Woodstock Report | "I Wanted to Be Drawn Back In"

[Woodstock Report, June 2007, No. 88]

“Stories of Faith” was the title of the first part of Woodstock’s forum on young adult Catholics, held recently at Georgetown University (see Listening to the "Millennials" ). Woodstock asked Erin Delmore, a Georgetown senior and student journalist, to write about the discussion for the Woodstock Report. Here is part of her account, available in full online. Woodstock also releaseed an electronic occasional paper based on this event.

By Erin Delmore

A panel of Catholic Georgetown University students and young alumni gathered on February 6 for a forum titled “Young Adult Catholics: Believing, Belonging, and Serving,” hosted by the Woodstock Theological Center. Together with the audience, they discussed 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.

Rob O'Rourke

Aileen Tejeda

Jeffrey Brown

Six panelists were asked by Woodstock fellow and Georgetown professor Father Raymond Kemp to lead the discussion, and these students and young alumni were encouraged to speak candidly about their feelings toward the Church.

The panelists agreed that being Catholic is not only hard to define, but varies among individuals. Senior theology major Rob O’Rourke, who is involved in campus ministry and Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice, said, “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.”

Many students commented on how the busy pace of college life leaves little time for formal Church activities, and they echoed another comment by O’Rourke, who described service as central to Catholicism. Senior Chris Paulus said, “I think Catholicism and Christianity and what Jesus is all about [is] the service to other people, hopefully less fortunate than you. It’s pretty simple, it’s just a message of love, I guess.”

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 discerning why she is Catholic as distinct from any other Christian faith. The panelists emphasized that as cradle Catholics, their faith was chosen for them and that this is problematic for them at times. Some also felt they hadn’t been educated well enough in Catholic doctrine to understand the faith.

“I’ve definitely taken being Catholic for granted since I was baptized into it,” senior Aileen Tejeda said. She grew up surrounded by crucifixes and saint statuettes placed around the house by her mother. She attended Catholic school, and remembered being offered extra credit in school for serving as a lector at church. Tejeda said 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.”

Carrie Gladstone

Chris Paulus

Pati Notario

Georgetown alumnus Jeffrey Brown said, “I never really had a choice. I just did it because that’s what Mom and Dad expected of me.” Brown was deeply involved in his hometown parish St. Ignatius, in Yardley, Pennsylvania. He was also deeply shaken by the clergy sexual abuse scandal when a favorite priest was named in the scandal and two of his former pastors were alleged to have covered up the abuse.

“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. Talking about the issue with another priest and participating in a campus ministry retreat helped Brown renew his Church involvement. “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,” he said. “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-percent agree with everything.”

Theology major O’Rourke said he would love to see a future Church “encourage us to think critically about the issues before us and then formulate our own opinions. It would be great to have a Church that let each person be Catholic in a way that was right for them.”

The panelists agreed that the Church will need to change if it wants to hold onto this and future 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” today as it will be tomorrow.

With open discussions like this one sponsored by Woodstock, young Catholics will be able to engage in dialogue to help shape the direction of tomorrow’s Church.