This could be a great thing. The pope being on twitter will help get the Church’s message out without going through the media filter.

However, this can’t be used as a substitute for real structural change in the Church. And its open to debate whether this will bring twenty somethings to their local parishes for mass—the tacit goal of all this I imagine: to get young Catholics to practice their faith.

More access to the pope doesn’t address the issue of lay people having little to no real influence or power in Church policies. The Church needs to incorporate lay people in the body of the church and endow them with actual say in parish closing, diocesan finances, and the running of their dioceses. New Media whiz bang gizmos aren’t going to make people forget that their local priest, for example, can shut down the parish finance council any time he wants or that a favorite priest can be reassigned any time without the slightest warning.

The Vatican might be in to the brave new world of New Media but too many parishes are somnambulant half empty places where everyone’s either 18 or younger or 40 or older. The bulletin being printed in color is their idea of new media. Here in Boston the average priest graduated high school during the Ford administration and they often brag about how technologically inept they are.

Church fathers are a strange bunch in that they drool over New Media while neglecting the traditional person-person way of evangelizing. New Media can be very useful in generating buzz but unless the Church’s goal is to create this amorphous, disembodied, web-centric layity, it’d be better to focus on adult faith formation in communities.

Some day young people will get over the novelty of the pope being on twitter; the question is: what will keep them following his feed?

And young people, have an amazing BS detectors that they use on parents and teachers. I shudder to think of the intellectual battles I’m going to have with my kids. They are not going to tolerate the Vatican’s sometimes murky explanations. 

Here in Boston our Cardinal Sean O’Malley about 6 years ago started a blog. When it debuted, there was an article in the Boston Globe, other press, and over 20 comments. The novelty wore off and the blog has degenerated into an endless supply of pictures of the Cardinal at different events, ceremonies, standing with mostly elderly men no one knows. Oh, and there hasn’t been a comment in months.

O’Malley isn’t the pope but he does spend much of in interminable ceremonies.

Great article Matthew!

Ted, as one of those young people who has a very sensitive BS radar that I have used and continue to use repeatedly on peers, relatives, parents, students, teachers, and professors, I will say this about the Pope for actually having read him:  all he needs to do is to be himself (and Mr. Warner’s suggestions are excellent ones so that they people get to know him better). 

Any precocious and genuinely curious young person who wishes to engage the Pope on hard questions will find it a fruitful endeavor.  Benedict XVI is intellectually and spiritually equipped to have these kinds of discussions with young people, and they will come away learning much.  He also makes it look easy, which is something I admire greatly.  The qualities that I describe that the Pope has—i.e. communicating and gently urging people to grapple with the Truth with humility and joy—are qualities that I have seen in the best students, teachers, parents, and professors, and are very rare among most people:  the stuff and sinews of life involve grappling with the highest things, and many, many people can’t be bothered, in part because we live in a culture that tries to anesthetize us from dealing with those questions, lest they are inconvenient to us or make us feel uncomfortable.  I note with wry amusement many a time that people claim to want a challenge, but complain that Christianity is “too hard,” whereupon they insist that its “hard teachings” be dumbed down so as to disregard them as of little consequence or importance in favor of the stuff they “like” while they “question authority”:  the problem, though, is that the “hard stuff” is what defines and reinforces the stuff you “like.”  Without it, the stuff you “like” will fall down.  And if you don’t question *all* authority in humility and honesty, including yourself, then “questioning authority” merely becomes an excuse for self-indulgence. 

You may be afraid of the future intellectual conversations and battles that you will have with your children, but I can assure you that the Pope is not, because he knows what is at stake.  He is not some crusty old man in Rome who is out of touch, and he respects young people by not condescendingly insulting their intelligence in a way that I have seen and experienced many a parent, peer, teacher, and professor do when they dumb things down.  I have studied and observed enough in both the secular sphere and now the Church to expect BS to arise wherever there are human beings, and know full well that not all BS and murky explanation comes from “the Vatican.”  Such is the nature of concupiscence.

The Pope knows that young people hunger for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, and he wants to enable them to seek it and live it.  Furthermore, Benedict XVI is acutely aware of the authority that he has been given as the Successor of St. Peter, wherein he is to serve others as the Servant of the Servants of God.  The Pope points them in the direction of the Truth, enabling them to want to engage in it and root themselves in it.  He is also acutely aware of the authority that he himself submits to, and that he is only human—again something else that I find sorely lacking in the average person who likes to brag about “having a problem with authority,” wherein the authority they least question is themselves and their supposed right to do whatever the heck they like.  The Pope urges young people to not be afraid of Christ, because Christ takes nothing away and gives one everything.  And in the end, he respects their freedom to either choose for Christ or to reject Him, while knowing that no-one is beyond God’s love and mercy.  He also has a far more nuanced sense of obedience than most people have, therefore:  he knows that assent must be thoughtful, and that obedience in good faith is not the same as blind obedience, which really would be obedience in bad faith.  I think that any young person who is honest with themselves and wants to get to know the Pope better will discover all these things:  they will come to learn that he plays for keeps, and that he’s not just being faddy.  He understands the nature of communication—not just message, but medium—having actually discussed it in his homilies from time to time.  He understand how all of these things are connected, which should excite many a young person who is learning to think deeply about a reality that is bigger than themselves, perhaps for the first time.

As for a favorite priest being moved, perhaps this is an opportunity for us to be aware that our priests are a gift from God, and that we should be grateful for them.  Furthermore, the moving of a favorite priest does remind us how much we are all dependent upon God.  All priests, whether we like them or not, to say nothing of the fact that God’s gift is something that they, like the rest of us, hold in earthen vessels.  Who are we to decide against the idea that since Father is such a good priest, the Holy Spirit might decide that another, more needy parish could benefit from him or that in the move, Father himself might be given a grace-filled opportunity to better become the priest that God calls him to be?  Priests are here because God’s wills it, and not at the request or pleasure of the laity.  Priests are priests for us, not themselves, but they do not “belong” to us.  And perhaps any seemingly lackluster or jaded priest needs our prayers, for they struggle greatly, and do not need our condemnation or our reminders that we prefer his predecessor.  Furthermore, perhaps a priest who shies away from the truth in the pulpit needs to know that his flock knows who and what a priest is and that they have his back.  Lay Catholics are as responsible for learning more about the faith just as priests are responsible for preaching it, and should not put all of the burden of catechesis on the priest or the bishop, but to help them out by actually caring to learn it.  That’s where our “power” lies, and I would also pose the following question to you:  is this power of which you speak meant for God’s glory, or is this power meant to get us what we want, when we want?  Perhaps the “power” of the laity lies in love:  how can we help our priests be who they’re supposed to be for us?  The new evangelization is one way, which of course must always complement evangelizing face to face.

Ted,

I don’t know how you can even suggest lay people’s voices are unheard in the church and that they are marginalized in any way. In your average Catholic Church, the laypeople almost run the show. They are involved in almost every conceivable ministry except the diaconate and priesthood. If anything, it’s the voices of the bishops that go unheeded.

And as a young Catholic myself, I can tell you that we crave tradition and ceremonies. We see the clear word of God being spoken out in the liturgy. While the Vatican certainly is murky about alot of things, I find this no different from what would be in any large church. As Catholicism grows more traditional and ceremonious, believe me, the young will come back. They already are.

And I wouldn’t venture to say that the hierarchy shies away from personal evangelization either. Like every one else on the planet, they are busy. They have used the new technology to adapt to be able to communicate with others despite this business.

You’ve studied and observed the secular world. I’ve lived in it. I’ve lived long enough to see the pastor of the church I grew up in admit to a multiyear homosexual affair with a high school boy and later be appointed to the parish of the middle school i went to, all with full knowledge of the cardinal. The only reason he’s no longer in ministry near children and not in prison is the statute of limitations (the best secular friend the catholic priesthood has ever had). I lived to see thst same pastor, admitted molester with dozens of acts of stuatory rape, live unsupervised and collect a pension from the people of my archdiocese. I lived to see the deacon who ran my confirmation die before he could face the multiple credible accusations of sexual contact wit underage males. I lived to see the priest who baptized my cousin s son be removed for sexual contact with an underage male. I’ve lived to see my current cardinal Sean o’malley thank in writing the secular newspaper for forcing his archdiocese to change its appaling negligence in handling abusive priests. I’ve long enough to learn that my archdiocese for 18 years was swcretly diverting some $80M in collection monies from the retired priest fund to pay for other expenses. The archdiocese ended running up a $100M deficit. I’ve lived to hear seminarians joling how theyve used their collars to get out speeding tickets amd get better seats on airplanes. i’ve lived to see men ordained to the priesthood forever only to be laicized. Such is the nature of expediency.

I love this younger generation but I worry about your appetite for the work of bringing institutional integrity to the church. Work that Was begun in 2002 with the sexual abuse revelations but has since seemed to stall. I worry about your glib reasoning about the Vatican BS and the logical consequences of it. You know that the Vatican is not the only source of BS. So because there are many human institutions spewing BS in addition to the Vatican, therefore there’s no reason to demand the Vatican to stop.

I worry that this generation will be more interested in fostering a false cyber relationship with a distant father figure in Rome rather than doing the difficult work of reforming their local parishes and also fixing structural flaws within the institutional church itself.

Be weary, my young articulate young friend, of yourself and others using the Holy Spirit to justify every action of God’s earthly ministers. I believe In the Holy Spirit and I believe it is active. But it has been invoked to justify insanity and cruelty too often by the wolves in sheep’s clothing. A beloved priest of mine is being transferred to cover for yet another priest being taking out of active ministry pending investigation of credible accusations of homosexual pedophilia. The archdiocese of Boston routinely transferred abusive priests with no explanation and no warning. Another priest was moved because he was too strident in his antiabortion views.

The power of which I speak is the power of checks and balances and recourse. The power of the laity to counteract an inept, dishonest,  and or negligent bishop And the damage that they can cause. If you doubt the damage that can be done please research Cardinals Justin Rigali, Bernard Law, and Robert Finn. Also research Bishop James Dupree from Springfield Massachusetts, A twice indicted child molester who is currently living unsupervised in suburban Maryland. The Catholic Church is the last surviving absolute monarchy in the Western Hemisphere. Each parish is run like a baronial fief with the priest as the Baron. Even things like a parish finance consult serve at the pleasure of the priest. Case in point in Massachusetts recently a priest was removed from ministry after embezzling $60,000 from his parish. The Parish finance council had noticed his actions but had neglected to confront him or informed the archdiocese because they wrongly assumed that whatever he was doing was licit.

Rachel, whether you know what or not you serve at the pleasure of the priest. Whatever ministry a lay person is serving in the pastor can shut it down without any notice irrevocably and permanently if he so chooses and regardless of how positive An effect it is having on the parish. Don’t think it doesn’t happen? I knew a priest once who decided to abolish the premass custom of greeting one another in the spirit of Christian fellowship Because it wasn’t reverent enough. It was gone and it stayed gone. The archdiocese of Boston is still suffering from the poor decision-making of its former Cardinal, Decisions that were made under advisement but without any kind of tempering voice. Why is institutional transparency and openness so difficult for an institution founded by Jesus Christ?

Have you ever wondered what is so anti-Catholic about having in place a body of laypeople to serve as a check and balance to the power of the bishop? Not to change doctrine mind you. Mostly people don’t have a big problem with Catholic doctrine. Studies have shown that fallen away Catholics fell away not because of a disagreement with the true presence or the eternal virginity of Mary but rather with boring dismal liturgies, a sense of disconnection, and having experienced too many arbitrary, Capricious, and self-serving actions on the part of their diocese.

Rachel, The only place the voices ofthe bishops goes unneeded is outside the church. Inside the church their word is law.