Healing the World

Hope for the future. Excerpts:

...London and Madrid were dramatically drawn alternatives to the problem of being alone. On one hand there were young people who embraced a framework in which destructive violence united them in a demonstration of power. On the other were those who embraced a framework that demands something arduous of them in service to others.

The pilgrims in Madrid were given a special catechism, to which Pope Benedict wrote an introduction.

“I invite you: study this catechism,” he wrote. “This catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life.”

Youth culture offers a great deal aimed precisely at pleasing, even indulging, the young. But what the young need is a more sturdy framework than one assembled from their own appetites and immature ideas. There is plenty of bad news from Europe this summer; the good news is that its oldest framework, the Christian gospel lived fully, is still on offer, and has not lost its power to attract the young.