Going Beyond Faith As Habit

The recent Catholic Weekly reported on a parish community attempting to help young people deepen their faith life away from habit to understanding and participation. Below is a summary of the article.

The youth school has been open since May of last year thanks to the interest of the parish priest who felt a need for a learning center for doctrine and faith for young people. This is because young people who graduate from middle and high school Sunday school do not have many opportunities to learn about doctrine unless they collect information on their own or travel to find it.

The priest  who has been in charge of youth ministry at the parish and has listened to the voices of young people, said: "Young people these days are sensitive to justice and equality, so I am especially interested in the church’s  social doctrine." He went on to say, "I wanted to accompany young people who have limited leisure time due to work, study, and employment so that they can quench their religious thirst." 

The educational content is filled with topics that young people pay attention to because of the times. Last year, they learned a lot about moral theology, the death penalty, abortion, peace on the Korean Peninsula, and nuclear power plants. Young people recommended topics with an awareness of issues such as ‘How is human life dignified?’, ‘What kind of relationship should humans have with nature, which is also a child of God?’, and ‘How can we reconcile with North Korea, our closest neighbor?’ Accordingly, priests and religious with expertise in each field are invited to give special lectures.

Youth school was a time to revitalize and enrich the religious life that was often stale. In this year's third course, a special lecture on liturgy and sacred music received a great response. The  head of the youth school, said: "It was an opportunity to open my eyes to what I should focus on and what beautiful meaning the Mass contains which I  just thought I had to attend."

The values ​​pursued by youth schools are not just theory-centered education, but education that resonates with young people. In April, they had a field experience visiting the Korean Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas. The young people said: "Thanks for visiting a neighboring church that I would never normally visit, and learning from another's religious tradition."

In this way, the existence of a learning center that informs young people of the things they are truly curious about also serves as a good guide for young new believers who have never had in-depth contact with faith. This means that young people, for whom rational understanding is important, can accept church teachings and mysteries ‘as if they were their own’, which are difficult to blindly accept.

Another participant said:  "I was able to easily understand and learn about doctrines and various questions that could have been limited to simple knowledge."   Another who started attending church in March said: "For a catechumen, many things felt unfamiliar and complex, such as the Mass liturgy where you sit and stand repeatedly, or the Angelus prayer said three times a day." He continued: "Unlike back then, I developed a mindset of being grateful and cherishing how valuable the faith I had chosen was."