Youth voice needed in social justice reforms

TORONTO - A Newman Centre evening aimed at revitalizing Catholic social justice work in downtown Toronto got people talking mainly about who wasn’t there.

The April 19 gathering of about 60 people for Mass, potluck dinner and discussion was supposed to draw young people, but couldn’t compete with exams, the start of summer jobs, moving dates and all the other commitments students face in the spring.

When Jesuit Father Jack Costello looked out at the grey-haired crowd in the Newman Centre chapel he said he would have to adjust his homily to fit an older crowd than he had expected.

“You would hope there would be people to pass the torch to,” said organizer Peter Baltutis of the Newman Centre staff.

Getting undergraduates interested in the church’s social justice teaching isn’t easy, said  Kim Godfried-Piché, Ryerson University director of chaplaincy service.

“They confuse charitable works with social justice,” she said.

The Ryerson Chaplaincy team mounted a year-long series of evenings at St. Michael’s Cathedral examining the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church and failed to attract a single student.

Students don’t want another lecture or another set of obligations when they come to church, said Godfried-Piché.

“They like to get out of themselves. They’re walking by homeless people holding out their hats and they say, ‘What do we do?’ ”

If you can make the connection between faith and social justice for a young person it makes a big difference in their attitude toward the church and organized religion, said Diane Janisse.

“It shows there’s a side of the church that reflects the Jesus they’ve heard about,” she said.

Rather than footnoted documents, the social justice movement needs to refer to the Gospels if it wants to attract young people, said Philip Schmidt.

“It’s scripturally based. It’s not something the church just invented,” he said.

Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace animator Luke Stocking said that when he speaks to high school students he never mentions the social teaching documents produced over the last 130 years.

“It’s not dry documents. When I talk to high school students I don’t even say Rerum Novarum,” he said.

Instead, Stocking’s starting point is the Lord’s Prayer. Then he asks the students whether permanent and degrading poverty or environmental devastation belong in the Kingdom they just prayed for.

For Marianne Moroney, who spent years avoiding church and exploring new age spirituality when she was younger, social justice was a way to attach herself again to the faith she grew up with.

“I also realized the Church is me,” she said.

The Mass before dinner was presided over by Auxiliary Bishop William McGrattan. Baltutis said having the bishop present was an important start in the effort to re-energize social justice ministry.

“We’re called to be collaborators with the local magisterium,” he said.