Young Catholics Seek to Restore Old Values

I came across this article today when I was occupying my time reading some Theology of the Body stuff online.

It's an article from the New York Times following the death of our beloved Pope John Paul II. It's a very encouraging portrayal of our generation of Catholics. There is hope for the future of the Church and we're in it for the long haul. For those of an older generation, do not despair, the generation x-ers care. Haha, so I'm not a poet, but really, this should be encouraging.

Here are some excerpts:

"At Catholic universities, these are the students studying the "theology of the body" - John Paul's theological justification for a conservative sexual ethic that includes opposition to contraception, abortion, premarital sex and some forms of assisted reproduction.

In seminaries, they are the young priests who wear the long black cassocks cast off by an earlier generation of Vatican II priests.

In their parishes, these are the youth group members who are reviving traditional spiritual practices like regular recitations of the rosary or "Eucharistic adorations" - praying for long stretches in front of the consecrated host."

"Data from the World Values Survey, gathered by researchers in 58 countries, tends to bear out impressions of a conservative trend. It shows that the "millennial generation" of young Catholics - those born in 1982 or later - has returned to the traditional religious attitudes and behavior of generations born before World War II, said Mark M. Gray, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. The values survey, coordinated by the University of Michigan, has been conducted periodically since 1981 by researchers who pool their data and make it available to scholars.

Catholics in the "millennial generation" are more likely to attend Mass weekly, pray every day, feel that religion is important and have a lot of confidence in the church than Catholics in either the Vatican II generation (born 1943 to 1960) or those in the Post-Vatican II generation (1961 to 1981), he said."

"In the 1970's, in the wake of the Vatican II Council, he said, priests let many traditions fall by the wayside. Now, he said, the younger generation is reviving devotional practices more familiar to their grandparents than their parents."