Cathal BarryJesuit campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has warned that young people who are “disinterested” in the Church are the “prophets of today” and should not be blamed for “straying”.
Speaking at this year’s SMA Summer School in Newry, Fr McVerry said that young people telling the Church that there is “something fundamentally wrong” with its message need to be listened to.
“Those young people who are walking away from the Church, disinterested, are the prophets of today, telling the Church that there is something fundamentally wrong with the message which our Church preaches,” he said.
The Jesuit priest noted, however, that “as always with the prophets”, the Church “attacks the messenger, blames them for straying from the Church and asking for prayers that that they will see sense and return some day”.
Noting that older Catholics “have been brought up to believe in a God who lays down laws and demands that we obey them or face the consequences”, Fr McVerry insisted that “young people today are simply not interested in such a God… and rightly so”.
Fr McVerry said he believes that the direction Pope Francis is leading the Church is a “fundamental and irreversible change”.
“For too long, the Church has proclaimed a God of the Law, a God whose passion is the observance of the law, and has been telling us that our relationship with God is determined by how we observe the law. A God of the Law is a God who excludes the sinner,” the priest said.
“Pope Francis, by what he is saying and doing, is bringing us back to that gospel message of Jesus, that our God is a God whose passion is compassion. This is both a fundamental change of direction for the Church, but it is also irreversible,” he said.