involved, hookup culture can quickly lead to a culture of sexual assault.

Without love or friendship we are left with the language of an economic exchange, the sexual partner as service provider.

The women in the story speak of the "cost-benefit" analyses of having a relationship, and the "low risks and low investment costs" of hooking up versus putting the time and energy into a real friendship, which, they argue, may not lead to anything long term. Continue reading

Source: America Magazine

Image: Brennan Boom

Anna Nussbaum Keating is the co-owner of Keating Woodworks in Colorado Springs, Colo, and is co-writing The Catholic Catalogue, a field guide to Catholic practice and culture.

Cardinal O'Brien went into retirement after admitting "there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal".

The newspaper said Church officials in Scotland said the complainant left the priesthood in the mid-2000s, but has since returned to the Church.

The officials said they believed he complained to the Vatican last winter in revenge for Cardinal O'Brien's outspoken attacks on homosexuality and gay marriage.

The Herald said the complainant was known to have been in regular telephone contact with Cardinal O'Brien until recently and was a frequent visitor to St Benets, his official residence in Edinburgh.

The paper said the dramatic downfall of Britain's leading Catholic cleric was spurred by gay priests angry at his rhetoric and hypocrisy about same-sex marriages.

"All those who complained about Cardinal O'Brien and alleged they had been abused by him were known to him for decades. At least two are known to have been in same-sex relationships and had become exasperated at double standards in his statements about gay marriage.

"In the six months building up to him being forced to stand down last month, the cardinal had been under some pressure from priests to tone down the rhetoric.

"However, his statements, such as describing homosexuality as a ‘moral degradation', were a tipping point for those previously close to him."

One senior church figure said that while some fundamentalist Catholic groups had previously linked the priest with Cardinal O'Brien "there were many questions that others were asking about the relationship".

Another said: "One particular priest was a very close friend of the cardinal. It seemed to some to be a very unusual friendship."

Source:

Herald Scotland

Image: The Guardian