Mags GarganThe papal nuncio to Ireland has said that young Irish Catholics need “to have the courage to be different” and rebel against a society that “is distancing itself from God”.
Speaking at the closing Mass of the Youth 2000 Summer Festival in Roscrea on Sunday, Archbishop Charles Brown told the over 1,000 young people that the surrounding culture in our society “tends to dampen and extinguish” the joy of faith.
Referring to the young Pope John Paul II living in a Communist society in Poland and the early saints living among Paganism in Rome, he said that for Catholics to follow Christ “we have to have the courage to be different”.
“The Catholic faith belongs to young people. The Catholic faith is about young people,” he said. “The Catholic faith in a certain sense begins with a young woman in a town which still exists today in Northern Israel – a teenager certainly, a girl who said yes to an angel and became the mother of God and changed the course of history, changed the world, changed everything. So if our faith began with a teenager, it is going to continue with young people.”
Revolutionaries
Archbishop Brown said Pope Francis is very aware that our culture gives us messages “which go against our Catholic faith” and referred to his letter inviting young people to World Youth Day next year, where he called for the youth to be “revolutionaries”.
“He says 'I ask you to be revolutionaries. I ask you to swim against the tide. Yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture.' That’s what it means to be a Catholic today in Ireland. It means to rebel, to be different, to continue to practise your faith, to love the person of Jesus, to receive the Holy Eucharist, to confess your sins and to be filled with the joy that only comes from him," the nuncio said.