The nice folks at Catholic Extension have long been great supporters of the work of the Church in the Rio Grande Valley. They were kind to ask me for permission to publish the concluding part of a lecture I gave a couple of years ago in San Antonio, Texas. I was happy to do so. The section they published has to do with the challenges our youth face here in the Valley, but, also,you can be sure, in many places throughout the country. I reproduce what they published in the most recent edition of Catholic Extension Magazine here below.
You may be most familiar with the work of Catholic Extension through their Calendars. They are widely distributed in parishes in the United States, and I remember having them at home when I was growing up. Support for the Catholic Extension Society helps to promote the work of the Church in the many mission dioceses we have in the United States. The Diocese of Brownsville is one of those mission dioceses.
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| A favorite picture of mine. A young person reaches out to touch the image of Jesus as He walks the way of the Cross. |
The Future on the Border
A pastor called me one day last spring just to inform me that he had received a call from the local police. They wanted to know if he had a student about 13 or 14 years old by the name of Carlos (not his real name) in his religious education classes. They did not have a last name. The pastor told them there were at least three by that name enrolled. The police then went on to say that they had a tip that a boy by the name of Carlos was being targeted by a local gang precisely because he had decided not to join that gang. The gang members knew he went to Church there and was going to CCD classes. The word on the street was, the police added, that this boy would be beat up or possibly killed. So they were warning the pastor to keep his adults particularly vigilant to look after the kids before and after CCD, and that they, the police would be patrolling the area on Wednesday night for some time to come.
Everywhere I go in the Valley, I repeat a message to whoever will hear me that the ones most at risk are our kids. I plead with parents: spend time with your children. The cartels, and the gangs associated to them start by offering an 11- or 12-year-old 50 bucks to take the drugs across to the other side, or to bring something back. If they do well, they will get more money the next time. They can rise in the ranks and make more money. We have all known this for some time, and law enforcement has been raising this concern, especially recently. The offer is what we call the “glamour of evil.”[1]
Eleven or 12-year-olds are making decisions about whether to make money quick and easy, or risk being beat up if they choose to live an honest kid’s life and go to Church, go to religious education classes. The border violence is not simply about security around the line of demarcation between two sovereign nations; battles are being fought on the borders of the soul that mark the difference between life and death, grace and sin. The conscience of an 11-year-old is the principal battle ground in the current border wars.
I have read a great deal of the French novelist Georges Bernanos, some would say I have read too much. But with a kind of starkness that defies my ability to describe, he relentlessly shows how the soul must sooner or later choose Christ or despair, grace or self-destruction, life or death. In the end, either our lives are held in the hand of a loving God, or there is nothing holding us at all. Al fin y al cabo, either the story of life is a story meant to end in the triumph of life and goodness, or it is a story that must tragically end in the destruction of all things. Between Christ and despair there is no middle ground; there is no safe secular space where we all happily mind our own business. I bring this up because we in the Church must re-engage the urgent necessity of our evangelization efforts, our catechetical and formational efforts on behalf of our families, our young people, our young adults, indeed on behalf of the whole world.
If a 12-year-old does not believe that in the end, love and life wins, than the options open to him or her are fairly obvious. If in the end, death triumphs, then nothing really matters. Si al fin y al cabo triunfa la muerte, nada importa, y me voy con los que me ofrecen el dinero, las drogas y las pistolas. There are too many statues of la santa muerte in our neighborhoods for me naively to think that this evil we face is simply a political and economic and social problem. The ancient enemy of the human race is drawn by the smell of death, and he disseminates it. He is not a bystander in the tragedy unfolding along the river and beyond. He is the ultimate purveyor of this cynical “nothing really matters anyway” attitude that can infect a young soul or an old one at any time.
The infection is deadly, unless there is some deeper reservoir of life and hope, some stronger conviction about what human life is destined for. We have faith; we must teach the faith. But what do we believe? We believe, as Saint John tells us in his first letter, “Not that we have loved God, but that he has first loved us, and sent his Son as the expiation for our sins.”[2] To teach the Gospel, and invite participation in the mysteries of grace is precisely this, to fortify the soul with its deepest need, namely faith in the triumph of love over hatred, grace over sin, goodness over evil. Christ is risen, death does not win.
Even a 6-year-old in our religious education classes knows this. We hope and pray this young person still knows this when he or she is 12.
It takes both conscience and courage to be good in this world. Conscience is rooted in the natural law, but the inclination toward the good is both wounded and rudderless without early, age appropriate guidance and formation in grace. And courage is lacking if there is no conviction that the victory is possible. The Gospel taught to a 6-year-old, first communion gently and effectively prepared for, is the beginning of conscience and courage. Because if you believe that God loves you enough to die for you, and give himself to you in the Eucharist, then you believe that in the end, the love of God triumphs over death and sin. In the end, the truth someone teaches a child at age six may be the only thing that really saves the next generation from the designs of death.
We have to refocus more pastoral resources on the younger youth demographic. If our youth groups and youth activities are exclusively aimed at high school or college, I greatly fear we are missing those most at risk. Consult the sacramental statistics of any diocese in the United States, and you will find some manner of drop-off between the numbers of first confession / first communions and the numbers of confirmations. It is a complex question to answer: where did those kids go? But the bottom line is that they are not so much with the Church anymore. And that is the demographic that is being offered the 50 bucks to carry the narcotics, or smuggle the guns. It is not an impossible task to step up our pastoral efforts to connect our middle school-age children to the life of the Church, but it is an urgent task, and an effort that we need to intensify, given what is at stake.
And yes, I think poverty has a lot to do with the vulnerability of this age group, but so does the reality of either a broken home, or two parents who work and are hardly ever home. And a national immigration policy that separates parents who were not born here from children who were born here exacerbates the problem intolerably. If parents are the first teachers of their children about how to tell the difference between right and wrong, both the Church and the wider society need to be marshalling their attention toward the support of parents in this vital, irreplaceable work. The Church, that is to say, we, all of us, need to be actively encouraging parents to spend time with their children, especially when they are very young. Maybe a second job makes for a better life economically, but if there is no time to talk to the kids, reflect with them about what they are seeing at school and in the neighborhood, then the cost of that second job is too high. Parents have to make those kinds of decisions every day.
The school cannot do this, and the parish cannot do it initially. Our public schools are increasingly unable to teach about virtue and the good, largely because the working secular consensus cedes practically all of morality to the private sphere. This disposition toward leaving large swaths of the moral horizon to private decisions, coupled with children who increasingly do not have a stable home-life to return to, has led to a moral vacuum in the social fabric. How can a 14-year-old hold a gun in the direction of a man in a car, a man who happens to be the bishop of a diocese in northern Mexico? And it is not sufficient to say “well, that happens in Mexico.” Do we think that that 14-year-old does not have a twin somewhere in Pharr, Texas, or in Detroit, Michigan, for that matter? How can this happen? We might as easily ask when hope in the goodness of life was driven from him, and then when the conscience lost its voice.
To give the kind of pastoral attention I am talking about, we have to find ways to coordinate in common the pastoral efforts in parishes on behalf of families, and on behalf of youth. Sometimes these end up being separate efforts. Particularly when dealing with the younger demographic, we must be sensitive to the fact that parents are looking for safe and protected situations for their middle school-age children to develop a strong social and moral sense, as well as a sense of belonging. Todo el mundo quiere pertenecer, tomar parte. And if our younger children do not find the right place to belong in the wider community of the parish, they will easily find themselves invited to belong to a gang or a cartel. We should be experts in this basic human desire for community, about having a place, and having something to contribute.
Also, I think we have to do much better at teaching this younger demographic about the beauty and nobility of a call to goodness and holiness. The lives of Saints can be powerful in this aspect of youth formation. If someone had not told me about the life of Maximilian Kolbe when I was starting High School, and handed me a book about him, I doubt I would be here today. Sometimes I think we adults do not truly appreciate how an example of generosity and charity impacts the conscience of a young person. Maybe we get cynical about such things. But the heart of a child is a sacred place, and the early impressions of the sacredness of life and the goodness of God can have a life-long impact. I admire the young man, Carlos, and others like him, who have the courage to go to Mass and religious education classes; he took a risk in saying no to the gang. Where does such courage come from in a young person? It is from the Lord. Something powerful got through to him; and he and we are the better for it.
Do we actually know how important it is what we do every day in the Church? Or do we ourselves give in to a quiet despair that really doubts that in the end it matters very much? Family time, and soccer games; Sunday Mass and parish festivals, confirmation classes, and service projects; baseball games and holy hours for peace; First communions and confession lines; youth rallies, family rosaries, and musical concerts; a time to be together, and a time to be silent, a time to wash cars, and a time to clean up the parish grounds; retreats, and charismatic prayer meetings. The list could go on. What are these things? They are what we do to build up a sense of what it means to live this life in the confidence that faith gives us in the goodness and beauty of life. These are the things we do to build up that sense of prayer, community, and service that make up the essence of what it means to be believers, and to offer light to the next generation. These are some of the things the Lord does to help us in our times of severe trial. The conscience and courage we seek to inculcate in our communities is the leaven that the Lord gives to his people, through his people. He gives his grace through us, walking together the pilgrimage of life. To the Lord of life, who gives us these gifts, to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.
[1] Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve C. McCraw, ass reporters by Reuters, October 17, 2011: Cartels would pay kids $50 just for them to move a vehicle from one position to another position, which allows the cartel to keep it under surveillance to see if law enforcement has it under surveillance," he said."Of course, once you're hooked up with them, there's consequences." McCraw said 25 minors have been arrested in one Texas border county alone in the past year for running drugs, acting as lookouts, or doing other work for organized Mexican drug gangs. The cartels are now fanning out, he said, and have operations in all major Texas cities. This month, "we made an arrest of a 12-year-old boy who was in a stolen pickup truck with 800 pounds of marijuana," he said. "So they do recruit our kids."
[2] 1st john, 4:10.
Which books by Georges Bernanos, other than Diary of a Country Priest, would you recommend?
ReplyDeleteJulie Donati