Natalia Imperatori-Lee - young Catholics - Brief Article

It's a scary time to be young, but to be Catholic, too? For my generation, the intersection of these two realities means living with a high degree of ambiguity and dissonance. We are the product of the post-Vatican II church. Judging the success of the council by its fruits in this generation, I have to ask if the church that produced Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, and Vatican II wasn't a better church than the one in which younger Catholics have grown up.

We are also products of the Internet: pervasive reachability, instant communication. This has spoiled us. We want the answers now. We want clarity now--the kind that the post-Vatican II church doesn't provide. What many of us are too slowly coming to realize is that no church, not even the one before Vatican II, could ever provide the kind of blueprint for religiosity that we long for. The "manual" theology, the neatly ordered morality of the past, is a pill we can't swallow--we are too savvy, too technologically proficient. We practice safe sex, not free love, but not chastity either.

This is an informed, information-driven generation. We know so much, we long for that which we don't know--hence the desire for "mystery" among many young, conservative, restorationist Catholics who hunger for a past idyllic church. But once the novelty fades, will the Tridentine Mass evoke mystery, or simply more boredom? Since we don't know any other liturgy than the reformed one, since we're unclear on the past, and under-involved with the present reality of the parish, we often mistake non-sense for mystery.

Perhaps Vatican II doesn't "work" for this generation because it requires commitment that's different from the neoconservative and neodevotional. It requires intellectual commitment. Not assent, but a genuine commitment to intellectual inquiry that involves risk--deep as well as horizon-broadening risk. This kind of risk-taking produced Vatican II and its implementation by pastors and educators--the kind of risk-taking that remaining a catholic Catholic entails. I'm not sure that my generation of Catholics is up to the challenge.

There are moments when I feel that I was born at the wrong time. I belong with the generation at the first Call to Action meeting (1976). I should have studied at the Gregorian (as a woman? Maybe not). I should have been in Rome during the council. I should have been around then, to see that the church is capable of miraculous self-renewal. What happened to the days of aggiornamento--the openness of the church toward the world heralded by John XXIII and so characteristic of the council? No one's throwing open any windows anymore--we're closing them up and winterizing. Are we keeping the world out, or sealing the truth in?

There remains a kind of openness appropriate for "emerging" adults. It's a difficult kind, because it requires openness to ambiguity. We need to admit that there are no easy answers. Ambiguity surrounds us, and there is no hermeneutic, no way of understanding the whole, certainly not after September 11. The hermeneutic of suspicion seems to have worn itself out--our generation is tired of suspicion, and wants what's on the other side. But what does that look like? No one said this postmodernity thing would be easy.

Maybe every generation of Catholics goes through this. I wonder what kind of Catholics my daughters will be. Will they do laundry for priests, or be priests themselves?

Natalia Imperatori-Lee is pursuing a Ph.D. in theology at the University of Notre Dame.

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