This
Journal

October
1999

Warning: This is a dry, ponderous piece. You might want to pass it by and come back later for some lighter stuff.

There's a pretty good article by Julie A. Collins in this recent issue of America (a usually useful Jesuit publication) called "Adolescent Male Spirituality". She says something that I've been thinking for quite some time.

"If...our faith is our way of making meaning out of life, teen-agers are clearly hungry for faith; many are searching for it with near desperation. The teen-agers I meet are constantly grappling with questions of meaning, and so, in that sense, their faith life is vibrant."

Now, it's always dangerous to generalize. Teenagers come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and wrappings (just like the rest of us). But one thing that has always attracted me to high school work is the intensity with which some kids approach the big questions of life. Often their first target is a perceived mindlesness among those who profess religion. One young friend has written (very late at night)

"everyone is supposed to think the same ....everyones not supposed to question just to believe because questing the lord is wrong i guess a person who doesnt question what they believe would say its wrong to question god but from where i come from id say that god would be quite happy with our questing hed be happy we were thinking for ourselves...but there you have the nutshell of the complete subjectivity of religion."

I take it that he feels he's getting a heavy dose of traditional authoritarian Catholicism at home and at school (threats of hell and all). But it's wrong to dismiss his concern as just more of the same old teenage feistiness. I think we need to trust him when he says,

"i never go out on this stuff to be a blind rebel and just to be stupid like immature nonconformists who dont conform for the sake of it .... i just go out to be true and to be right. if thats rebellious so be it i guess."

More adults should be wondering ("questing") these same things about the connections between their faith and their reason(s). Of course, many do already, but those of us within the institution are very conscious of the current pressures toward public orthodoxy. This tends to throw a pall of silence over genuine spiritual/moral questions. In effect, it keeps us from discussing our actual spiritual experience. We fall back on cheap pious platitudes or cynical silence. (God help us if we expressed our own doubts and fears, or if we spoke of our actual attitude towards religious practices.) Plenty of folks out there seem way too eager to pounce if we stray from a very narrow orthodox path. Many teens see this and, rightfully, rebel. Will we meet and engage them in honest dialogue or simply turn our institutional back on these "neo-pagan" smartass kids who are ready to talk about "the complete subjectivity of religion"? (Could this be the right moment to introduce him to William James? Nah.)

Today's youth know that they have spiritual lives (and more than a few of them know that these spiritual lives are all tangled up in the glorious mess of their families, friends, intellects, affections and sexual desires); they're just pretty critical of what the community tries to do with (and to) that Spririt through Religion. They see Authority trying to get everybody to fall in line. And, of course, they are not hallucinating. And, of course, many are not buying it.

I remember sitting sometime in the past year or so at a Barnes and Noble open mic night, listening to a kid read his poems - many of them very critical of the ways of The Church and the idea of God. I was thinking that I would not be too surprised to learn someday that this young man had entered the seminary. I remember thinking that if he could ever wrap his mind (and his heart) around some of these questions, he'd have a lot to say that was worth hearing.

Such are my thoughts on a chilly, rainy Sunday evening in Mundelein, Illinois.

We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
Victor Hugo