Dear friends, here we go again. Young people are back in the crosshairs of surveys and analysis. A few days reading two news items appeared in the national press, I have taken a punch in the face, knocked capable of the best boxers around!
Two gloves in his face. First post: Nearly half of young Italians would be racist and suspicious of foreigners. Only 40% said they were "open to new ideas and new ethnic groups that now populate our country. It is the portrait offered by the survey, "I and others: the young Italian in the vortex of changes, "presented to the Chamber of Deputies.
The second column came from a perhaps even more ruthless news: more and more people consider alien to the Christian faith, so that we can speak of" first generation incredulous. "I Sixty-eight of their children's children who are ignorant of any Christian experience and knowledge. Faith is a thing of the past, that does not concern them, a concept from the history books.
I would like to dwell on this second point, that Don Armando Matteo explained in the book "the first generation in disbelief. The difficult relationship between young people and their faith "(Soveria Mannelli, tap, 108 pages, 10 €).
Young people are deaf and waterproof the great offer that you can also find in the parishes. With a beat you could say that the speakers are becoming more modern, the priests go from robes to jeans, but the churches are deserted by the younger generation. Faith is about a minority of young people who, as creative, is negligible within a mass that has a head and heart elsewhere.
The picture is bleak. But it gets worse. 90% of young people is a Catholic, chooses religious education in schools, but the church does not put nearly foot. Faith thus becomes a factor only cultural belief without belonging. According to Don Matteo (which is not Terence Hill, but the assistant of the Catholic University Federation Italian), we are learning to live without God and the church.
As usual, the faults are distributed: a little 'go to the parents, who first broke the drive belt of the faith from generation to generation, a little' Go to today's society, who suffers from narcissism and desire for eternal youth at any cost and by any means, but is weak in taking personal responsibility and community.
Something similar happens even in the church, good at organizing big events for the young, but very incisive in his daily pastoral proposals and unable to offer evidence to suggest there an agreement between faith and life. Faith, in fact, is perceived as a burden, a "deal" which is fine until you have children, but then ... does not matter anymore. So fall baptisms, confirmations, marriages and religious vocations.
accepted the challenge. Certainly faith is demanding, but worth it to live young! We must extend and customize the opportunities to meet. Maybe everyone could bring their own experiences of faith in Don Matteo. We are prepared to accept and raise. Who knows what Don Matteo - and we with him - not able to console themselves and may soon write another book entitled, "The grandchildren of '68 explain the faith to their parents."
Without underestimating this important survey on the relationship between today's youth and faith, we can say that it is not always so uncomfortable being a minority. He says even the proverb "A few but good! And then remember the strength of pinch of yeast in the flour? Those "four cats" who believe, let's do.
Diego Piovani
Xaverian Missionaries
N. April 4, 2010
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