Young Adult Catholics: Believing, Belonging, and Serving On Tuesday, February 6, 2007, Woodstock hosted a two-part forum on Young Adult Catholics. The panelists in the first session were Georgetown students and young alumni talking about their own stories of faith. In the second session, sociologists and campus ministers presented their data on and experiences with young adults. Following is the program and an article on the first session by a Georgetown University student journalist. Raymond Kemp, Rob O'Rourke, and Chris Paulus Part 1: Stories of Faith: Georgetown Students and Young Alumni 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. Reiss Science Building, Room 112 Panelists: Jeffrey Brown, class of 2006, Yardley, Pennsylvania Carrie Gladstone, class of 2007, Shaker Heights, Ohio Pati Notario, class of 2006, Bethesda, Maryland Rob O’Rourke, class of 2007, Worcester, Massachusetts Chris Paulus, class of 2007, Syracuse, New York Aileen Tejeda, class of 2007, Hunts Point, Bronx, New York Moderator: Rev. Raymond B. Kemp, Woodstock Fellow Questions: What does being Catholic mean to you? What’s challenging and frustrating about being Catholic? What kind of Catholic Church do you want to build? Part 2: How Young Adult Catholics Live Their Faith 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Intercultural Center Auditorium Raymond Kemp, Catherine Heinhold, Carroll Ann Kemp, Dean Hoge, and Jim Davidson Research Study: James A. Davidson, professor of sociology, Purdue University Dean R. Hoge, professor of sociology, Catholic University of America Davidson and Hoge will present research from their book, co-authored with William V. D’Antonio and Mary L. Gautier, American Catholics Today (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), the latest in a series of studies about Catholic laity in America, with a focus on young adults. Response from the Field: Catherine Heinhold, campus minister and director of Catholic retreat program, Georgetown University Carroll Ann Kemp, SNJM, religion teacher and community service coordinator, Gonzaga College High School Moderator: Rev. Raymond B. Kemp, Woodstock Fellow Questions: How do young Catholics, the “millennials” born between 1979 and 1987, compare with the rest of the Church? How do young Catholics link creedal faith, commitment to the institution, participation in the sacraments, prayer life, and help for the poor? How do young priests compare with and relate to their lay peers and other priests? "I Wanted to Be Drawn Back In" By Erin Delmore A panel of Catholic Georgetown University students and young alumni gathered at Georgetown University on February 6, 2006 to engage in a forum titled “Young Adult Catholics: Believing, Belonging, and Serving” hosted by the Woodstock Theological Center. The student panel and audience members engaged in a discussion focused on what being Catholic means to them, what is challenging and frustrating about being Catholic, and what kind of Catholic church they would like to build for the future. Six panelists were asked by Woodstock Fellow and Georgetown University professor Father Raymond Kemp to lead the discussion on the Catholic Church as it pertains to young adults. These students and young alumni were encouraged to speak candidly about their feelings toward the church. Young adult audience members offered opinions and anecdotes as well. The panelists agreed that being Catholic is not only hard to define, but varies among individuals. Senior theology major Rob O’Rourke is involved with the campus ministry and serves his community through Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice and the Hoya Outreach Program. He sees his studies and his involvement as the ways in which he views his life as a Catholic. “I think a lot of people would say: This is the Catholic way to respond to a certain issue. And I guess my experience has been it’s hard to come up with what that means,” O’Rourke said. “For me, it’s about service. It’s about responding to Jesus’ call to discipleship. It’s about loving one another. It’s about being Christ for people in this world,” O’Rourke said. Many students commented on how busy college life leaves them with little time to devote to the Church, and they echoed O’Rourke’s commitment to service as a means of participating in their faith. Senior Chris Paulus has always had limited time to engage in community service projects, so he says he gives back to the community in his everyday life. “I think Catholicism and Christianity and what Jesus is all about [is] the service to other people, hopefully less fortunate than you, so hopefully you’re taking care of those in need…it’s pretty simple, it’s just a message of love, I guess,” Paulus said. Senior Carrie Gladstone spoke of being born into an Irish Catholic family and said her religion has always been a part of who she is. For Gladstone, the challenge lies in determining why she is Catholic as opposed to any other Christian faith. The panelists agreed that their faiths were chosen long before they understood the significance, and that this is problematic for them at times. They also said they feel as though they had not been educated enough in the doctrine to understand the faith they had subscribed to at such a young age. “I’ve definitely taken being Catholic for granted since I was baptized into it,” Aileen Tejeda said. She grew up surrounded by the crucifixes and saint statuettes that her mother placed around the house. She attended Catholic school, and remembered being offered extra credit in school for participation as a church lector. Tejeda said that her faith “was always something that was, I think, forced on me…but then I realized [it] was something I needed to do to be complete.” Georgetown alumnus Jeff Brown is what he calls a “cradle Catholic.” “I never really had a choice. I just did it because that’s what Mom and Dad expected of me,” he said. Brown was extremely involved at St. Ignatius, his hometown parish in Yardley, Pennsylvania. Brown was extremely affected when a favorite priest was named in a sexual abuse scandal and two of his pastors in the Philadelphia Archdiocese were directly involved in covering it up. “When the abuse scandal hit, [I thought] it’s either going to draw people away from the church or draw them back in. I wanted to be drawn back in,” Brown said. “I wanted to be drawn back in.” Discussing the issue with another priest and participating in the campus ministry’s AGAPE retreat helped Brown regain his involvement in the church. “It was just another great experience for me to be able to find some people my age, my religion that were having the same kind of issues and qualms with their faith life as I was…Despite my doubts and criticisms, I still always want to defend the church in some way, even if I don’t necessarily feel that I 100% agree with everything,” Brown said. Most panelists make time each week to attend mass. For Paulus, mass is an opportunity for celebration and to be challenged, though he admits that priests consistently fail to challenge him. Paulus schedules his weekend plans around mass because, he said, he is extremely grateful for every day and is reminded so because of his cousin, who died of brain cancer at age 16. “I truly am always feeling blessed to be alive, and I think one hour a week of just celebration and being challenged is the least I can do,” Paulus said. Audience member –Graziano said of his Catholic faith, “I love the message; I hate the messenger.” He is well educated in the doctrine but cannot relate to the majority of Catholic priests. “I demand a lot of the person up there because I consider him to be highly educated…If you’re going to sit there and tell me a homily, I need to know it’s not only going to relate to the guy sitting next to me, but it’s also going to find something that’s going to relate to me,” Graziano said. Gladstone said she felt that her upbringing in the Catholic Church was a huge influence. “It has formed who I am and my identity. In the decisions I make, I’m not really thinking about ‘What does the Bible or the Gospel teach?” It’s engrained in me; it formed my values.” Pati Notario does not focus her faith on the doctrine alone. “Rather than say, ‘Oh, I find it hard to believe that there’s a man who came down, sent, and supposedly divine, supposed half man and maybe he was crucified and then he rose from the dead. Yeah, right! I’d rather not say, ‘Okay I can 110% say that that definitely happened and that’s my faith. It’s more the values behind that. Even if you strip that story away, there’s still forgiveness. There’s humility. There’s love. And of course, there’s that faith,” she said. She recalled working for a Catholic organization in Peru one summer, and one afternoon in particular when she was chatting with a few of her girlfriends and one girl suddenly asked if they all would like to pray the rosary together. “I stopped for a second because that’s not what we hear here…And I mean, why not? That kind of normalcy of prayer, we don’t see here…I’m trying to figure out where that difference comes from,” Notario said. Audience member Matt Maranges, who remembered his high school days, when he used to accompany his Evangelical girlfriend to mass. “It was like God was more present there for them than God was for our church,” he said. The panelists’ opinions on prayer varied. Notario said her parents and grandparents influenced her habit of prayer. She recites Our Fathers and Hail Marys, and O’Rourke also said he favored more structured prayer. Paulus and Tejeda said they engage in a more personal reflection as prayer. Gladstone said she no longer prays like she did in her childhood, and instead takes ownership herself. She said that for her, prayer is a means of finding her inner strength. “I’m just more in touch with myself, and maybe that is God,” Gladstone said. The Eucharist is not viewed as a central part of being Catholic for the panelists. Tejeda attributed this feeling toward the lack of understanding at First Communion. “In the Catholic Church, you’re trained to do something, and you don’t really know what it means,” she said. “You shouldn’t be taught and trained; it should be a learning process.” Tejeda admitted that being Catholic is viewed as “boring,” “old-fashioned,” and “not fun.” She and Gladstone commented that they would like to see a future church that has more progressive policies on sexuality, birth control, abortion, and immigration. “It has become really difficult sometimes to be a Catholic and to be an educated young woman living in 2007. It becomes a matter of having to choose one or the other and limiting yourself,” Tejeda said. “It’s hard to belong to a Church where I feel like such a strong and independent woman and yet women can’t be priests…its frustrating to belong to something where I feel like my gender is kind of not recognized as being completely equal,” Gladstone said. She would rather see the Church deal with its issues rather than automatically condemn them. For the panelists, the future of the Catholic Church rests on forgoing a narrow-minded approach and instead recognizing that being Catholic means something different to everyone. “I know that this is an institution that is old and traditions, but I do think that it needs to be modernized because I’m afraid that there won’t be as many Catholics or there won’t be as many girls my age that want to become nuns or young men that want to become priests…it’s scary to me that years from now being Catholic is going to be something that isn’t available,” Tejeda said. O’Rourke said he would love to see a future Catholic church that “encouraged us to think critically about the issues before us and then formulate our own opinions because I think it would be great to have a church let each person be Catholic in a way that was right for them to be Catholic.” The panelists at Tuesday’s forum agree that the future Catholic Church will need to undergo change in the future if it is to retain this and younger generations, but as Paulus said, “No country, no business, no nothing would last unless there’s some kind of underlying value, some kind of underlying message that is just as true as could be for there to be a million plus people today in the world to be a part of this.” With open discussion like that exhibited in the Woodstock Forum, young Catholics today can engage in dialogue to help determine the direction of tomorrow’s church. Erin Delmore is a Georgetown senior and student journalist.