Reflecting on Corpus Christi Sunday, Joe Escalante has a suggestion for getting kids more interested in the Faith: seize on the wild and supernatural.
Focus on rivers of blood, secret language (Latin), 3D Gothic images, Gregorian chants, etc. And dress those Knights of Columbus like Roman soldiers for effect and get them out of those Captain Crunch suits. This will get the kids interested. The last thing they want is 40 year old church ladies trying to make things “hip” with grooveless interpretations of mid-tempo tunes left over from the 1970s flowery Charismatic movement. . . .
Let’s take the solemn dress code away from the Goths, the Rosaries away from the gangs, the blood & death fixation away from the scene-kids, the art away from the academics, the Latin away from the Harry Potter geeks, the bi-location away from Siegfried & Roy, the exorcisms away from Art Bell, the Angels away from Hollywood, the bling away from the players, the stigmatas away from the Arquettes, and the ghosts away from the new agers. In Denver there’s a beautiful downtown cathedral called the Church of the Holy Ghost. Who’s not curious about what goes on in there?
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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And let’s not forget the Twihards — if you’re into the whole blood-drinking and eternal life thing, just wait until you hear about the Eucharist.
In fact, Father Robert Barron says that our culture’s tendency to ignore the spiritual is precisely what leads to things like the Twilight craze:
I’ve complained in the past about a bland, bored secularism that simply sets aside questions of the spiritual, the supernatural, and the transcendent. And this widespread bracketing of the religious dimension is abetted by a consumerist culture that teaches us in a thousand ways that sensual pleasure and wealth are the keys to happiness. For the secularist mind, God is, at best, a distant, indifferent force; Jesus is a guru of self-affirmation; and eternal life is a childish fantasy.
But in accord with the above-mentioned law, the supernatural will not be denied. The instinct for God and for a world that transcends the realm of ordinary experience is hard-wired into us and thus our desire, thwarted by the environing culture, will produce some distorted version of transcendence, some ersatz spirituality.
So why not give them the real thing?
[H/t James Poulos]
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