Guest
Matt Gaspers is the Managing Editor of Catholic Family News, a monthly journal and online media apostolate devoted to promoting the traditional Catholic Faith and the precious heritage of Christian civilization. He has also been published by The Fatima Crusader, OnePeterFive, and LifeSiteNews.
Links
- From World Youth Day to the Traditional Latin Mass (article)
- Catholic Family News (website)
- World Youth Day (website)
Transcript
Eric Sammons:
Since its inception in 1980s, World Youth Day has drawn millions of young Catholics to its events for the purpose of strengthening the faith of the next generation. But do World Youth Days actually accomplish their mission and should they continue to be held? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons your host, editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to smash that like button to subscribe to the channel, let other people know about what we’re doing here. Also, you can follow us on social media, @CrisisMag. So our guest today is Matt Gaspers. He’s the managing editor of Catholic Family News, a monthly journal and online media apostolate devoted to promoting the traditional Catholic faith and the precious heritage of Christian civilization. He’s also been published by the Fatima Crusader, OnePeterFive and LifeSiteNews. Welcome to the program, Matt.
Matt Gaspers:
Thanks, Eric. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I’m so glad. This was an idea you thought of. World Youth Day is going on right now as we record this and when this goes public, World Youth Day will still be going on in Lisbon, the 2023 World Youth Day. And it’s a great topic to talk about because there’s a lot to say about World Youth Days. I think they’re a major event in the church, have been now for more than 30 years, and they have a big impact. For good or for ill? Mostly, that’s what I think we’re going to talk about.
Matt Gaspers:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
I think most people know what World Youth Day is, but Pope John Paul II started World Youth Day in the 1980s, and the idea was that every two to three years, you’d have this global gathering of youth with the purpose of really encouraging young people in their Catholic faith, letting them see the universality of the church. It’s modeled-
Matt Gaspers:
And to get the young people excited about the faith. I think that was part of the goal.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, exactly. Get young people excited about the faith. I think that’s a great point you make because the way it’s designed is to be kind of a festival. It’s designed, people sometimes call it the Catholic Woodstock, and so the general vibe is more of a festival than anything else. And I think World Youth Day, to me, it was really propelled into its global impact it had in the early nineties with the 1991 one in Poland, which was a big deal because obviously JP II, and then the 1993 one in Denver, which I’ll talk about here in a minute. So what I want to do is both of us have been to a World Youth Day. I’ve been to 1993 in Denver, you’ve been to 2002 in Toronto, is that right?
Matt Gaspers:
Correct.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. So we’re both going to tell our World Youth Day stories to start off. Yours is way better than mine, so I’m going to start with mine and then I’ll let you tell yours, and we’ll actually have a link to your World Youth Day experience article as well in the show notes for people. So I went to the 1993 World Youth Day in Denver.
Matt Gaspers:
I just wanted to mention I live in the Archdiocese of Denver, and I think there’s still an ongoing impact being felt here from that, just as a side note.
Eric Sammons:
Oh wow. You live there now, in the Archdiocese of Denver?
Matt Gaspers:
Correct. Not in Denver proper. I live about an hour northeast, but yes, in the archdiocese.
Eric Sammons:
To say it was a big deal is an understatement because I remember, I was receiving the church in April of 1993 and World Youth Day was in August of 1993. And I remember the lead up to it was everybody predicted in the establishment of Catholic media and the establishment of mainstream media that that would be a big failure. Why would a bunch of young Americans come out to see this old dude from Europe? And that was how it was presented. It was going to be this colossal failure.
Matt Gaspers:
Clearly they didn’t know John Paul II.
Eric Sammons:
Exactly, because remember, of course the nineties is when JP II really came into his own as the rockstar Pope. For good or bad, that’s just what he became. In the 1980s he was well-known, but it was like he still was kind of just a pope, and the nineties is where and I think World Youth Day in Denver was one of the things that propelled him to that stature. And so I was working for a college pro-life group and we wanted to raise money, so we designed these beautiful T-shirts with an icon of Our Lady on the front, and it had our name on the back and we sold them on the streets at World Youth Day in order to raise money. And it was kind of funny because we progressed. We were college kid, we didn’t have a permit or anything like that. We started-
Matt Gaspers:
You probably didn’t need one back then.
Eric Sammons:
Well, that was the funny thing. We started right in the major areas and the officials kept pushing us away saying, “No, you can’t sell here.” They kept moving us further and further out. Eventually we sold out though in two days anyway, and so the rest of the time was just spent at World Youth Day. And I will say for me, it was a big deal because like I said, I’d been Catholic for six months and as a Protestant United Methodist, my whole conception of Christianity was basically my suburban church I grew up in. I had very little global or outside experience of Christianity and to see so many Catholics, you’d walk down the street and literally a bishop would walk by you. And I was 22 at the time and to me, this really was a big deal. I do also remember, this was kind of funny because I didn’t really process it until later, when we went to the event where the Pope shows up at Mile Heights Stadium, the stadium that was in Denver at the time, and he’s coming and the screaming by the girls when he showed up.
I will say, I think this is my personality more than anything. I’m not really a super emotional type guy, expressive guy. I will say I did think, “Okay, this might be a little bit much.” Even though I was like, “This is great that the Pope is the guy we’re cheering for,” the fact that he was treated like the Beatles had just come into town was a little bit odd. But anyway, so I will say though that I had a positive experience of it. I don’t know any other way to put it. I felt like it did help me in a lot of ways. I knew very little. I’d just been Catholic for six months. I had learned enough to become Catholic, obviously, but you don’t know anything six months into being Catholic. And the other thing was is that I do know a lot of people, a lot of vocations that occurred where they credit World Youth Day 1993 a lot. American priests became priests not only because of World Youth Day-
Matt Gaspers:
It was a major catalyst.
Eric Sammons:
Yes, a major catalyst. So that was my experience was just that I liked the idea of the support for the Pope, I liked seeing the universal nature. It was very foreign to me, this idea of the whole world, the whole church is Catholic and universal, and just the enthusiasm I saw of people for the faith, it did rub off of me. Obviously I was a new Catholic so I was already enthusiastic, but it bolstered that as well. So that’s my World Youth story. I haven’t been to any since then. That was the only one I’ve ever been to. I’ve been to when the popes come to town and stuff like that, but no World Youth Day. So now tell your story, Matt. Yu were there in 2002 in Toronto.
Matt Gaspers:
Yes. So I was 17 years old. I’m a cradle Catholic. I was not raised with the traditional Latin mass or anything. My parents were always very morally conservative, but when it came to liturgical matters, they were both formed in rural Nebraska in the 1950s and sixties, and I think the prevailing attitude was if the local bishop says if this is coming from Rome, if the parish priest approves, then that’s right and good and that’s what we need to do, and you don’t question it. So grew up in an average diocesan Novus Ordo mass, and my parents were always very musical. They got to playing guitar masses in the eighties when I was growing up, so I developed a very strong interest in music as a young child and I wanted to start playing the guitar play.
I learned how to play the drums, but I started getting into the hard rock, heavy metal music. Led Zeppelin I know was one of the first bands that I got really into and Black Sabbath, Metallica, Megadeath, all that kind of stuff, which was certainly not what my parents were into and was concerning to them, but they wanted to foster my interests and I formed a band with some classmates at the time, middle school, junior high. But the older I got, the more serious I got about the music, practicing two or three hours a day, practicing every weekend with my band mates, Friday, Saturday night, no aspirations for going to college or anything like that. We were going to go to California and make it big, the pipe dream. So my mom in particular, both parents were concerned, praying for me that I would get out of this.
But my mom was very adamant that I attend World Youth Day because she was hopeful that it would bring about some kind of radical change in my life and by God’s grace, she was right. It did do that, although looking back on it now from a more traditional Catholic perspective, I don’t think it was so much the event itself or anything that the event offered me per se, it was more about how God used it for his purposes, basically letting me live out my dream of being a rockstar for a week. So how that happened was the youth group leader that I went with is very good friends with a man named Tony Melendez, who’s a very well-known Catholic musician. He was born without arms as a result of his mother being prescribed a medicine for morning sickness called thalidomide back in I think the late fifties or early sixties, and they didn’t realize that it was causing birth defects until it was too late, basically. So he was a thalidomide baby, but he learned-
Eric Sammons:
Are you saying that science isn’t always right?
Matt Gaspers:
Yeah, exactly. So he was born in Nicaragua without arms, but he learned how to play the guitar. He tunes the guitar so that when you just strum all the strings, it’s an open chord, and then he can put down his big toe on the frets and basically play bar chords. That’s how he does it because obviously, you can’t finger complicated chords with your toes like you can with your fingers, so he has an adapted form of playing. But anyway, Tony was one of the headline musicians at World Youth Day 2002. What launched his career, he got to play in front of Pope John Paul II, I think it was in like 1987, and that really launched him into the Christian music scene from there.
So in 2002 he was playing World Youth Day and my youth group leader, Pat, was good friends with him, also a very talented musician himself. And there’s some pictures of me there. The one on the left is me with Tony Melendez and the one on the right is me backstage with some of the other performers for World Youth Day that year. If people listen to Christian pop music, they probably recognize Matt Maher is on the left of that photo. He’s gotten pretty big in recent years. Then also Steve Angrisano and Tom Booth, they’re staples in the praise and worship Life Teen mass, which is what I was attending at the time.
Eric Sammons:
For those who are just listening, not watching, we have some great photos. You got to watch it just so you can see Matt with long hair and looking a lot younger. And I recognized Matt Maher, of course immediately, and I guess he was already back then, 2002, already performing.
Matt Gaspers:
And I had forgotten that he is Canadian, so I think that could have been how he got invited. I think Tom Booth may have also been a mentor to him and maybe got him a foot in the door, I’m guessing. So when we went to World Youth Day, Pat, my youth group director was playing on stage with Tony, and apparently they were in need of a drummer, and so Pat convinced Tony to let me be their drummer because I had been playing the drums at our Life Teen mass back home, and so Pat thought it would be a natural transition. And so basically, I got to live out my dream of plane in front of tens of thousands of people on this huge stage.
And what I felt like God was communicating to me through that experience, obviously I didn’t have an apparition or a locution or any kind of supernatural phenomenon, but God was telling me very clearly, as it says in the Book of Psalms, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. If you live your life for me, if you use your gifts and talents that I’ve given you for my glory, this is what I can do. This is what can happen.” Not that it’s always going to happen and that it’s always going to be the mountaintop experience, but I think God knows when we’re young and immature in the spiritual life, we need that consolation in order to get us on the right path, so I think that’s what God gave to me through that experience. I got to be the drummer for Tony Melendez for that week of World Youth Day, which as an aside, it’s weird that they call it World Youth Day because it’s a week-long festival. I don’t know why they call it World Youth Day, but anyway.
Eric Sammons:
I never even thought of that. You’re right, it never is only a day, it’s a whole week-long festival. So I think we’re going to address some of the concerns we both have with World Youth Day, concerns that have come up over the years, but in a nutshell, what would you say is good about World Youth Day? Would you have anything that you would say, “Yes, this is something, these things that come out of it,” or whatever? Would you say anything positive of your own experience or just from what you’ve seen of World Youth Day yourself?
Matt Gaspers:
Well, I think some of what you already mentioned is very true. It is a very powerful experience of the catholicity of the church, the universality of the church that you have people from all over the world, they speak different. It’s kind of like an experience from the Acts of the Apostles, everybody coming together from all different parts of the world, speaking different languages and yet you’re united in the same faith. So I think in and of it, the idea of it I think is a good thing, and it can be a very powerful tool for good in the world. I think it’s also important for people to see and be in close proximity to the successor of St. Peter, who is supposed to be our spiritual father in the faith, and that he’s not just some museum piece over in Rome. He is a real living human being that we are called to pray for and to be close to spiritually.
And so I think it does have some positive aspects. Unfortunately, I think it’s also if I would sum up the problems with World Youth Day, I would say it suffers from the same malady in some sense as the Second Vatican Council. Not necessarily, I’m not saying that everything in the documents is wrong or heretical or anything like that, but it’s pervaded by this notion that modern man, and modern meaning contemporary man, needs something different than what Catholics of all ages throughout the past have needed, that the past way of practicing the faith is no longer sufficient for modern man, that he needs something new and different.
Eric Sammons:
And I think I want to talk about some of the specific issues of this year’s World Youth Day in a minute because under Francis, I think it’s changing a little bit even from what it was under JP 2. But just in general, I feel like my issue with World Youth Day, and I’m with you as far as a lot of the positive aspects of the idea of it, the idea of bringing Catholics together around the world, the idea of being spiritually, literally physically close to the successor of St. Peter, those are all very noble ideas and good, good intentions. I think that my biggest criticism is just my general criticism I have of all, quote, unquote, “youth ministry,” in the church in that it tends to, I think personally, I think it looks down on kids. It looks down on teenagers, and it expects that we have to be hip and cool, we have to be emotional. We have to give them lots of excitement in order for them to be touched and have a response of faith.
And I feel like first of all, that literally was never the way it was ever done for over 1900 years and we always brought people in somehow. And it clearly is modeled, whether consciously or unconsciously, on the modern Protestant model of youth ministry. Even Martin Luther wouldn’t have done it like this, but the modern Protestant model of youth ministry. And I think there’s enough evidence in now that we’ve been doing this long enough that that type of focus, while it does have individual successes… I’m not saying there aren’t people who haven’t been in their youth group and it’s changed their life for the better. And the funny thing is for me personally, the Protestant youth group I went to when I was a Protestant high schooler had a very positive impact on me in the sense that direct I was doing some bad stuff, drinking with friends, partying.
I got involved with my Protestant youth group and then I changed the direction of my life, and eventually that led to Catholicism. So I get that. But on whole, this idea that we have to excite the kids, get them emotionally wound up, that’s the only way we really can reach them, I feel is demeaning to them on some level. I don’t know, I feel like it’s almost like they’re almost like robots. If we just input emotion into them, they’ll respond the way you want them to. But they’re young adults, they’re not kids. First of all, they’re young adults, and I think that’s probably my biggest general problem is that just the way World Youth Day is typically done is to get that emotional response.
Matt Gaspers:
I have a quote to share with you on that in that regard. Another part of my story, which is very providential, my predecessor, some folks may know that Catholic Family News was run for many years by a gentleman named John Vennari, who passed away in 2017. So he was actually there in 2002 in Toronto documenting the event for the paper, and he turned it into a book which he co-authored with Cornelia Ferreira called World Youth Day: From Catholicism to Counterchurch, so they obviously have a very negative assessment-
Eric Sammons:
You think?
Matt Gaspers:
… based on the title. But I think John is spot on when he writes in his section of the book, and he also had a huge musical background in his teens and early twenties. He was playing in the bar scene in upstate New York. So he says, “I neither play nor listen to this music anymore, but I still know a rock concert when I see one.” And there are literal rock concerts at these events. It’s not praise and worship, and he documents it. He made a DVD about this. He said, “World Youth Day was primarily a rock and roll festival pervaded by the superstition that today’s young people are the first generation in church history that are incapable of knowing and practicing the Catholic piety of the centuries. I do not understand why this insult to our young people is broadcast as a love of the youth,” quote, unquote.
Eric Sammons:
I love that quote. It’s so insulting to think that a 15 year old young lady, 15 year old young man, that somehow, if you give them what previous generations were always given growing up, that somehow they just can’t accept it. “No, I need this junk food rather than the meat.” That’s what it seems to me that it’s really saying, and World Youth Day really does, they lean into this idea of the festival atmosphere, the excitability-
Matt Gaspers:
Essentially, that the faith needs to be adapted to popular culture or else the kids are going to think it’s dumb or boring or irrelevant or whatever, when that’s never been the case.
Eric Sammons:
And I think when World Youth Day first came about in the 1980s, that idea is still wrong and insulting in a lot of ways, but it’s at least a little bit understandable in that you have a situation where a lot of people left the church, people aren’t sure why. They’re like, “Okay, what can we do? Youth seem to like this type of music. We have this new rock and roll music,” all that stuff. Whereas now though, we have a documented history of the past 40, 50 years of trying to do that, and what are young people more attracted to today? Which parishes have the most young people in them and have the most young people attracted to them? Spoiler alert for people who don’t know, it’s the traditional Latin masses. And I’ll even say, we can have a whole debate on the reverent Novus Ordo, but even those Novus Ordo parishes that are much more conservative and traditional in how they celebrate the liturgy, they also are attracting many more young families and young people than your typical diocesan parish, which does none of that.
Matt Gaspers:
Right. Exactly right. And I think in more recent years, at least under the pontificate of Benedict the 16th, if I understand correctly, there have been a small number of traditional Latin mass Catholics represented at World Youth Day. I think there have even been some TLMs offered there. It’s certainly not the norm, as we’ll get into. If anything, it’s a very stark contrast to what the norm is for those masses. Even the ones with the Pope, there’s some terrible liturgical abuses that go on.
Eric Sammons:
So let’s go into that. So I think one of the major criticisms, and this is from both traditional Catholics and more just conservative Novus Ordo Catholics, is the concern about these mega masses. So you have these tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people there, and so you want to have a mass with everybody, and on the last day celebrated by the Pope, but even before those. And I think that’s a great idea in theory in the sense of everybody coming together for mass, especially with the Pope celebrating.
What a wonderful opportunity it is for so many Catholics to be part of that, so I’m not against the idea. In fact, I’ll talk about it in a minute, Peter Kwasniewski talked about how you do these, how they’ve done been done in the past. But what happens is, I’m going to try to pull this up. There was a bunch of tweets already that have gone out, but you sent me one from Father James Martin, which he’s notorious, so let’s see if I can pull this up without messing up the screen completely. Here we go. So basically what we see is the picture there-
Matt Gaspers:
And if you click on the photo, it’ll get bigger so that people can see it.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, yeah. There we go. Thank you.
Matt Gaspers:
Sure.
Eric Sammons:
So there we go. So for those who are listening only and aren’t seeing, what we see is Communion being distributed at one of these masses. And so you see the young man in his hat and T-shirt and shorts and a lady in a T-shirt and jeans handing out the Eucharist to him, and there’s just a lot of different stations just randomly. It looks like over here on the right, that might be a guy who’s just maybe he’s looking at his phone.
Matt Gaspers:
I think the irony is that they bother having people hold an umbrella over this woman. I don’t know if that’s for a practical reason, if it might rain or if it’s for reverence or what, but it’s just ironic.
Eric Sammons:
And so what we see though is it’s a very casual way of distributing our Lord in Holy Communion at these masses. And in fact, I read where literally at I think the mega mass, they had there literally no priest or bishop distributed Communion. It was only lay extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, whatever you call them these days.
Matt Gaspers:
Unbelievable.
Eric Sammons:
And so it really is this idea, and this is not uncommon. When I went to World Youth Day in 1993, the way they distributed Communion in the final day’s mass was at this big state park outside of Denver and basically, you were cordoned off into these sections, and then that’s how a person would come and distribute Communion. I can’t remember now to this day if it was a priest or a lay person, but the person who’s distributing Communion had to basically walk through this entire field, huge field, there’s 500,000 people there or something like that, to distribute Communion.
Just holding it and then handing out, and of course there’s no coordination of is everybody there even Catholic? Obviously you’re seeing it in the hand. What do they do if you drop the host on the ground in a field? All these issues, which for a long time, there was criticism that well, the trads, they’re just too hung up about that. But now you see I think everybody who believes in Eucharist is at least concerned with this idea. I feel like this is one of the major problems of World Youth Day, is just how this is done.
Matt Gaspers:
The logistics are a nightmare. As you said, it’s a nice idea to have a single mass, but what’s more important, having the experience of everybody having a single mass altogether or people actually attending the holy sacrifice as they should and participating reverently, and most importantly, treating our Eucharistic Lord with the greatest respect possible? And I think a great example of how outdoor masses, even for large numbers of people, can still be done reverently would be the Chartres Pilgrimage. Obviously at an outdoor event like World Youth Day, we don’t expect everyone to change into a suit and tie or a dress or something.
And they don’t do that either at the Chartres Pilgrimage, is my understanding. I’ve never been, but I’ve seen lots of photos and video footage. A lot of the younger kids are in scout uniforms and stuff, which is fine. For the occasion, that’s appropriate, but they still kneel down to receive Holy Communion. It’s still only the priest distributing Communion and there’s a server with a paten so that in case the host were to slip or fall, that it wouldn’t just drop into a grassy knoll or something. So there are ways that can be done, as I’m sure Dr. Kwasniewski got into much more detail.
Eric Sammons:
What he mentioned was just simply he mentioned this Eucharistic Congress in Chicago in the 1920s that had tens of thousands of people there. And basically, what they did was they just simply didn’t distribute Communion to most people, it was just the people up near the altar. They would distribute Communion to them, maybe a few 100 and that’s it, and everybody else made a spiritual Communion. And first of all, that’s an important thing to note. Receiving Communion during mass is not necessary. It’s not something that’s like it has to be done.
Matt Gaspers:
It’s not integral to the mass itself-
Eric Sammons:
Right, exactly.
Matt Gaspers:
… which has become the prevailing misconception, unfortunately.
Eric Sammons:
Right. And also what he said was low masses were said throughout the city during this Eucharistic Congress so people could receive holy Communion because it is a good thing to receive holy Communion, especially at a Eucharistic Congress. So they could receive Communion, but the idea was we’re going to keep a reverence for the Eucharist. And of course, with our whole Eucharistic revival happening in this country, this is an example of where there’s no question at the visuals, at the very least, show a disrespect for the holy Communion. That’s anything other than just a piece of bread. Now, I do want to read a tweet from somebody. I don’t have it up on the screen, but I saw earlier before we got on and somebody was criticizing how this is going on.
It wasn’t a trad or anything like that, just somebody that was like, “This is not a good idea,” and somebody responded. A liberal Catholic said, “Holy Communion isn’t meant to be shielded under a pretty walled dome when outside, hundreds of thousands of young people hunger for the sanctification it provides.” And to me, that sounds like a Eucharistic theology that’s basically magical in how it’s done in the sense of somehow, it’s like you have to get this pass. You get your Eucharist and now all of a sudden you get the sanctification, where being at the mass offers a ton of graces. Yes, of course we receive Communion in a normal sense, but again, like I said, it’s not necessary. But I think it forgets though that this is Jesus Christ.
Matt Gaspers:
It’s also presuming that how you receive holy Communion has no bearing on how much sanctification takes place, which is also incorrect.
Eric Sammons:
And I think at these mass elements like this, these mega masses, especially with young people, there is the obvious pressure to receive because everybody else is. And what if they’re in a state of mortal sin, obviously? Obviously a teenager can be in a state of mortal sin. They might even know that they’re in a state of moral sin and want to get to confession, but they’re not able to or whatever, but everybody’s going to holy Communion and it’s just like, “Okay, I go up as well.” And so there’s another, the sanctification isn’t happening in that case. The exact opposite, in fact. So I just feel like these mega masses, and this has been the case since John Paul II, this isn’t a Francis thing. I know Benedict talked about the idea.
He wrote before he became Pope the idea that at these mega masses don’t offer holy Communion to everybody, just for maybe the priests or celebrating or something like that. But then in his own mega masses, they offered Communion to everybody, so it didn’t really happen. So now I want to talk to this is this year’s Lisbon conference. So the first thing I want to bring up, I’ll read this quote to people and then you can respond to it, reflect on it. This is Bishop Americo Aguiar, I think you pronounce this name. I probably butchered it, because I butchered most names. He is actually the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon. He is the head of, he’s the organizer of World Youth Day this year, and he’s going to be a cardinal. He is announced that he’s going to be created a cardinal-
Matt Gaspers:
Which is really bizarre because his archbishop is already a cardinal.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. It’s clear he’s going to be moved to probably a Roman office at some point soon. And also, this is another little tidbit I just found out today about this guy. Before his ordination, he worked in local politics in the Porto region and was a member of the Socialist Party.
Matt Gaspers:
Wow.
Eric Sammons:
Did you know that?
Matt Gaspers:
I did not.
Eric Sammons:
I didn’t know that until about two hours ago. It was an article-
Matt Gaspers:
Shocking, but not surprising.
Eric Sammons:
… about him. It wasn’t stated in a bad way, it was one of these liberal Catholics writing about it. So he was a member of the Socialist Party. Anyway, his quote leading up to World Youth Day was, “We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.” Let me repeat that. “We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.” And then he continues, he says, “We want it to be normal for a young Catholic Christian to say and bear witness to who he is or for a young Muslim, Jew or another religion to also have no problem saying who he is and bearing witness to it, and for a young person who has no religion to feel welcome and to perhaps not feel strange for thinking in a different way.” So in the next three hours, please explain what’s wrong with that.
Matt Gaspers:
Exactly. It’s insane. Does this bishop even have the faith? I think it’s fair to ask that question because the great commission of our Lord is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that he has commanded them. What other purpose could a World Youth Day have other than to either bring about someone’s initial conversion through evangelization or through their continued conversion if they’re already Catholic, and making progress in the spiritual life? If it has any other purpose than that, then it’s a waste of time. Worse than that, damaging souls.
Eric Sammons:
Even if you want to argue that there’s a place for Catholics at certain ecumenical events, certain interreligious events, let’s say we’ll even grant that there’s a place for Catholics. People that have read my book, Deadly Indifference, know I don’t really think that, but let’s just grant that as acceptable. This is a Catholic event. Can’t we have our own events that are 100% Catholic and are 100% promoting Catholicism and inviting people to become Catholic? Aren’t we allowed to have at least some of our own events like that? Why is it even our own events have to turn into ecumenical events? It’s not like the Baptist. Everything the Baptists do are ecumenical, or the Muslims, everything they do. It’s like just we can have our own 100% Catholic events, come and enjoy being Catholic and celebrate it and invite people to become Catholic.
Matt Gaspers:
Right, and that doesn’t make it unwelcoming. You notice in that quote, in his mind, either you are what Francis would say, you’re a rigid traditionalist or Neo-Pelagian, I forget all the different insults over the years. In other words, you’re either an uncharitable, unwelcoming, bigot or else you’re an or else you have to be ecumenical and interreligious and all of that kind of stuff. It’s an either or proposition, which is simply not true.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Because like I said, even if you want to accept that ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, we can still have our Catholic events. It’s not like even at the most Catholic event, you get up there and say, “Let’s go persecute the Protestants,” or something like that. It’s like we’re just saying, “This is what we are, and we believe this is the fullness of the faith. This is the one true church and we urge you to join it.”
Matt Gaspers:
Right. And we’re not even separating people like in the Old Testament, into the courtyard of the Gentiles or something. They’re all intermingled. During the mass, we’re all in the Holy of Holies.
Eric Sammons:
Right, right. Now, also, I think you were the one who first tweeted about this or at least I heard for sure from you, is it true that they’re also encouraging the youth who go there to visit mosques and synagogues and things like that?
Matt Gaspers:
That’s the only impression that I can gather from this. Here, I’ll send you a link in the private chat, in case you want to throw it up on the screen for those who are watching. But this is from the official website for World Youth Day 2023, and it’s interfaith dialogue. It says, “Lisbon is one of the largest and safest ports on Europe’s Atlantic Coast. Cultures and religions coexisted there.” That’s leaving out a lot of history there, with the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and such.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Matt Gaspers:
So it says, “Take advantage of World Youth Day, Lisbon 2023 to visit the places we suggest,” and then it has a list of not only Catholic churches, but also a Jewish synagogue. I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce the name of it, “Inaugurated in 1904. It was the first synagogue built in Portugal after the expulsion of the Jews at the end of the 15th century.” It goes on to list two different mosques, one of which belongs to a branch of Shia Muslims, so I’m guessing the other one is probably Sunni Muslims, the two main branches of Islam. It even lists a Hindu temple, if you can believe that. It’s just unbelievable.
Eric Sammons:
Literally, this website-
Matt Gaspers:
Is the official website that pilgrims would be consulting for how they should be spending their time.
Eric Sammons:
And it literally has links to registration forms saying, “To better manage the capacity of space, please register using the online forum below,” assuming that the Catholic pilgrims going World Youth Day would go to the mosques. They’d visit the mosque or the synagogue or the Hindu temple. Obviously my book goes through this pretty detailed, but there’s no way that doesn’t send a message that Catholicism is just one religion among many.
Matt Gaspers:
Right. And that spectrum, I love that image that you have in your book. I forget what you call it in there, but I think at the right side of the spectrum is where it starts going into religious pluralism with the Abu Dhabi document and all of that stuff. That’s clearly the message that’s being sent, religious indifferentism. There’s no other interpretation possible.
Eric Sammons:
And in fact, the interreligious aspect, the religious dialogue and the humanism, it wasn’t part of 1993 World Youth Day at all. I don’t know if-
Matt Gaspers:
No, this is definitely we’re getting into some uncharted territory here.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. Because this is really pushing now, and it seems like every single public event, every single thing that the Pope goes to has to include all these interreligious dialogue events and/or some promotion of it. In fact, they’re saying that the fraternity is a big theme of this year’s World Youth Day, from his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, I is now you pronounce it. And just this idea of human fraternity, which that then points to the Abu Dhabi declaration and the Abrahamic House, which we’ve talked about in this podcast.
Matt Gaspers:
And I’ll just share a quote with you. So this was from yesterday’s opening mass with the cardinal patriarch of Lisbon, so the primary prelate of the church in Portugal. He said at the beginning of his homily, so this is the very beginning, he’s welcoming the pilgrims, he says, “Dear friends who have come here from around the world for World Youth Day Lisbon 2023, welcome all. Welcome also,” the second line, “in the ecumenical interreligious and goodwill breath that these days have and also bring together. I desire for you all to feel,” quote, “at home in this common home,” obviously a reference to Laudato Si’, “where we all live World Youth Day. Welcome.” So even in the opening mass, it’s present.
Eric Sammons:
We want these people to actually come home.
Matt Gaspers:
Exactly.
Eric Sammons:
They’re not home, and they should feel a little uncomfortable in the sense. That’s the thing, is if you have a fully Catholic event, non-Catholics can come to it, obviously, but there should be a little bit of discomfort they have in the sense of they feel like they’re missing out on something. I know that was my case. Before I became Catholic, I had to attend some Catholic things and I remember feeling a little left out, and that’s a good thing.
Matt Gaspers:
If that’s not the case, then why would you have any desire to convert if you’re not missing out on anything?
Eric Sammons:
And I think honestly, that answers your own question because they don’t really want people to have a desire to convert because they’re literally saying, “We’re not trying to convert anybody.”
Matt Gaspers:
Right. Exactly.
Eric Sammons:
Now, I will say that there was some pushback to that, what the bishop said about the organizer. I know that Bishop Barron had said something to the effect of, “We are trying to evangelize.” Chris Stefanick, who brought a huge group of kids to it, he was saying, “We’re there to evangelize.” So I just want to make sure it’s clear to our listeners that we’re not saying every single person who attends World Youth Day is doing something wrong or has bad intentions. I am at least saying, and I think you probably agree, Matt, that the organizers of it this year particularly, I do actually question some of their intentions because when you’re-
Matt Gaspers:
How can you not, when they make it so blunt?
Eric Sammons:
Right. When they’re literally saying, “We’re not trying to convert anybody to Christ,” it’s like well, what’s the purpose?
Matt Gaspers:
It’s not acceptable.
Eric Sammons:
Right, right. Why even have it? Now, World Youth Day, we’ve talked about some general problems with it, we talked about specifics with this year. What would you say though, Matt, as far as what should the church do for young people to attract them? Should we do anything? Should we just say they just should come to everything we do? Is there a more traditional equivalent to World Youth Day? What should be done by the church in this area?
Matt Gaspers:
Well, as far as an event is concerned, as I said earlier, I have never had the opportunity to attend the Chartres Pilgrimage. I hope to someday, but I think that would be an excellent alternative because it is definitely a youth movement.
Eric Sammons:
Why don’t you explain it a little bit? I know you haven’t been and neither have I, but why don’t you explain a little bit for people who aren’t familiar with what it is?
Matt Gaspers:
From my understanding, it’s a traditionalist pilgrimage. Well, there are two different ones, actually, that go in opposite directions to each other. One is primarily Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, I think the Ecclesia Dei institute is the ones leading it. So they start in Paris and they take a pilgrimage, two or three day walk. I forget how long. It’s a grueling walk. It’s a few 100 miles from Paris to Chartres, to the cathedral there. And oftentimes, I think the bishop of Chartres in recent years has been involved and very supportive of it. Michael Matt is one of the experts on that particular branch of the tour, or the pilgrimage rather. And then there’s another one, excuse me, that’s I think more based in the SSPX, where they start in Chartres and they walk the pilgrimage to Paris. But it’s definitely a youth movement.
It’s tens of thousands of young people, young families. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the kids, I think scouting seems to be very popular in France because a lot of them are dressed what we would recognize as Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, those kinds of uniforms, and I’m guessing it has more of a faith-based theme to it than just the American version of scouting. But it seems it’s growing exponentially. Between the two branches, I think they had over 20,000 pilgrims this past. It always takes place around Pentecost Sunday, is my understanding. So I think for something to attend, that would be a good alternative where you would have the reverence, you’d have the traditional Latin mass, but you’d also be learning about they have their particular chants that they do. It’s a very lively event. It’s not like a solemn people walking around, whipping themselves as they walk from one place to another. It’s a very joyful event.
Eric Sammons:
I think one of what I feel the key difference between those two type of events, the Chartres Pilgrimage and World Youth Day, is that the purpose of World Youth Day almost seems to be, at least the unspoken purpose, is to have fun.
Matt Gaspers:
Oh, absolutely.
Eric Sammons:
And that’s not the purpose given for the Chartres Pilgrimage, yet I would be willing to argue that the vast majority of the young people who go, if you ask them later, they probably might even use the word fun to describe what happened. Not in an irreverence, but just like they enjoyed themselves. Like you said, it’s not like they’re whipping themselves. They really did enjoy themselves and they got such spiritual benefit out of it. And they’re around other young people and they’re just having a good time, wow, but that’s never the focus of the organizers-
Matt Gaspers:
Exactly.
Eric Sammons:
… it seems like, from the outside looking in. I’ve gone to a pilgrimage before, not that one or anything like that, a small one, and that’s what it seems to be like. Everybody afterwards just feels refreshed. They feel maybe tired too, but refreshed and energized, but they had a very enjoyable time while getting a lot of spiritual benefits.
Matt Gaspers:
And I think another difference is that World Youth Day, as far as the fun aspect, it’s very sedentary. I guess there is some moving around, but basically the difference is that you go to the one place and then you’re there for a week, and you’re milling around to different locations and things. It doesn’t really have a particular goal in mind. The goal is to keep everybody entertained for that week so they don’t get bored. With an actual pilgrimage, your destination is your purpose, is your goal, so you’re pilgrimaging. You’re walking towards something, you’re not just sedentary doing activities.
Eric Sammons:
And it also seems to be as in almost everything, we’re forgetting our past. We’re forgetting our own traditions because pilgrimage has been done by Catholics for 2000 years, and it’s a proven way to energize your faith. I’m using a modern term, I know, but the idea being that really, it’s almost like a retreat-type atmosphere, but you’re doing a purpose to it, like you said. Now, today though, and I’ve talked about this a few times on this podcast, we are very much focused on we catechize by talking to you. And I know that the World Youth Day that I went to, and I think it’s still the same, there’s a lot of talks given, and there might be some very wonderful talks by some wonderful speakers, and there might be a lot of bad talks because I know Father James Martin gave one of talks, so I know at least one this year at the World Youth Day was not a good talk.
But the point is regardless, it’s almost irrelevant in one sense whether or not the talk is good or not, it’s like this is the only way that we know how to catechize and how to evangelize and energize the youth is just talk to them a whole bunch. And then the talking becomes, “Okay, we have to be more and more energetic. We have to include music with it,” and something like that. Whereas in the pilgrimage, there probably are talks. At different pilgrimages, there are talks maybe given, if it’s a multi-day one, I wouldn’t be surprised if at times they may give a little talk here and there, but that’s not the primary focus. Primary focus is this joined effort to reach your destination and do it in a prayerful attitude throughout it.
Matt Gaspers:
Which typologically is meant to remind us of our journey to heaven. That’s the whole point.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Yes, exactly. I’m really hoping that heaven is not like a big World Youth Day.
Matt Gaspers:
Well, it’ll certainly be a letdown.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, right. That’s right.
Matt Gaspers:
I think the other elements, especially this year with it being in Portugal, that’s being neglected, and I’m happy to say there are some people from the Fatima Center who are there on the ground spreading the message of Our Lady of Fatima, but Fatima should be front and center at this World Youth Day. Not only the event of Fatima, but Our Lady’s message to young people. It’s amazing that they’re not capitalizing on that, but why would they if their goal is not to convert people? Because that’s certainly Our Lady of Fatima’s goal is to convert all sinners, lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of mercy.
Eric Sammons:
That’s a great point, and I’m glad you brought that up because millions of pilgrims have gone to Fatima over the decades and it’s right in your backyard, essentially. I don’t know the exact geography, but I know it can’t be that far away because Portugal isn’t very big. And so exactly, to tap into that, you would think that that’s like a gold mine. If you’re organizing this, you’re thinking, “What’s the most Catholic thing about our area?” And that’s Our Lady of Fatima you got right there. But like you said, the message is the problem. It’s an uncomfortable message, let’s be honest, in today’s church, that we’re all sinners, that we need to do penance. All these things are not something that-
Matt Gaspers:
But also something interesting, I heard a talk several years ago at a Fatima Center Youth Conference in 2018, and one of the priests there, Father Daniel Couture of the Society of St. Pius X, he said something that I’ve always remembered. The first thing that Our Lady did, she didn’t open by showing them the vision of hell, the first thing she told them is, “Fear not, I will not harm you,” and then when Lucia asked her, “Where are you from?” “I am from heaven.” She could have answered differently. She could have said, “Well, I’m from Nazareth,” or, “I’m from the Holy Land,” because those would also be true answers. No, she said, “I am from heaven.”
And Father Couture points out in his talk, it had the exact effect that she wanted it to have, because immediately it got the kids thinking about the supernatural and thinking, “Well, am I going to go to heaven? Is Francisco going to go to heaven? Is Jacinta going to go to heaven?” So the message of Fatima is ultimately a message of great hope. It does have some very serious realities intertwined with it, such as the vision of hell and the fact that many souls are going there, but it’s ultimately a message of God’s great love for humanity and that he’s sending his mother as a final refuge for us. Her immaculate heart is meant to be our refuge and the way that leads us to God, as Our Lady said.
Eric Sammons:
\And actually, that fits perfectly, of course, with the idea of a pilgrimage because you have this suffering and difficulty along the way, but then when you get to the final destination, that is you’ve accomplished the goal that you’ve set out to do. And typically, at most pilgrimages I’ve ever heard of, they usually have some type of a mass at the end, and so it’s like now you’re-
Matt Gaspers:
A celebration or something.
Eric Sammons:
… right, a celebration. You’re now entering into that heavenly foretaste of heaven. Everything about it, you don’t have to say a word about it. You don’t have to explicitly tell the kids, “Oh, by the way, this is going to foreshadow, pilgrimage,” you don’t have to say any of that, it just puts it in their minds-
Matt Gaspers:
They experience it.
Eric Sammons:
… they experience it, that in order to get the celebration, to the party so to speak, to the feast, you first go through the fasting, the penance and things like that. And I think that’s it. And I personally, I truly believe that’s something young people respond to. And I will say this, John Paul II, who did of course found the World Youth Days, and we’ve talked about some of the issues, he did understand at least on some level that you do want to call young people to something greater. And I think that is something that we need to do with the young people, is stop this dumbing down call.
Treat them like the young adults they are and call them to something beyond this world because I think they recognize better than most how broken our world is because they’re still idealistic. They still have in their mind that they have this view of a perfect world in their head, and then they’re starting to see oh, shoot, this world is nothing like that. And so then when the church comes and says, “We’ll just be like the world in order to attract you,” they’re like, “That’s exactly what I’m not attracted to.”
Matt Gaspers:
And speaking of that, I’ll read another quote from this official World Youth Day website. This is under the program section. Here, I’ll send you the link real quick in case you want to throw it up on the screen. But it says under the welcome ceremony, so this is going to be happening tomorrow. Pope Francis I think is traveling to Lisbon today. I think he’s already arrived, but tomorrow is the first time he’ll get together with the youth there. So it says, “As it is the first moment of encounter between the young people and the Pope, this ceremony will be an event with a festive and meeting environment, keeping the dimension of prayer.” Well, we’ll see how prayerful it actually is. “It wants to show the young church that sets out with the successor of Peter towards the construction of a more fraternal society.”
Eric Sammons:
Wow. I’m trying not to be triggered right now, Matt. I’m sorry, that in a nutshell is the problem. Our mission of the church, the young church, the old church, I don’t care what you want to call it, everybody in the church, is not the construction of a more fraternal society. That might be a noble task of politicians, of laypeople at times. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to have a better society under Christ the King, but that’s not the purpose of the church. The mission is not more fraternal society.
Matt Gaspers:
Not unless you’re talking about Christian fraternity. We’re all meant to be brothers and sisters in Christ, but you can’t have a more fraternal society when Christ the King is left out of it.
Eric Sammons:
And I would even argue that a more fraternal society in a Christian aspect is not the end goal, it’s just a result of everybody striving towards heaven.
Matt Gaspers:
A natural consequence.
Eric Sammons:
Thank you, a natural consequence. It’s like if your goal is just simply to make this world better, you’re going to end up making the world worse and you’re not going to get to heaven. But if your goal is let’s get everybody to heaven, then you are going to make this world better because it’s going to help make it so people can more easily get to heaven.
Matt Gaspers:
Right, because people aren’t interested in being converted if you’re a curmudgeon or something. You do have to be charitable in order to convert people.
Eric Sammons:
Right, right, exactly. And just creating a more Christian fraternal society helps people avoid temptation more because you have laws and different things in effect that would be more conducive towards the practice of Catholicism.
Matt Gaspers:
And that’s something we have hope for a whole other show, maybe the modesty issue. I know from my experience, that was a major problem.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, yeah. And I don’t even have a problem myself personally, I know some might, with what you were saying, people at these mega masses where you’re out and about all day, if the people are dressed in more casual fare. That’s fine, but you’re right, there is modesty issues. When literally the person who’s distributing Communion to you has a short skirt on, it’s like it, I’m sorry, but the 16 year old boy who’s walking up, you can’t tell me-
Matt Gaspers:
He’s not going to be thinking about Jesus.
Eric Sammons:
… that’s right, he’s not. And here’s the thing. God made him to be attracted to those situations because that’s not unnatural for him. The problem is that he’s been put in this situation where it’s very incongruous. Well, I think we’re going to wrap it up here. Is there anything else though? I like this, that this became somewhat of an ad for the Chartres Pilgrimage. I think I like that because that’s great. I know there’s a pilgrimage in England, Our Lady of Walsingham, they do a pilgrimage there I think once a year. I think that it might even be in August. It might even be this month, I’m not even sure. These are growing. I would love to see a nice one in the United States. Do you know of any United States that are pretty prominent or anything?
Matt Gaspers:
No, I haven’t heard of anything, and I have pretty low expectations for the Eucharistic Revival, Eucharistic Congress. We’ll see what happens.
Eric Sammons:
I’m afraid it’s going to fall into some of the same problems as World Rural Youth Day, but I do know this. This is a little hint. I’m not going to say too much, but I do know there is a plan by certain people of the more traditional bent to be present at the Eucharist Revival and to at least present to the attendees perhaps more traditional way of looking at the Eucharist and things of that nature, so that’ll be good.
Matt Gaspers:
Yes, that’s good news.
Eric Sammons:
But I would encourage people then, parents who are watching this and they want their young people to have an experience, there’s nothing wrong with having a spiritual experience, that you want your kids to have that and teenagers, maybe look into pilgrimages. Something like the Chartres Pilgrimage, maybe that’s too expensive. I feel like there was one in Pennsylvania, there used to be one, but I don’t remember. Maybe somebody will mention that in the comments once we put this out there. Okay.
Well, thank you, Matt. I really appreciate it. I’m going to put a link in the show notes I’ll put it to the World Youth Day website so people can see what we were talking about, but also particularly to Matt’s article about going from being a rockstar at World Youth Day to now attending the traditional Latin mass. It’s a good story. You’re going to want to read the whole thing. Matt just gave a quick overview of it here, but you’re going to want to read that.
Matt Gaspers:
Thank you so much, Eric. That’ll be available at catholicfamilynews.com. I encourage folks to check it out and also join us. We do a weekly news roundup, typically on Thursday afternoons early evening, so you can find us on YouTube in Rumble for that show, Weekly News Roundup.
Eric Sammons:
Yes, thank you. I wanted you to promote that. Catholic Family News, they have a great website. They do their news, the roundup and everything. So I’ll put links to that as well in the show notes and I encourage people to check that out too.
Matt Gaspers:
All right.
Eric Sammons:
Okay, great. Thanks, Matt. Until next time, everybody, God love you.