I’ve never been to a World Youth Day. I don’t really know much about them.
My sense has been they are a chance for Catholic youth to gather—as young people love to do. For young people, the excitement of gathering is the point.
(Brief aside: How many RSVPs do you think you’d get if you invited 50-year-olds to gather with a million other 50-year-olds?)
Anyway, it seems to me that Pope John Paul II used this perfectly natural impulse—the desire of the young to gather—for a very good purpose. Rather than inviting them to a concert or a protest, he invited them on pilgrimage, a journey to come closer to the Lord.
Nicely done.
So, how to interpret the recent comments of cardinal-designate Américo Aguiar, president of the World Youth Day Lisbon 2023 Foundation?
“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all. We want it to be normal for a young Catholic Christian to say and bear witness to who he is or for a young Muslim, Jew, or of another religion to also have no problem saying who he is and bearing witness to it, and for a young person who has no religion to feel welcome and to perhaps not feel strange for thinking in a different way.”
One reaction to this odd locution—I admit it was mine—is to groan. This guy is about to be a cardinal?
I mean, why even have cardinals? We already have UN officials and FIFA governors who talk in this way; what is the point of adding cardinals to the chorus?
On the other hand…(deep breath), there is something to what the cardinal-designate says. Religion is being relegated. To share religion, to be—really be—Jewish, Muslim, or Catholic—is increasingly seen by the world as a problem.
I’m with the soon-to-be cardinal on this. It is a nice side benefit of huge religious gatherings that they can normalize religion and help rescue it from the Suspect Activities list by emboldening people to be open about their faith.
On the other hand…(deep breath), it’s hard to just waltz past the fact that we have a cardinal designate saying, quite publicly, “We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.”
I mean…what?
It reads like a slightly too on-the-nose parody of a politically correct cardinal.
But it’s not parody. It’s not comedy of any kind.
It’s the other thing.