Young Catholics Get Word in Anaheim

Some danced in the aisles, donning the backward baseball caps and baggy pants favored by many teens. Thousands listened to a chillingly honest message about sex, and others shouted “Amen” in a provocative workshop meant to root out racism.

More than 10,000 Catholic high school students converged Thursday on the Anaheim Convention Center for Youth Day, the kickoff to the annual Religious Education Congress organized by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The event runs through Sunday and is expected to draw 20,000 adult delegates from as far as Poland and Australia to discuss Scripture, spirituality, homosexuality and AIDS, religion on the Internet, and a host of other topics.

Thursday’s Youth Day--which organizers called the biggest gathering of Catholic teens in the nation--highlighted one of the church’s greatest challenges: learning to speak a language that young people will listen to and understand.

“This is a prime time for evangelizing young people,” said Brian Johnson, associate director of youth for the Diocese of Galveston, Texas, and Thursday’s keynote speaker. “More and more, the church is realizing that we have to be about the business of reaching young people and really listening to them.

“It’s amazing to get 10,000 kids together on a school day focusing on their spirituality and their place in the church, and challenging them,” said Johnson, who worked the crowd with storytelling, soulful singing and some hip dance moves.

The Congress, dubbed “Embrace and Echo The Word,” opened with Johnson’s rousing call for youth to find the church in their hearts and live by their beliefs.

“If you’re in a situation that brings you down, if you’re with friends who aren’t really your friends and stab you in the back, you’ve got to change that,” he told the crowd. “It doesn’t happen overnight and it takes work. But God is good all the time. If you walk out of here today with that theme, know that everything is going to be all right.”

Luke Perez, a 16-year-old from St. Patrick’s Church in Moreno Valley, beamed throughout Johnson’s sermon and leaped from his seat to dance to religious rock music. This year marked his third visit to Youth Day.

“You get to meet a bunch of youth that share your common faith, and it’s a good safe environment,” Perez said. “There are tons and tons of Catholics. And I love the music.”

Joyce Fitzgerald, an event organizer from the Archdiocese’s Office of Religious Education, estimated that two-thirds of the Catholic churches and high schools from the Los Angeles region were represented at Youth Day.

More than a dozen Orange County churches and schools brought teens to the convention center. Others came from as far away as Brooklyn and Iowa.

“It’s fun. It’s an experience,” said Jesse Garcia, 15, from All Souls Church in Alhambra. One reason for attending, he said with a grin: “A lot of girls.”

“There’s God and girls,” added Luis Gracia, 16. “A little bit of both.”

Their group, wearing matching blue T-shirts from their church’s youth ministry, had chosen to attend one of the morning’s more provocative workshops: “Sex Has a Price Tag,” a hard-hitting presentation by Pamela E. Stenzel about pregnancy, intimacy and sexually-transmitted diseases.

Stenzel, who founded the Minnesota-based Straight Talk to educate teens about sexuality “and the importance of chastity,” told thousands of teens crammed into the convention center arena that she wasn’t there to make choices for them.

Speaking from years of experience as a pregnancy counselor, however, she shared the pain of other teenage girls and boys who had gotten pregnant, sought abortions, raised their children living below the poverty line, or found themselves paying hundreds of dollars a month in child support from meager salaries earned flipping burgers.

But her talk was far from prudish.

Sex, she told them, “is a good thing,” created by God. “It’s not a horrible thing that we can’t talk about in church,” she said. “And God wants to give you the best sex, the best intimacy and the best marriage. But because God is good, he gave you some boundaries to protect yourself.”

Marriage, she said, is that boundary, “but I know a lot of you sitting there don’t believe that.”

In a smaller gathering, Paul Ybarra Florez, director of youth ministry for the Diocese of Lubbock, Texas, challenged teens to face their racial prejudices.

Ybarra made a blackboard list of all the derogative names for whites, blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans, drawing from the audience’s wealth of knowledge.

“How is it that we, who believe in Jesus, continue to use these words every day of the week?” he asked the mixed-race audience, calling on them to “uncondition” themselves and take the risks of exploring worlds different from their own.

“He was bad,” meaning good, said Jorge Serrato, 16, one of about a dozen youth to give Ybarra a standing ovation. “His speeches, his humor, it changes your attitude about life.”

Serrato, who sported a shaved head topped with dyed-blond strands, made the trip with other youth from Holy Trinity Church in Greenfield, Calif. Lupe Arroyo, 17, also from Holy Trinity, said she was so moved by the workshop she planned to act differently when she got home.

“He changes the way you think about people,” she said.

Other Youth Day workshops included a talk on averting gang violence by Father Gregory J. Boyle, former pastor of East Los Angeles’ Dolores Mission Church; and how to use music to be more spiritual. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, presided over a liturgy.

The tone of the event, which continues through Sunday for adults, has yearly drawn the ire of conservative Catholics, who plan to picket the congress Saturday as “hazardous to the Faith of young Catholics.”

In an Archdiocese weekly editorial published last week, Mahony stressed that all congress speakers come “fully approved by the diocesan bishop where he or she lives” in order to “assure the fullest level of authentic Catholic teaching.”