What’s the matter with kids today? I’ll bet if we look hard enough, somewhere on this planet this question is probably inscribed on a cave wall in an ancient language dating back thousands of years. When people my age become merely a memory, I’m sure some elderly millennial will say those words again. Some things never change.

 

Adults have always worried about children — those little humans that represent the future and the assurance that life will continue — and the effect the world will have on their morality, faith and future. What will the modern day distractions do to the future of our children? Distractions like billard halls, motorcars, music, radio, television, video arcades and games, the internet, virtual reality, not to mention sex, drugs and rock and roll. What will it do to the citizens of tomorrow?

 

What’s the matter with kids today? They are being themselves. Young people are being what they are meant to be — young. They are curious, questioning, excited, expectant, anticipatory, scared, apprehensive, uninhibited, naïve, innocent and the list goes on. All any of us has to do is think back for a moment to our own young lives to realize that as we grew into the people we are, we, at one time or another, exhibited all these particular traits. And I’m pretty sure there were few, if any, times that we stopped to think that there was something the matter or wrong with us as we navigated all those dangers and distractions of youth on the path to adulthood.

 

The Synod of Bishops this month is taking up the subject of young people in the Church. That’s good. The Church needs to reflect constantly on how it can best take care of its young people to grow and nuture them in the Catholic faith. And the synod recognized early in its meetings that the Church can’t just talk “about” young people as if they were an issue or problem for solving. A synod on young people also couldn’t just be a forum for listening. To explore the relationship between the Catholic Church and young people there had to be conversations. 

 

One of Pope Francis’ appointees to the commission drafting the final document of the Oct. 3-28 synod is Brazilian Father Alexandre Awi Mello as secretary of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. Father Awi Mello was interviewed by Inés San Martín of Crux who asked, “You say that there’s an opening of the bishops to listen to young people. But, the pope recently told young people that they have to be open to listen to their elders, who are the ‘roots.’ Do you see that opening too?”

 

Father Awi Mello replied, “I think so, and that’s nice. The theme of intergenerational dialogue, which is so dear to the pope, is present all the time. And I think that this feedback between young people and adults (and the elderly) is fundamental. Only half-joking a girl said, ‘because you are elders,’ and the synod fathers who spoke after her owned up to it and answered beginning by saying ‘we the elders.’ Obviously, the age difference in the synodal assembly is visible, but I think this dialogue of mutual openness is visible too.” 

 

This leads me to believe that like garden plants, young people bloom and grow adapting to the conditions around them. However to grow and bear flowers or fruits plants need some constants like sun and water. Growing young people need constants too. They need their elders — those who have traveled the path from infancy before them. An intergenerational dialogue as Father Awi Mello called it, in my mind, is much more than an ingredient for a productive synod. A constant conversation between all people in the Church — Catholics young, old, of all colors and social stratas need to be not just sharing the Catholic faith with each other from their perspectives, but more importantly also practicing the faith together. The new evangelization and outreach to youth should include more than talk. It should be an intergenerational walk through the sacraments to Christ. To me, this is what will matter with kids today and the adults of tomorrow. It will seek to answer the age-old question for all time.