Mr Christopher Wilks
on behalf of The
Members and Alumni of the Australian Catholic Students Association
PresidentAustralian
Catholic Students Association
150 City Road, Darlington,
NSW 2007 president@australiancatholicstudents.org
12 October 2018
Synod Fathers
Palazzo del Bramante
Città del Vaticano
Synod
Fathers, youth ambassadors, and all the faithful participating in the Synod on
Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment, Cherishing the opportunity
presented by a synodal church, we humbly pray for your consideration of this petition.
Forming the young, shaping the Church
The young
do not want to shape the Church before the Church can form us. The world is confused.
And in this confusion, the young have nothing to grasp. We want the Synod
Fathers to remind the world that God will only deliver us when we cling to
Him in love.
1
His
Grace Archbishop Anthony Fisher recently explained to the Australian Catholic Students Association that Blessed John Henry Newman
was a major influence on the fathers of the Second
Vatican Council, in their teaching on the dignity of conscience and its need
for formation. It is because of Newman that the Catechism of the Catholic
Church describes conscience as ‘the aboriginal Vicar of Christ’.
2
But even
Newman saw the risk that ‘conscience’ could be interpreted as any man’s
“prerogative to be his own master in all things”.
3
Without
the Church and everything she offers divine revelation, tradition, community,
and reason itself - conscience has no substance. We need a reliable moral
compass. For this, the young need to be well-formed in the truth. We cannot shape the Church when we are not
formed. Formless minds will manifest a shapeless Church, constantly evading the truth. This formation takes a
lifetime, a lifetime the young cannot claim. Newman’s epitaph reads:“Throughout
his entire life, Newman was a person converting, a person being transformed,
and thus he always remained and became ever more himself.”
Every
one of us, like Newman, is a man or woman converting. How could we ever presume
to shape the Church, which as the Mystical Body of Christ contains within
it billions of life times of conversion, the hopes and prayers of all the faithful departed, the
wisdom and holiness of the entire Communion of Saints, and the conviction and
bravery of an ever-growing army of martyrs?
1 Psalm
91: 14-16
2 §1778
3 Letter
to the Duke of Norfolk, 1875
Like past
generations, today’s young will only shape the church when we are
ourselves formed. Then we will, God willing, take shape as Christ’s hands,
eyes, feet and heart.
Ambiguity
But we
can’t hope to take shape amidst confusion over issues such as contraception,
sexuality, communion for divorcees and non-Catholics, married priests and
female ordination. Such confusion is borne from senior prelates purposefully
employing ambiguous language when addressing such issues, even in the face
of Christ’s teachings, the Church Fathers and the clear dogma of the
Church. Such ambiguity is neither charitable nor desired by the youth
and needs to be addressed by this Synod. Some of the Synod Fathers wish to
avoid a Church of ‘rules’ which fail to encourage a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. However these rules lead us to Christ, they always have. We need
the Church to explain why and how this is. When the Church eschews the truth for policy-speak, young people are left with only
superficial banalities to express their beliefs. Deliberately unclear
words are, ironically, relied on and repeated with rigidity. The Church
should not discourage young people following its rules in love, nor its priests
from teaching them. As well as clarity in language, we pray for an increase in practices which help satisfy thesacramental
needs of our bodies and souls - pilgrimages, confession, devotions, adoration, sacred
art, music and architecture. The world can be an ugly place, and the
outward beauty of our churches should be rays of light in our communities,
particularly in the lives of the poor. The times show that the young are
searching for meaning beyond flattery. Many young people are enamoured by
public intellectuals such as Dr Jordan Peterson. He doesn’t tell the young that
they are fine the way they are. Though he is explicitly agnostic, he repeatedly
tells the young: “pick up your cross”.
4
In their
hearts, even people who have little faith somehow know that this image, this
instrument, the cross, gives their suffering meaning. Veiled in the language of
psychology, Peterson explores the significance of scripture unapologetically
and at length. But Peterson and those like him have a ceiling. They know some of
the truth intuitively, but they do not offer the fullness of truth because they
do not have faith. Only the Church can provide real meaning to our world.
The Synod Fathers need to accept this mission. The young want the truth,
unambiguously.
A worthy Mass and welcoming Church
In his
Synodal intervention, Archbishop Fisher apologised for “unbeautiful or
unwelcoming liturgies”. In preparing Australian youth for a Plenary Council,
his Grace asked us:
how can we ensure that we are praying and worshipping God in ways that
are worthy and welcoming?
The
balancing of these two concepts of ‘worth’ and ‘welcoming’ is the point of tension
for most.
Of course
we want our churches to be welcoming to everyone, we want as many souls as possible
to be received into the Church. But we also want the Mass to be worthy of the
profound claim it is making that the same Jesus Christ of the Gospel descends
to the altar body, blood, soul and divinity, in every instance.
The
problem is the debate over ‘worth’ and ‘welcoming’ is limited to what form
and what tone the Mass should take. This makes the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass look
like a battlefield between the faithful, when it should only proclaim the
victory of Christ over death, time and sin. The inescapable truth is that the
Mass and what it re-presents is profound. It is no accident
that the
Last Supper is part of the ultimate series of events of Christ’s earthly
ministry. When Jesus says “this is My Body”, it comes after all the parables,
sermons, and miracles which,
although
marvellous, only hint at the overwhelming claim He makes at the Last Supper.
If it took the Apostles such immense preparation at the feet of Christ himself
(and even then
they
didn’t quite get it), how could we possibly hope to make the Mass ‘accessible’
to people
today? No
matter how much we try and make it contemporary or easy to understand, the Mass
escapes us. In bringing the Mass down to our level of comfort, we turn a
profound claim physically manifested in a glimpse of heaven, into a weird
claim which people struggle to take seriously.
Solution: wider use of the Divine Office by the laity
We can ensure a welcoming Church before it comes to Mass. The Synod Fathers should
consider encouraging the use of the Divine Office more widely. This would
complement the increasingly popular and fruitful practice of Eucharistic
adoration in parishes and university chaplaincies.
Imagine
the widespread practice of vespers in the same vein as the Community of
Sant’Egidio’s
evening
prayer, encountered by so many young people and pilgrims in Rome at the
Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. A warm, candle-lit refuge from the
world, passers-by wander in, clueless, are handed a psalm book by a kind hand,
and then gently guided by the community in prayer. This could be easily
replicated around the world. The Psalms are appropriate for
welcoming
people into the Church, as they continuously hint at Jesus’ coming,
preparing us
for His
awesome claim. And so we can achieve a beautiful and welcoming service, in
an ancient Catholic setting. Perhaps solutions such as this are part of
the answer to retaining a Mass that is worthy, and promoting a Church that is
welcoming?
Conclusion
Newman
once meditated on Mary as the Mystical Rose. How did Mary become the Rosa
Mystica, the choice, delicate, perfect flower of God’s spiritual creation?
It was by being born, nurtured and sheltered in the mystical garden or Paradise
of God.
5
Mary, as
the greatest of God’s creation, is a model to all of God’s people, no less for
the young.
But as
Newman explains, Scripture makes use of the figure of a garden when it
would speak of heaven and its blessed inhabitants. So how can we become
flowers in the Paradise of God, like Mary? We do not find flowers in the
mountain-crag, or rich fruit in the sandy desert. We will not find heaven
wandering the wasteland around us. We will find it by being born again in Baptism,
nurtured by the Sacraments and sheltered by the Truth in the Mystical Body of Christ,
the Church.
5 Meditations
on the Litany of Loreto, for the month of May
The young
do not want to look elsewhere any more. We do not only want accompaniment inthe
wasteland. Synod Fathers, plant us in the mystical garden.
Yours in
the Lord,
Members and young alumni of the Australian Catholic Students Association
https://es.scribd.com/document/391072904/Australian-Youth-Write-Letter-to-the-Synod-Fathers#from_embed
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