This may well be one of the only times I ever link to a story from NCReporter, but given that it was written by their only reporter who still retains some amount of sanity. While the comboxes are predictably combustible his article is particularly insightful – rare indeed is the chance to see someone effectively say the future of the Church lies with kids of a conservative bent on this site. Trying to summarize his article is difficult at best, but perhaps this paragraph will do the rest justice:
Case in point: A 2009 study carried out by Georgetown’s Center of Applied Research in the Apostolate, and sponsored by the National Religious Vocations Conference, found a marked contrast between new members of religious orders in the United States today (the “millennial generation”) and the old guard. In general, younger religious, both men and women, are more likely to prize fidelity to the church and to pick a religious order on the basis of its reputation for fidelity; they’re more interested in wearing the habit, and in traditional modes of spiritual and liturgical expression; and they’re much more positively inclined toward authority.
Another quite useful point he makes is that for this new generation the old class delineations of liberal and conservative are of little interest. They have little interest in the all-too-common method of putting everyone in comfortable predefined box and judging everything they say or do through the lens that accompanies that box. But that is not to say they have no interest in understanding and making judgments on people and movements – they just don’t want to use the, frankly intellectually lazy and inaccurate, method of pigeonholing we find all around us. While this may make them seem uninterested in such a concept as universal truth what it really means on the inside is that they have a deep interest in truth that is true, not merely convenient or handed to them by others. I think that is a lesson we could all reflect on a little more, particularly as the political season turns up another notch.
