The young people of faith who are travelling to Madrid for World
Youth Day “are determined not to be prisoners of the past but architects
of the future,” according to Bishop Donal McKeown of Down and Connor.
Speaking ahead of the departure of a group 50
pilgrims from his own diocese and the diocese of Derry, Bishop McKeown,
who is Chairman of the Episcopal Commission for Vocations and Youth,
said, “Despite negative publicity and a hostile cultural environment,
many still hunger for belonging, peace with the past and a dream for the
future.”
Quoting the renowned American peace activist, Fr Daniel Berrigan, he
said World Youth Day, “still provides a focal point for that generation
of young idealists who refuse ‘to be distracted from distraction by
distraction’.”
Speaking of the context in which these young pilgrims are embarking
on their journey, Bishop McKeown said that there was much talk about
where Irish Catholicism goes in the context of the current challenges.
“Some suggest that only a radical break with a corrupt past will offer
any prospect of a future. Others are equally clear that only a return
to clarity and orthodox teaching can help people reconnect with faith in
Jesus,” he said.
The 61-year-old bishop commented, "As leaders at local and national
level seek to sketch out
ways forward, Catholicism – and all other
religious groups - will have to swim in a very different sea from the
one where my generation grew up.”
He suggested that one of the changes
emerging is an end to the century-long culture where religious identity
was something a person is born into and so part of who a person is fated
to be.
“Now faith is a matter, not of fate, but of choice,” he explained and
suggested that the new National Directory for Catechesis in Ireland
recognised this changed environment.
“Church will be less about keeping people in their allotted faith
community and more about inviting them to opt into a local church family
where they can grow in faith,” Bishop McKeown said.
The Bishop, who will participate in World Youth Day in Madrid, also
warned against local churches becoming a “transient and comfortable
‘holy huddle’ of currently like-minded individuals, based on a
supermarket approach to religious experience.”
He warned that diversity
and choice do not have to mean fragmentation.
He underlined that the core elements of the early Christian Church
were “the teaching of the apostles, the community, the breaking of bread
and prayer.”
Commitment to these core disciplines, the Bishop told
pilgrims, were “as much key parts of Christian discipleship in the 21st
century as they were in the 1st century.”
In a culture where the competitive consumer is king, faithfulness and
loyalty, justice and solidarity are not necessarily popular modern
virtues, he said.
“But faithful belonging to the imperfect pilgrim
People of God is not just a lifestyle choice that I make. I suggest
that there is little future for forms of Christianity that give more
space to my choosing, than to my being chosen.”
In a message of hope, Bishop McKeown concluded that leadership in
church and state is not just about articulating anger and repentance but
also about sketching a dream. It involves the Gospel value of pointing
out that those with a past can also have a future.
A special feature on World Youth Day 2011 is now available on the Bishops’ Conference website www.catholicbishops.ie