of Church as distant and unrelated to what is most important and significant in their own lives. Effective ministry with young adults today needs to begin by establishing its credibility in and through a proactive effort to overcome stereotypes. While most young Catholics continue what an important research study at the Catholic University study calls an “affiliation”: their connection to Church is occasional and fringe—they have no sense of ownership (sometimes translated as definitely not having envelopes). We need to meet young people on their own terms and find creative ways to inform and educate them about the core elements of the tradition. Vatican II’s challenge to translate ancient truths into a contemporary syntax could not be more relevant.
While an explicit awareness of the central Catholic doctrine is important, we all know that experience is the greatest teacher—that we learn more by doing than by hearing about the doing. And for today’s young people, doing the faith is more important than ever. Any pastoral plan, whether on campus or elsewhere that seeks to reach today’s young adults’ needs to focus on practice. Indeed, intentional, consciously aware practice has always been the great orientation to the tradition, and it is practice that effects the transformative experience.
Without persistent and consistent practices, Catholicism yields no transformative results, no genuine healing, reconciliation, or liberation—no conscious awareness of God’s unconditional love active and powerful in our lives and the life of the world. Without persistent and consistent practices, we are sucked into the flat emptiness of the conventional culture, into a fundamaterialism that eats away at our souls and leaves us