Colm Flynn: Today, in the year 2023, when we hear so much about religion declining around the world and about so many different distractions for young people, why do you think an event like World Youth Day is not only relevant, but also important?
Bishop Robert Barron: Well, the faith, in some respects, is declining in the West, but in other parts of the world it’s not. One thing about World Youth Day is that we see Catholics from all over the world and it braces out of our western, myopic view of things. I love that you see the vibrancy of the faith in Africa and Asia. Secondly, everyone is hungry for God – whether they acknowledge it not, whether they feel it directly or not: everyone is hungry for God. When there’s an opportunity to come together to seek God, to praise God, young people respond. They don’t want an uncertain trumpet, they don’t want a vacillating message; they want something clear. And when they get it, they respond to it.
Colm Flynn: It’s interesting you say that they want something solid, something with solid foundations, something clear.
Bishop Barron: We dumb downed the faith for way too long. My generation got a dumb-downed Catholicism and it’s been a pastoral disaster. That’s not just my private opinion, you can see that in every survey. When you ask people why they’re disaffiliating, in the western world anyways, they often say ‘I never got my questions answered’, ‘religions seems stupid’, ‘it’s out of line with science’ etc. We dumb-downed the faith in an attempt to make it relevant and we undermined ourselves. It’s a vibrant, smart, beautiful Catholicism that people find compelling.
Colm Flynn: Do you think there was a complacency? I know in my own country of Ireland, when we did a report recently looking at the decline of the faith, a country that was once called the ‘Land of Saints and Scholars,’ they had the people coming at 90 percent attendance, there was no great need to evangelize because the people where there, the pews were filled.
Bishop Robert Barron: Evangelization is a task the Church, in every time and every age. Whether you get 90 percent or 20 percent coming, our job is to evangelize. Pope Benedict said the Church does three things: it worships God, it serves the poor, and it evangelizes. So, that is the task, in season and out, whether we’re successful culturally or hated culturally: we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.
Colm Flynn: I’ve been speaking to young people here, all the worries and anxieties, you think of what has happened in the world since the last World Youth Day in Panama with the war and the pandemic, what do you think young people should leave here with a sense of, that they didn’t have when they came here. How should they have changed?
Bishop Robert Barron: I think it is tough being a young person now, and the pandemic had a lot to do with it. But also, the rise of social media and its negative aspect. I love social media, I use it, but it has a very negative aspect – young people know this. The numbers of anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies are all spiking among young people and a lot of it is related to social media. I want them to come away with a sense of, that world you can use it, it is a tool, but it is not the real world. The real world is the world of the worship of God, the service of the poor, communion with one another and that’s what this day is all about.
It’s tougher to be a young person now than it was when John Paul started these things a long time ago. It is a tougher now, which means we need Christ more than ever. I want them to come away with a sense of a Jesus who loves them, who walks with them, and wants to be the Lord of their life in a liberating way. If that message comes through, we got something good for them.
