What about beauty? Pre-Synodal meeting: "Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment"

The following excerpt is from the draft document of the Synod of Bishops XV Ordinary General Assembly, Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment, issued following the Pre-Synodal Meeting in Rome, 19-24 March 2018.

http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2018/03/24/0220/00482.html

The Arts and Beauty – Beauty is universally acknowledged and the Church has a history of engaging and evangelizing through the arts, such as music, visual art, architecture, design etc. Young people especially respond to and enjoy being creative and expressive.

Apart from the obvious conclusion which reads more like a drive-by observation from the window of a car speeding through the neighbourhood of young people's lives, it is true that art has been, in earlier times more than now, an effective vehicle through which the Church has communicated her message of salvation in Jesus Christ. Of course, with so many people now illiterate, unable to appreciate the true, the good and the beautiful, there is a pressing need to move from mere observation and the somewhat mediocre appreciation of the present circumstance as narrated by the Document to real leadership whereby people are formed in the language of the transcendentals. People must be taught how to recognize true art, which is to say art. The word "art" needs no qualifier because art, by definition, is the full embodiment of the true, the good and the beautiful. For many deprived of the real sense of the transcendentals, their "art" is a commodity which satisfies some base instinct.

Sociology or Soteriology?

Is the Synod intending to call people to Christ. Or, is it preoccupied with avoiding the hard bits and overly concerned with accompanying people so as to permit them to avoid confronting sin in their lives? Is the Synod more concerned with massaging the zeitgeist than speaking to the ageless condition of man? Jessica Harris says it well enough in a Catholic News Agency article:

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta so wisely said, “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.” This quote strikes me as something that anyone who works for the Church needs to keep in mind.  If we are faithful to God and what He asks of us, material success does not matter.  This doesn't mean that we should be careless about what we do.  St. Augustine summarized the attitude that we should have towards serving God when he said, “Work as if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God.”

Focusing on being faithful to God rather than what we would like to see as the outcome of our work means that we are recognizing that it's not all about us. Rather, we are “pencils in the hand of God” (Bl. Teresa of Calcutta) and, in so many ways, God's plan for our lives and for the lives of the people that we love and serve, will be a mystery.

God will give us the grace and strength to be faithful to what He asks of us, and “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Even if the work that we do does not turn out exactly according to our plans, we will see, again and again, that God's plan is infinitely better.

Does the pre-Synod document Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment discern the direction toward which the Holy Spirit is calling Catholics, young and old? Or, is it distracted by merely accounting for the inadequacies of modern liberal religion without having the spine to call people to authentic discipleship in Christ? Perhaps the document and its organizers have chosen a "soft sell" approach by using a particular orientation of language to first engage then, after "accompanying" the seeker, introducing him or her to the meatier stuff of religion...?

Does the document Young People read the signs and follow them or ignore them and merely drive past them? Synod organizers would do well to recall that in matters of faith and obedience to God, the number of people who call themselves Catholics is not as important as the degree to which Catholics are faithful to Christ. Anyone who disregards the teachings of Jesus yet claims to love Jesus would do well to reflect on Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of Saint John, Chapter 14 beginning at the 15 verse: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus continues: He who does not love me does not keep my words (v.24).

Here are some signs that, because they identify the obedience Jesus requires, are worth considering:

1a. traditional religious orders are booming with young vocations.

1b. liberal progressive orders are shrivelling.

2a. where leadership in dioceses is orthodox and the Mass is reverently celebrated, vocations to the religious life and the priesthood are flourishing.

2b. where leadership in dioceses is heterodox and the celebration of the Mass is rife with abuse, vocations to the religious life and the priesthood are practically nonexistent.

The Synod would do well to be reminded that effective leadership requires that leaders be well-formed in the Faith and that students of that Faith require clear teaching from their leaders.

Contrast the text of the pre-Synod Document with the witness of the following excerpt from an article by John A. Monaco, a graduate student at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, at the Catholic Herald:

(C)ertain prominent themes coming from a number of youth in the Facebook group were largely ignored – namely, ones concerning orthodoxy and liturgy.

By and large, members of the Facebook groups voiced a desire for orthodox teaching and reverent liturgy, including specific references to promoting the Extraordinary Form. On the writing prompt concerning the resources in the Church which promote spiritual growth, I counted over almost 30 specifically mentioning the Latin Mass. The basic tenor of the comments was the same: the youth’s ordinary experience of the Sacred Liturgy in the post-conciliar Church left them wanting something “more”, and many of these young people found their desire for transcendence and awe within the Extraordinary Form, a desire that could not be satiated by banal folk music and anthropocentric liturgical behaviour.

http://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2018/03/30/on-liturgy-and-orthodoxy-the-synod-document-forgot-our-voices/

Younger people hungry for orthodoxy and beautiful liturgy have grasped the necessity of obedience. That is, faithfulness to Jesus Christ, and not to count the cost of discipleship. The same young people want what every disciple needs: the Truth.

Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?—St. Matthew 7:9-10; St. Luke 11:11-12

The Synod would do well to remind seekers that grace is available from God to live the Gospel to the full. Do not rob seekers of grace by reducing the practice of the Faith to convenient and comfortable gestures intended to allow people to be comfortable "christians" stuck in their sins.

In the words of G.K. Chesterton,

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”–Chapter 5, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910.

The college-age Catholic students this blogger routinely encounters are hungry for authenticity, which is to say hungry for orthodoxy, the facts of apostolic Christianity.

The pablum of liberal religion does not grow disciples of Jesus Christ. Without an orientation to the transcendentals, mission is doomed to fail. Lacking a sense of the transcendentals, efforts to evangelize will fail. People need a diet of art in order to thrive, not just survive. Art is mystery "incarnate". People's hearts are made for capital 'M' Mystery, toward which all Catholic art should point. If instead of the Mystery seekers are offered the myth of liberal religion, then we can expect more of what we have seen in the 1970s.

Deborah Gyapong at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society weighs in:

https://anglicanorumcoetibussociety.blog/2018/03/26/young-catholics-release-pre-synodal-document-revealing-much-difference-of-opinion/