Vatican City, Mar 19, 2018 / 10:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis opened this week’s pre-synod meeting telling youth to hold nothing back and to have the courage to ask the “raw” and direct questions about life, love, and vocation.
In the March 19 opening session for the event, Francis told youth to let their questions come “without anesthetizing” them.
“The strong questions of ours can have a process of being played down in tone,” or asked in a “polite way,” he said, but urged the young attendees to “be courageous” and to “say the raw truth, to ask the raw questions.”
He spoke to French youth Maxime Rassion, who is not baptized. Rassion said he was facing doubts about his career and struggles to find a deeper meaning in life, asked what he can do to figure out where to start.
In his answer, Pope Francis noted how many youth have fears about similar questions, and said there is a need for discernment. However, “at this point, many ecclesial communities don’t know how to do it or they lack the ability to discern.”
“It’s one of the problems we have,” Francis said, and urged those in positions of pastoral authority not to be afraid to let youth “take everything out” that they are thinking or feeling, and to listen to the blunt questions that young people may pose.
“Accompany them so they don’t err,” he said; and on the other hand, he encouraged youth to find someone they can talk to about their experiences.
Talking is important, but “you can’t talk to everyone about everything,” he said, and told them to find someone “who is wise, who isn’t scared and who knows how to listen” to help them sort through the questions they have.
“It’s important to open everything, to open everything, not to put make up on your feelings,” he said, and cautioned against closing in on oneself, which “weighs you down and takes your freedom.”
“Let your feelings come up, don’t anesthetize them, don’t downplay them; look for someone wise [to talk to] and discern.”
Pope Francis spoke at the opening session of the March 19-24 pre-synod meeting, which has drawn some 300 youth from around the world to talk about major themes for the upcoming Synod of Bishops on “Young People, Faith and the Discernment of Vocation.”
Youth in different states in life are in Rome to participate in the event. Priests, seminarians, and consecrated persons will also participate. Special attention will also be given to youth from both global and existential “peripheries,” including people with disabilities, and some who have struggled with drug use or who have been in prison.
At the end of the gathering, notes of the various discussions throughout the week will be gathered into a comprehensive concluding document, which will be presented to Pope Francis and used as part of the “Instrumentum Laboris,” or “working document,” of the October synod.
In his opening speech for the March 19 session, Pope Francis told youth that “your contribution is indispensable” for the preparation of the October synod gathering.
Too often young people are talked about without being spoken to, he said, stressing the importance of having a “face to face” meeting where they can share their thoughts and desires.
“It’s not enough to exchange some messages or share some nice photos,” he said, adding that “youth must be taken seriously!” Too often youth are left alone, he said, and cautioned that in the Church, “it must never be like this.”
“We need to regain the enthusiasm of the faith and of the flavor of the search. We need to find again in the Lord the strength to recover from failures, to go forward, to strengthen confidence in the future.”
“We need to dare [to take] new paths, even if it involves risks,” he said, adding that risk is necessary because “love knows how to risk; without risk a young person grows old, and it also makes the Church grow old.”
Because of this, “we need you young people, living stones of a Church with a young face, but not using makeup: not artificially rejuvenated, but revived from within,” he said, explaining that the purpose of the synod is to accompany youth.
“Be assured: God trusts you, he loves you and he calls you,” Francis said, saying the Church, in the synod, must learn to have “new ways of presence and closeness.”
After his opening address, Francis heard testimonies from five young people: Tendai Karombo from Zimbabwe, Nicholas Lopez from the US, Cao Huu Minh Tri from Vietnam, Annelien Boon from Belgium, and Angela Markas from Australia.
The Pope was then asked questions from five youth, one of whom was a young Nigerian woman named Blessing Okoedion who was brought to Italy four years ago as a victim of human trafficking.
After suffering the “hell” of forced prostitution, she was finally able to escape and find healing with an order of religious sisters. In her question to the Pope, Okoedion said many of her clients were Catholics, and asked how youth can be made aware of the problem of trafficking, and how to fight the “sick” mentality that reduces women to being the property of men.
In his response, the pope said human trafficking is “a crime against humanity” which is ultimately “born from a sick mentality.”
“The woman is exploited,” he said, noting that “today there is no feminism that has been able to take this out of the unconsciousness” in societal thought. “It’s a sickness of mentality, it’s a sickness of social action, it’s a crime against humanity.”
Pope Francis then asked forgiveness “for all the Catholics who commit this criminal act.”
“I think of the disgust these young women must feel when these men make them do anything,” he said. What women endure is “unbelievable,” he said, and called the practice a form of “slavery.”
In response to a question posed by Argentine youth Maria de la Macarena Segui, who asked about education initiatives and what youth can do to make their encounter with the Lord last over time, the pope stressed the need for an integral education.
Francis said there is need for educational initiatives that follow a “head, heart, hands” model, and which “harmonize” these three aspects into a solid foundation for the person that takes intellectual and charitable formation and turns them into action.
He also responded to a question posed by Ukrainian seminarian Ylian Vendzilovych, who asked how young priests should act amid the “complex realities” of modern society, and questioned how someone preparing for ordination can differentiate between what is good and what is wrong in society.
Francis stressed the importance of community in the life of a priest, and pointed to the many priests who serve their parishes alone or in remote areas. In these cases, it’s important for both the priest and the parishioners to make an effort to build a communal relationship, he said.
“A priest is a testimony of Christ to the extent that he is a member of that community,” he said, adding that if there is not community in a parish, “the bishop needs to intervene.”
He also spoke out against the “terrorism” of gossip and clericalism, which he called a “sick mentality” that confuses the people and drives them away. “Attitudes that are not paternal, not fraternal, also worry me,” he said, explaining that when a priest becomes too rigid or worldly, “there is no witness of the mercy of Christ.”
“I prefer that a young person loses their vocation rather than being a bad religious,” he said.
Sr. Teresina Chaohing Cheng, a religious sister from China, asked how young consecrated people can balance their cultural formation and spiritual lives while fighting against a materialistic society.
In his answer, Pope Francis said good formation for a consecrated person is built on four pillars: the spiritual, intellectual, communal, and apostolic.
This means making sure religious are aware of cultural habits and trends, even those that are bad, while also having a solid foundation to help distinguish and discern what is harmful, he said.
Francis cautioned against keeping religious too sheltered and in the dark about what’s happening in culture and society, saying to “overprotect” them is not formation, but “annuls” their understanding and does them a disservice.
He said to do this “castrates” a person and takes away their freedom, and told Cheng to fight against this in her community. “Don’t overprotect,” he said, because doing so prevents people “from maturing psychologically” and from responding to people in need.
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This is very simple. An enemy of the Latin Mass is an agent of Satan.
We see the battlefield being shaped by Bergoglio on this emerging issue. It is not difficult to predict how this is going to play out.
I only wish that your analysis could be shouted from the housetops: an enemy of the Latin Mass is an agent of Satan.
89 years a man of the old school indemnified spiritually with the beauty of what the present age wishes to eradicate. Summorum Pontificum and much more. What was it if not the expression of the collective soul of a Church embedded with the soul of Christ. Wounds and all yet Christ’s image in its music and art. A hidden masterpiece written in the modern idiom with classical overtones The Sacred Concerto described by a critic as a musical depiction of a mystical renaissance religious painting. Werner Josten German emigre wrote The Sacred Concerto 1925, conducted by Leopold Stokowski four parts Annunciation, Miracle, Lament, Sepulchre and Resurrection. I recommend this lengthy spiritual song, perfect for contemplating our unsettling time strengthening what matters. Our faith in Christ the beauty it conveys.
“What was it if not the expression of the collective soul of a Church embedded with the soul of Christ. Wounds and all yet Christ’s image in its music and art.”
Yes, it was a true community of Christ with the faithful—a community bound together in worship, faith, hope, charity and repentance. Yes “…the collective soul of a Church embedded with the soul of Christ.” —a mystical envelopment or overshadowing of those participating, a most precious gift, intangible, yet filling the very being of those present, enabling them to bring Christ to others and others to Christ.
When will they admit that the Novus Ordo is a catastrophe of the highest proportions? The reason Summorum Pontificum is not as great as the Modernists expected it would be, is because the Modernists have done all in their power to block Summorum Pontificum. Should the heretics deny this then they are children of their father, “satan the father of lies”. If the Novus Ordo Mass is a revision of the Old Latin Mass then as St. Pius V declared in “Quo Primum”, “Let them be Anathema….They shall incur the wrath of Sts. Peter and Paul”. Strange how the Modernists have caused only division and they blame division on the Traditionalists. We have not separated ourselves from the Church, they are the ones who have separated themselves from Christ and His Church. If they damage and not properly promulgate Summorum Pontificum, let them be Anathema.
It is good to hear from Cardinal Zen a defense of the extraordinary form and of the beauty of Gregorian chant. It should not be forgotten, however, that the reform of the council did not abolish Gregorian chant. On the contrary, it stated that it has principal place in the Latin rite. A sung Mass celebrated in the ordinary form with Gregorian chant and ad orientem has its own very great beaty and sacredness.
It is indeed, although it is also exceedingly rare. In my own experience, I have found clerical hostility to the celebration of the OF in Latin with chant or polyphony on par with the attitudes toward the EF. That hostility, interestingly, also extends to the use of the Roman Canon in English as well.
It is impossible to trust a Bishop or Conference of Bishops, or a Cardinal or College of Cardinals, or a Pontiff, whether named Paul or Francis, who allows Bishops to restrict the ancient Mass, which seems after 50 years to indicate a widespread silent apostasy (the widespread apostasy that is reluctantly admitted by Fr. Robert Imbelli in his essay “No Decapitated Body,” referenced here on these pages 1-2 years ago), rejecting the eucharistic theology of the Roman Canon (which the “New Order ” labels the so-called Eucharistic Prayer Number 1″).
My conclusion about the impulse to prohibit the liturgy of the “non-Bugnini-Mass” (to paraphrase the late Laszlo Dobszay) is that such Bishops, Cardinals and Pontiffs reject the beliefs prayed in the liturgy of the traditional Mass, particularly they reject the beliefs prayed in the Roman Canon.
Such conclusion seems ratified by the idolatry event orchestrated by the Pontiff Francis in Rome in 2019, and the general “non-response” by Bishops and Cardinals, who by failing to themselves to imitate the behavior of the Pontiff Francis, and refusing in their own jurisdictions to orchestrate worship of the idol selected by the Pontiff Francis, have by failing to imitate him, silently admitted that the Pontiff broke the First Commandment, and orchestrated idolatry.
Thus, the prohibition of the traditional prayer of the Mass is understood to be a prohibition of Catholic faith, in favor of the new cult of silent apostasy and idolatry.
Chris,
“… the beliefs prayed in the Roman Canon.” The Canon was seen in English in the missal alongside the Latin column. The faithful could follow along with the priest which was very educational and bore much fruit.
Just an aside, some of the older pray books had a section in the back of the book with important writings from the Church Fathers. Very nice.
Rodemarie:
Thank you.
And yes I know, I was an altar boy trained in the old rite.
Your friend in Christ,
Chris
The Amazon Synod looks like a reversion to King Solomon and his foreign wives, who turned his heart away from God. With all the talk of schism it looks like the Church may be going the way of King Solomon and the divided kingdom. To me the Protestant Revolt/Reformation looks a lot like the division of the kingdom that happened to unfaithful King Solomon.
Novus Ordo was never authorized and was designed with the help of Protestants. The Tridentine Latin Mass is the ONLY authorized Western rite. In this case, it would be as the Mass officially stood at the end of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII in 1958 and before the “changes” introduced by John XXIII.