The Church and youth


<$5

THE CATHOLIC HOU
^t«i £Xusz: 4 <*+*£>/y<2t< AA

AAh/ 9992.

THE CHURCH AND YOUTH
BY

REV. PAUL TANNER
Director, Youth Department, National Catholic Welfare Conference,

Washington, D. C.

%

The second in a series of nine addresses on THE CHURCH IN ACTION,
delivered in the Catholic Hour, broadcast by the National Broadcasting Com-
pany, in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men, on September
12

,
1943 .

National Council of Catholic Men

Washington, D. C.



THE CHURCH
Friends: It is proper that early

in this series of addresses on “The

Church in Action” we should devote

one broadcast to youth, for in her

activities related to youth we see

the Church in action among her

favorite souls. Christ ordered His

disciples to permit the children to

be brought to Him, despite the

press of other labors, “for of such

is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:

14). The Church exercises the

same solicitude for youth and for

the same reasons as did her

Founder. She speaks to them au-

thoritatively and infallibly of the

great central problems of human
existence; not merely as does great

literature or poetry, or with the

persuasive arts of human wisdom,
but as the very mouthpiece of God,

“thus saith the Lord,”—with the
solemn definitiveness of a divinely

mandated and guided Teacher,

Ruler, and Sanctifier. Seldom in

man’s history has there been

greater need of a generation of

youth closely attentive and obedient

to the sublime commandments and
precepts of the Church.

Sometimes our commonest bless-
ings escape attention merely be-

cause we have become used to them.
We should thank God that here in
the United States the Church has
been given perfect liberty to or-

ganize and inspire and direct

AND YOUTH
groups of youth. Public authorities

and private agencies have gener-

ously and consistently encouraged

and aided the Church in this work.

In other parts of the world we
have seen instances where the

State itself assumed the sole right

to organize and direct youth

groups. When Hitler seized power,
for example, he wasted no time

trying to convert people over 40;

either they accepted him at once
or he put them out of the way. No
such savage alternative was pro-

posed to the youth of Germany.

Instead, every available technique

was used to indoctrinate them,

from earliest childhood upward,

with the Nazi ideology. Thus in

one short generation a substantial

portion of the German nation was
cut off from an inheritance of

Christian culture and civilization

that had taken centuries to accu-

mulate. With a sneer of contempt

young Brownshirts swept into the

discard a tradition of kindliness

and decency and honor the value of

which they did not even know how
to appreciate. In Italy, except for

the stubborn and effective opposi-

tion of Pope Pius XI, Mussolini all

but succeeded in capturing and per-

verting the youth in the same

manner. The indoctrination of the

youth of Russia by the Communist

Party is a matter of record. How

Deaddffisd



grateful we Americans ought to be,

therefore, that the State has not

usurped the rights of the Church

and other agencies to foster and

develop organizations of youth in

our beloved land. How vigilantly
we must guard against such a
policy in the United States.

The comprehensiveness of the

program of the Catholic Church for

her youth in the United States is

appreciated by very few people.

Perhaps the chief reason for this

unawareness is the fact that we are
not accustomed to think of certain

purely religious or educational ac-

tivities of the Church on behalf of

youth as youth work; but actually

these religious and educational ser-

vices constitute the very soul and

core of the Church’s youth pro-

gram. As I see it, there are three
main areas of Catholic youth work;
you can envision them by thinking
of three concentric circles. The
inner circle is symbolized by the
parish church, the middle circle by
the church’s school system—pri-
mary, secondary, and university

—

and the outer circle by the parish
hall. The parish altar, the class-
room, and the recreational center,
each in its own way and in due
proportion to its importance in

life, plays a part in the. youth pro-

gram of the Church.
At the very core of her youth

program stands the parish church
—18,976 of them in this country.

The first contact of the Church

with her youth is a divine act—the
administration of the Sacrament of

Baptism which communicates sanc-

tifying grace, infuses the theolo-

gical virtues of Faith, Hope, and

Charity, and implants in the soul

of the child the germs of all the

supernatural virtues. As years

bring the dawn of reason, habits of

devout prayer are acquired, and

near the parish altar the child

learns through sermons and cate-

chism lessons of the wondrous and

almost incredible mercies of God

in His dealings with men—in such
truths as the creation of man, the

fall of Adam, the promise of a

Redeemer, the incarnation of Jesus

Christ, our redemption by His

death for us on Calvary’s bloody

hill, the establishment of His

Church to continue His ministra-

tions among men, and of the solemn

realities of death, judgment, heav-

en, and hell. Near that same altar

the child early enters the tribunal

of God’s mercy to experience the

thrice-blessed comfort and conso-

lation of the Sacrament of Pen-

ance; at the parish altar he re-

ceives for the first time his Euch-

aristic Lord—the beginning of a
life-long habit of intimate com-

munion with Jesus Christ depicted

so unforgettably in the sixth chap-

ter of St. John’s Gospel. During

the placid days of childhood and

through the critical and sometimes



confused years of adolescence the

youth strengthens his hold on the

spiritual and supernatural realities

of the life of grace through the

frequent and regular assistance at

Mass and the reception of the sac-

raments. Finally the days of youth

are climaxed by the exchange of

the vows of Matrimony before that

same altar. The world cannot be

saved merely by good laws and so-

cial institutions and organizations

—good men are needed first and
above all. The business of the

parish church is quite literally the

making of saints, and only to the

degree that this job is accomplish-

ed will the world be populated with

men and women capable of making
radical changes for the better. It

approaches understatement, there-

fore, to say that the quiet, unpub-

licized, daily labor of the parish

church is the heart and soul of the

Church’s youth program.

The second circle is the Church’s

school system. Here we need some
straight thinking and courageous

speech and action. A man’s philos-
ophy of education will be deter-

mined by his philosophy of life.

If, therefore, a man believes in
God, if he believes that the most

important business in life is the

sanctification and salvation of his

immortal soul, if he views the

ownership of material wealth solely

as a stewardship for which an

exact accounting must one day be

rendered to His Master, if he be-

lieves that his love and service of

God must be manifested and proved

by his love and service of his fel-

lowmen, if he believes these and

dozens of other truths of the Gos-

pel of Jesus Christ, then inexorably

he will insist that the educational

discipline in which his children are

schooled shall include these most

important truths as an integral and

essential part of the curriculum.

If religion is not just a part of life,

isolated and unrelated to the whole

life, but rather life at its fullest

and best, then true education must

be religious education. Because

the public schools do not include

the most important of all knowl-

edge in their curricula—the truths
of religion—Catholic parents, at
great cost and under the unjust

burden of a double taxation for the

education of their children, have

erected a school system that har-

monizes fully and completely with

the Christian philosophy of life.

Training given therein reaches not

only the head but the heart as well,

it embraces all reality—spiritual as
well as material—and gives its stu-
dents an integral, complete picture

of the whole of life. It is quite

impossible to calculate the service

to youth being given by the

Church’s school system which last

year aggregated 2,035,182 pupils

in grammar schools, 361,123 pupils
in 2,105 high schools and 161,886



college students in 193 colleges.

Finally we come to the third

circle—the recreation center or
parish hall. This is the avowed

field of leisure-time activities in

which the free time of youth forms

the pattern around which recrea-

tional programs for youth are

built. The youth work of the

Church in this third circle has

grown by leaps and bounds of late

years and will continue to grow.

Not that the Church sees in good

recreation the panacea for all social

ills and private woes—she under-
stands clearly that eternal salva-

tion cannot be achieved by such in-

adequate means. But even as

Christ used the familiar things of

everyday life—the hen and her
chicks, the flowers of the field, the

wedding dinner—to elevate men’s
thoughts to God, so His Church

regards a bat and ball, a song or a

play, a game or a contest as not
unworthy instruments to be spirit-

ualized in the service of the

Master.

With lavish generosity the

Church has provided many differ-
ent types of youth organizations

for both boys and girls, young men
and young women, covering a var-
iety of interests in the religious,

cultural, social, hobby, guidance,

and athletic fields. I do not speak

of the highly specialized care pro-

vided for that small minority of

youth who because of the death,

incapacity, or desertion of their

parents, or because of sickness or

injury, or because of crime, stand

in need of the expert care of pro-

fessionally trained workers. For-

tunately the majority of the

Church’s youth enjoy the blessing

of a normal home and it is for these

typically splendid young people

that the parish youth program is

designed. Recently the Church in

the United States has seen fit to

unify and coordinate these far-

reaching and diversified youth

groups through the instrumental-

ity of parish, district, and diocesan

youth councils. Together with the

two national college student federa-

tions, these diocesan youth coun-

cils constitute the National Catho-

lic Youth Council. The promotion

and development of the National

Catholic Youth Council is one of

the chief responsibilities of the

Youth Department of the National

Catholic Welfare Conference.

The chief reason for the forma-

tion of the National Catholic Youth

Council was to strengthen and ac-

centuate the growing consciousness

on the part of youth groups of

their opportunities to serve in the

Christian apostolate. Webster de-

fines apostolate as “the office or

mission of an apostle” and clarifies

the definition by adding that an

apostle is “one sent forth—one of
the twelve disciples of Christ, sent

forth to preach the Gospel; more



widely, any of the others sent forth

by Christ, or, as Paul and Barna-

bas, soon after his death.” A sec-
ondary, and not irrelevant, mean-

ing of the world apostle is “the

first Christian missionary in any

region; also, one who initiates any
great moral reform.” It is in this

sublime tradition of the term,

dating back to the first Bishops of

the Church, that we speak of a
Catholic youth apostolate. The sole

reason for the existence of a Cath-

olic youth movement is to penetrate

and reform the natural temporal

order of society with the spiritual

supernatural vitality and truth of

Christ in His Ghurch.

In the words of Bishop Duffy of

Buffalo, the Episcopal Chairman of

the Youth Department of the

N.C.W.C., “Men hope and believe
that stability will come out of the

present chaos, that settled condi-

tions of life will eventually replace

the present uncertainty. Youth

must necessarily play a vital part

in the attainment of such stability

and order. This makes the direc-

tion and guidance of youth the

most important work that Church

or State can engage in. Our vision

of a better day cannot become a

reality unless the youth of this

hour, who will be the men and
women of tomorrow, have develop-
ed a character and disposition that

favors the arts of civilization and

wT-orld peace. The Catholic Church,
which has lived through the rise

and fall of empires, the dissolution

of governments, and the extinction

of great civilizations, sees this

problem with crystal clarity. It,

alone of all, knows from the ex-

perience of centuries, the profound

truth that peace and a settled

social order will come only when

the youth of a transitional era are

properly trained mentally, physi-

cally, and by far above all else

—

spiritually” (Bishop Duffy).





THE CATHOLIC HOUR
1930—Thirteenth Year—1943

The nationwide Catholic Hour was inaugurated
on March 2, 1930, by the National Council of Cath-
olic Men in cooperation with the National Broad-
casting Company and its associated stations. Radio
facilities are provided gratuitously by NBC and the
stations associated with it; the program is arranged
and produced by NCCM.

The Catholic Hour was begun on a network of
22 stations, and now carries its message of Catho-
lic truth on each Sunday of the year (and Good
Friday) through a number of stations varying from
90 to 107, situated in 40 states, the District of Colum-
bia, and Hawaii. Consisting of an address mainly
expository, by one or another of America's leading
Catholic preachers, and of sacred music provided
usually by a unit of the Paulist Choir, the Catholic
Hour has distinguished itself as one of the most pop-
ular and extensive religious broadcasts in the world.
A current average of 41,000 audience letters a month,
about twenty per cent of which come from listeners
of other faiths, gives some indication of its popular-
ity and influence.

Our Sunday Visitor Press

Huntington, Indiana

<s«||||jpD 454