- Sorry, it's not against you -a young man in his twenties tells me very kindly in a conversation after a dinner with university students-, but your generation, the generation of our parents, has not been able to give us references.
- What do you mean?
- You have dedicated yourselves to work, to earn money," he explains to me, "to have a comfortable life. But we have not found in you teachers to teach us how to live.
The post-war generation, and the following one
Fernando Sebastián, Archbishop of Pamplona and Bishop of Tudela, with whom I worked some years ago in the diocese of Navarre.
He spoke to me precisely about that generation, our generation, as a lost generation. His generation, the one that lived through the post-war period, with the blood still warm from the martyrs, had faith as something substantial in life. They knew what was at stake in life. They had values and a mission to fulfill.
But the next generation, which had lived in a culturally Catholic Spain, had not internalized the faith and therefore did not know how to make it a culture or transmit it to their children. It was, as the wise bishop told me, a lost generation. There is a missing link in the transmission of the faith and, as this young man commented to me, there is also a lack of references in social life.
Today's generation: a comfortable life is not enough, but they do not find the way
And there is a new generation of young people, the current one, who are groping and do not know which way to go. At the same time, they realize that the bourgeois dream of a comfortable life offered by the welfare society -that which we embody in our generation- is not enough, but they cannot find the path to follow because no one has shown it to them. That is his drama.
Those of us who were brought up in a Christian faith and values, even if we have moved away from them, have a place to return to. But those born in this age have no home to return to. They have no father waiting for them in the distance.
Some speak of a ‘Catholic turn’
There is a sociological change, no doubt. Some speak of a Catholic turn. I believe that it rather responds to the conjunction of a search of the heart of this new generation and to this orphanhood that has left young people without a goal in life, without knowing where to direct their steps.
We have been respectful and have told them to search for the truth on their own, without proposing anything so as not to condition them, while insisting that there is no such thing as truth, that everything is relative. We have condemned them to search all their lives without ever finding anything. We have condemned them to practical nihilism.
We are not looking at the silent cry of young people.
There are those who, when faced with this impasse, find no other way out than to end their lives. I am afraid that we are not looking at the reality of suicide among young people and the silent cry they are sending out to us. It has deep roots that cannot be cured with a band-aid.
Many other young people are not resigned to meaninglessness or conformism and are still looking for real teachers, real parents.
We want faith to be true, even if it costs
- In my parish they are afraid to make serious proposals," another young man told me recently. They do not realize that an undemanding Christianity is not enough for us. If we approach the faith it is because we want it to be true. Even if it costs us.
In this breeding ground, it is easy for socio-political messianisms to appear to fill the void of meaning we have left and offer them an ideal for which to spend their lives. In the midst of an identity crisis and in the face of the need for referents, those who attract them to their partisan interests by offering them identity slogans will rise up. And without other referents they will be easily manipulated.
We need teachers, fathers and mothers, witnesses
The challenge for society and for the Church is dramatic.
We need teachers. We need fathers and mothers. We need witnesses.
The young people themselves are demanding it of us.
Our lives depend on not letting them down.
