Article for CDJA Netherlands magazine - by Paolo Zanetto
Jubilee, there's something we should learn
In this very hot
August, the city of Rome has been peacefully invaded by two million
young people coming from more than 170 countries. They were
participating to the World Youth Day, celebrated in Rome in this
year of the Catholic Jubilee. The sight of the Pope John Paul II in
front of this young mass was really a powerful show.
After the end of
the movement started in 1968 all over the world, most of the
opinion-makers say that the youth of today is not as alive as the
one of yesterday, that we have no courage, no vision, no push to
change the world. In their opinion, we are useless people engaged
just in becoming older, without the inner light that all the young
people should have.
Probably, the view
of that giant young crowd gathered in Rome to meet the Pope was
shocking for most of these intellectuals. In Italy the newspapers
started a debate between enthusiastic and sceptical commentators
about the role of the Catholic religion for the young people. This
debate, dividing Catholics and laics as two opposite sides, shown a
completely wrong approach.
I think we can take
a big lesson from the success of the World Youth Day: the Catholic
Church, as well as other Churches, is able to move the energies and
the spirits of the new generations; instead, politics can't speak
anymore with the young people. This is a remark that goes beyond the
strict reasons of faith, because it's about the way you deal with
the youth.
On this issue, the
laic State should learn from the Church, because the Pope is really
willing to put young people at the center of his message. When
politicians speak about youth, their message is always perceived as
rhetoric, because in most cases (at least in Italy) young people
actually count for nothing. They keep saying that, since the youth
is the future, it's important to invest on it. True, but they don't
consider one important point: young people are also the present of
the society.
Indeed, there's a
big risk in front of us: the lack of commitment of the new
generations toward the construction of a better society. All over
Europe the number of young people voting in the elections is
reducing, the active participation to the life of the parties is
very low, and politics is not anymore something 'cool' that you
should follow. These signals, however, are counter-balanced by other
facts: the big involvement in the no-profit sector, the growth of
volunteering, the strong feelings about specific issues (e.g. in my
country the fight against illegality and mafia). I hope that those
who think that today's youth has no ideas, no ideals, no passions,
have seen the joyful faces of two million boys and girls in Rome.
We should consider
one more point: the Catholic youth of the Jubilee is a minority into
the youth world, no doubt about it. Anyway, we know that the
strength of today's youth is not in the ideologies, but in the
values that, no matter the confession or other discriminating points,
are shared by almost everyone: liberty, friendship, solidarity,
family. Most adults who want to teach something, they should learn
from us a lot of things: the pleasure of being together, the
responsible sense of fun, the purity of ideas, the courage to carry
them on.
After the fall of
the ideologies, politics has to find its way conjugating concrete
issues and high vision, giving to young people the dream of a better
society and the proposal of possible solutions. The first act coming
from politics should be an answer to their questions about youth
unemployment, an astonishing menace to the future of many families,
or about education and training programs that, in this changing
world of the New economy, have to be carefully reformed. The second
contemporary act of politics should be to understand the values of
the new generations, to learn from them, and to respect them.
Many people still
don't get the dimension of the problems we are facing. Today we need
to bring together different ethnical, linguistic and religious group,
to make them live together under the principle of solidarity. The
values shown by most of today's youth are the answer to that problem:
we should be happy about that, and not just recalling the past
fights among ideologies that in many cases were extreme. Give youth
a chance: this is the key for building the moderate Europe of the
people we are seeking.
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