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What it really means World Youth Day is almost on us. Over the next fortnight The Record will be bringing you all the best of it as Anthony Barich and Sylvia Defendi report on the action. But what is it really all about? In this extract from The Cube and the Cathedral, his remarkable analysis of modern life and the Church, papal biographer George Weigel talks about what makes the WYD generation different from their parents...
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here is a generational issue at play in western Europe. Previously in The Cube and The Cathedral, I’ve mentioned the generation of 1968... much to this generation’s surprise, and chagrin, its children are not following uniformly in its footsteps. As I said above, I first became aware of this in 1997 in Paris. To the amazement of most of French high culture, the international Catholic World Youth Day, held in Paris in August 1997, was an overwhelming success: 500,000 young adults participated in a week of talks, conversations and religious services; and more than a million people packed themselves into the
PLUS: Geraldton to Broome WYD Cross and Icon photos Pages 2-Vista 3 Longchamp race course for a closing Mass with the Pope. Throughout the week, John Paul II and other Catholic leaders had driven home the message: sanctity is possible in modernity; Catholic faith can nurture a free society (liberté), human dignity (equalité) and human solidarity (fraternité). The response was overwhelming.
‘These young men and women, Cardinal Lustiger told his startled interviewer, don’t think that being Christian and being intelligent, engaged, compassionate and dedicated are mutually exclusive.’ And confusing, at least to some. The night of the closing Mass, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, who had long argued that Europe must be reconverted “from the head down” (ie, through a new evangelisation of intellectuals and youth), appeared on French national
television. The anchorman, a child of 1968 straight out of central casting, asked the cardinal to explain the inexplicable: why, in the middle of summer holidays, had this vast crowd come to Paris to pray? Lustiger was blunt. It was a question of generations, he insisted. The anchorman belonged to a generation that had abandoned the Church of its youth in 1968 or thereabouts and had been fighting daddy, as it were, ever since. These young people, the cardinal continued, grew up empty. Having found Christ and the Church, they wanted to explore everything that meant. Don’t read their experience, Lustiger told his startled interlocutor, through yours: these young men and women don’t think that being Christian and being intelligent, engaged, compassionate and dedicated are mutually exclusive. No one would argue that World Youth Day 1997 – and its equivalents in Spain (1989), Poland (1991) and Rome (2000) – have decisively reshaped the cultural landscape of Europe. Yet the millions of young peoContinued - Page 12
Where will Benedict stay? We’ve got the photos! See Page 9
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ARCHBISHOP HICKEY APOLOGISES
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Following the last week’s controversy in WA media regarding the Bethel Covenant Community, Archbishop Barry Hickey has publicly apologised for not having done enough to address complaints from current or former members.
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