opportunities of the present. It means reclaiming our spiritual heritage, embodying it in vital and diverse communities of faith and service, scheming strategies for justice and the extension of human rights–for the expansion of opportunity and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
Without understanding the locus of Catholicism in this 21st century, there can be no genuine connection with the vast numbers of young adults today. While regressive, so-called “traditional” Catholicism identifies itself as popular with young people, the numbers, in fact, are few. Effective pastoral outreach to today’s young adults, I want to suggest, includes four pastoral strategies. These strategies cannot be reduced to programs or activities, but represent orientations or directions that shape and form our approach to all pastoral programs and services. I think we need:
1) To emphasize Catholicism as a unique spiritual path that involves a commitment to both personal and social transformation;
2) To focus constructively on what is central and core in our tradition—as Bishop Morneau would say, keep the main thing the main thing;
3) To help young people build bridges between what is central and core in Catholicism to their own lived experience; and
4) To help young people explore spiritual practices, including especially contemplative prayer, community service, social justice, and sacramental community, as the means towards implementing such transformations.
For the vast majority of today’s young Catholics there is an indifference about the Church—an indifference which is grounded, at least in part, in a superficial and tragically misinformed knowledge of the tradition, and in an experience