In U.S., Pope to Meet Youth Born in Age of Distractions

By LARRY B. STAMMER

Aug. 11, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES RELIGION WRITER

DENVER —

How does Pope John Paul II make his message--the promise of a fuller life--relevant to the thousands of young people gathering for his visit here this week when many of them are among the most privileged and well-heeled youths in the world?

How does he compete with the daily drumbeat of media messages from motion pictures, music, television, advertising and the printed word that hold out the promise of the good life or promote lifestyles and behavior that are anathema to Catholic teaching?

How would the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church answer the earnest questioning of Eric Hoff, a 14-year-old parishioner of St. Denis Roman Catholic Church in Diamond Bar, Calif., who says most of his peers think going to church is “dumb”?

As John Paul prepares to spend four days beginning Thursday with 164,000 youths and young adults here for the church’s eighth World Youth Day, his answers--and the youths’ responses--have never been more important for the future of the church.

A plurality of U.S. Catholic teen-agers--42%--say that religion is less important to them than it is to their parents, the Gallup Youth Survey has found. Another 30% say religion is more important, and 26% say they place about as much importance on religion as do their parents.

The survey also shows that Catholic teen-agers are far less likely than Protestant youngsters to attend Sunday school, to be active in church-related youth groups, or to sing in the church choir.

While the Pope will no doubt be greeted with deafening cheers when he arrives for a welcoming ceremony at the Mile High Stadium here, many of the young people present--especially those among the 118,394-member American delegation--strongly dissent from several of the church’s long-held teachings that John Paul has made a hallmark of his pontificate. Among those positions with which a majority of American Catholic teen-agers disagree are priestly celibacy and the church’s prohibitions against artificial birth control and women in the priesthood. They are split on the volatile issue of abortion.

Jeff Bowman, a 16-year-old parishioner at St. Denis, will be one of those cheering the Pope here. But he has questions. “All religions claim to be the right one . . . I think about it. Am I in the right religion? Is what the church saying right for me? I don’t know . . . exactly how I feel . . . about the church’s stance on abortion. I’m always questioning things like that.”

John Paul’s mission to evangelize the baptized is made all the more formidable by revelations of clergy sexual abuse that has made victims of many young people.

“The sensitivity to this is obviously deeply felt within our youth,” said Kristi Gonsalves, 22, of Portland, Ore. “My feeling is that it’s best to confront it, but I’ve noticed that the tendency here is that these delegates have already moved beyond it or it’s something that people are concerned about but would rather not talk about. It’s a difficult issue.”

Some, like Father Andrew M. Greeley, an outspoken Catholic sociologist and author, said John Paul should forthrightly ask for forgiveness on behalf of the church. While the Pope has pointedly condemned clergy sexual abuse during private Vatican meetings with visiting U.S. bishops and called it a “scandal” on the church, he has not spoken out in public.

“The best outcome would be for the Pope to call on American Catholics to do public penance for what (the church) has tolerated and (say) that the abuse will come to an end,” Greeley said. But he said a papal mea culpa is unlikely.

Today’s Catholic teen-agers are the second generation to live and pray in a church changed by far-reaching reforms ushered in by the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965. The changes virtually ended the Latin Mass in favor of the native language of the worshipers and encouraged far greater participation by the laity in the life of the church.

More troublesome for church conservatives, the liberal tendencies unleashed by Vatican II have barely been restrained in the United States despite attempts by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II to reign them in.

By some accounts, U.S. Catholic teen-agers are more liberal than their Protestant peers, even on issues like abortion. The Gallup poll said Catholic teen-agers are “slightly more likely” to support abortion than Protestant teen-agers.

Among Catholics, teen-agers are sharply divided. A Gallup poll last week said that 48% of them support abortion under any circumstances, while 45% favor an across-the-board ban.

Some 60% of Catholic teen-agers favor government-supported counseling centers to teach abstinence before marriage, Gallup found. But 86% support the distribution of free condoms to students in schools.

Catholic youth are somewhat more likely than Protestant youth to support gay rights, by a margin of 61% to 55%.

In view of the dissenting opinion among Roman Catholic teen-agers, some wonder if the American church is getting its message across. Enrollment in Catholic elementary and high schools--long a bulwark for the church’s religious instruction--is down. In Los Angeles, the nation’s largest archdiocese, for example, enrollment was 101,754 this year, a drop of more than 85,000 from 1965-66 levels despite an overall growth in the number of Catholics. Eighty percent of Catholic young people in Los Angeles do not attend Catholic schools.

Nationally, nearly 2.6 million pupils are enrolled in Catholic elementary and high schools, compared with 5.6 million pupils in 1965-66.

Many parishes are hard-pressed to fill the gap in religious education. They typically offer an hour of instruction weekly, compared with five hours in a parochial school.

Whatever the time spent on instruction, church leaders say there are areas in which teen-agers are receptive to Catholic moral teaching.

John Paul will likely find a more positive response when he speaks out against what he sees as rising materialism in the West, which he has assailed as strongly as he did communism in the East.

The theme of World Youth Day is drawn from the Gospel of John, and the Pope is expected to use it not only to vividly underscore what he sees as the ultimate hopelessness of a materialistic life but also the promise of a more fulfilling life of faith. The passage, John 10:10, quotes Jesus as saying: “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.”

“One of the things I noticed is that there’s a sense of being tired with some of the slickness and some of the glitz of the media that they’re experiencing,” said Tom East, director of youth ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Stephen Brennen, a 27-year-old delegate from Adelaide, Australia, said: “People have all these options and all these choices presented to us. We’ve got money. We’ve got spare time. We have choices. And the church is saying those choices won’t make you a better person. That’s where the difficulty comes in for young people in the developing world.”

That is not to say that today’s youth are single-minded in a spiritual quest or that they don’t hear competing messages.

The Catholic Educational Assn. said that in 1986, interest in materialism among Catholic teen-agers returned to a 1976 peak after a brief decline in the intervening years.

“We’re competing with some pretty strong value messages that are communicated by our society,” said Jerome R. Porath, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

In other cases, teen-agers are clearly turning to the church not only for guidance but also for sanctuary in a hostile world.

At St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church, located in a gang-battered South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood where there were four drive-by killings in two weeks recently, a handful of young people started a youth group a year ago that has grown to more than 47.

“We’ve been living with this (violence) a couple of years,” said 19-year-old youth leader Miguel Garcia, who is representing his parish in Denver. Three of the four youths killed in the drive-by shootings were parishioners. “It’s nothing new to us. We just see what we can do to prevent it . . . by having a family in the church,” Garcia said.

Huff, the young parishioner at St. Denis who said many of his friends think going to church is dumb, nonetheless said his church has been a comfort.

“When I have big thoughts on my mind, I go there to think it over and, I guess, talk to God. You know, mostly just to help myself through the problem or whatever,” Huff said.

Despite the dissension and problems, Greeley said that today’s teen-agers are not so different from their parents in their concern for others and views on the value of marriage and undesirability of divorce.

“Teen-agers that I know today are very like my own generation when we were growing up in the 1940s,” said Greeley, 65. “I don’t see all that much change. They may be somewhat more relaxed in sexual matters than my contemporaries, but they are still Catholic.”

* EXCHANGING IDEAS: Vatican expects free-flowing exchange of ideas when Pope, President Clinton meet. A16

Catholic Youths More Liberal

When Pope John Paul II addresses a World Youth Day celebration being held in Denver today through Sunday, he will find that Catholic teen-agers today demonstrate liberal attitudes toward social issues, even if they are at variance with official church teachings.

Approve of marriages between whites and non-whites. Catholic teen-agers: 87% Protestant teen-agers: 77% *

Approve of marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Catholic teen-agers: 91% Protestant teen-agers: 83% *

Oppose the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. Catholic teen-agers: 57% Protestant teen-agers: 51% *

Support public education efforts that emphasize safe sex. Catholic teen-agers: 61% Protestant teen-agers: 62% *

Favor providing free condoms to students. Catholic teen-agers: 86% Protestant teen-agers: 84% *

Support gay rights. Catholic teen-agers: 61% Protestant teen-agers: 55% *

Describe self as a born-again or evangelical. Catholic teen-agers: 28% Protestant teen-agers: 55% *

Feel the Bible should be interpreted literally. Catholic teen-agers: 29% Protestant teen-agers: 47% Source: Gallup Youth Surveys conducted over the past three years based on telephone interviews with randomly selected samples nationwide of 500 or more teen-agers, 13 through 17. Margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Pope’s Visit Includes Clinton Meeting

Pope John Paul II will be in Denver from Thursday to Sunday to celebrate the church’s World Youth Day. On Thursday, he will meet President Clinton for the first time.

DENVER EVENTS (Pacific times)

TODAY

* 6 p.m.--World Youth Day opening ceremonies, Civic Center Park.

THURSDAY

* 1:30 p.m.--Pope John Paul II arrival, greeting by President Clinton.

* 2:45 p.m.--Pope and Clinton meeting, Regis University.

* 4:30 p.m.--Papal welcome by World Youth Day participants, Mile High Stadium.

FRIDAY

* 6:30 a.m.--Pope holds Mass for U.S. bishops.

* 7:45 a.m.--Pope is presented with mementos by youths.

* 6:30 p.m.--Stations of the Cross, Mile High Stadium.

SATURDAY