Our young people

Many people have different attitudes towards the young today. Usually, one is either too optimistic or too pessimistic. Allow me to quote this paradoxical extract I deem very consoling: “We live in an age of decadence. The young are good-for-nothing, do not respect their elders, are impatient and rebellious. The wisdom of the old is ridiculed by them and their parents are treated without regard. These symptoms of our age are an indication that we are near to the end of the world.” What is consoling in these gloomy phrases, many will ask? This was written more than 4,500 years ago, by Atamou, scribe of Thebes, in Egypt, in the year 2,500 BC.

So before condemning our young people today, please understand that things could have been much worse in ages past. After seeing so many energetic and enthusiastic young people gather around Pope Francis a month ago in Lisbon for WYD, we should be grateful that a nice percentage of our younger generation still have precious values they cherish, and a good Christian upbringing, which they will hopefully pass on to their offspring. Pope John Paul II spoke in a more hopeful way in late 1979, when speaking to his Cardinals: “Young people, in their various phases from adolescence to the doorstep of marriage are righteous, generous, thirsty for the truth, for justice; they turn to the Church with renewed interest and with a profound desire for a clear reply to the fundamental questions of life… But I think also of the obscure realities which menace this potential richness of life.”