Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Spiritual vitality of today's youth vs. encultured sterility of older generations? A false dichotomy

Guy Noir, again, commenting this time on "Rah Rah T(eam) G(ospel) C(oalition)" (Old Life, September 13, 2016).

Noir writes:
SO the overheated rhetoric of "new" evangelization and new forms of discipleship is not just a postconciliar Catholic phenomenon. This critique seems not so much curmudgeonly as correct.

Let's have impassioned preaching (do we Catholics though have that?), but let's also have talk about faithful living that sounds adult in its tenor, and not like what sounds closer to either what Knox called Enthusiam or what I'd call very bad European ad campaigning.
Excerpts from the Old Life article:
[The so often] repeated contrast between the spiritual vitality of today’s young people and the enculturated sterility of the older generation is naive.... [...I]f spiritual renewal is to be a sustaining presence in the church at large, it must certainly go beyond what theologians, preachers, [...]officials, and other professional Christian workers do for a living. It must even go beyond what lay people do in devotion, worship, witness, and Christian social involvement.

2 comments:

Clear Waters said...

I do see some hope in the youth. While it is true most continue down the path of dissolution, while this occurs a small minority become more committed than before. A small, but more committed body of believers, is better than a large but indifferent body, wouldn't you say?

Monte see Monte do said...

Certainly the once "small but more committed body" of modernists has swollen like a pus sac over the decades. Perhaps one day Our Lord will see fit to drain it. Or not. Either way, I doubt that youth will have much to do with it.