Cathal Barry
US Bishop Frank Caggiano tells Cathal Barry how to engage young people in the Church
Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport, Connecticut is no stranger to addressing young people on faith and spirituality.
At World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011, he spoke of being ‘Firm in the Faith’ and in 2009 he travelled to Ireland as the main speaker at the Youth 2000 Summer Festival in Clonmacnois and again at Roscrea last year.
At the International Eucharistic Congress that was held in Dublin in 2012, he challenged the young people present to be courageous witnesses to the Faith.
However, on this his 5th visit to the Emerald Isle, the popular US bishop spoke directly to adults, keen to hear his advice on how they might better engage young people in the Church here.
Bishop Caggiano had been invited on this occasion by the Steering Committee for Adult Studies of the Catechism to address delegates on sharing the Faith with the next generation.
Representatives from several Irish dioceses gathered in Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, to listen and learn from the experience of this world renowned prelate.
It was to be a “conversation” as the bishop put it, but Caggiano’s in-your-face style and enthusiasm for the theme meant he alone commanded the room.
Community of faith
“You and I have been asked by the Lord to empower young people to take their rightful place in the community of faith,” he began boldly.
“We have been called to help them to know the Lord,” he continued. “Not just to know about him, but to know him in heart. To worship and adore him. And to serve him by acts of charity and mercy that make the love of God real.”
Challenging words for challenging times, some might say. Bishop Caggiano would agree.
“There is a universal change going on. Every age in the Church life has had challenges, we are no different,” he said.
“We are experiencing perhaps some unique challenges. The very fabric of human society is changing before our eyes and there is no one alive who can fully and completely expose where those changes are leading us.”
The Brooklyn-born bishop was living up to his blunt reputation. But he had not made the trip across the Atlantic to depress anyone. The Irish faithful are “well enough equipped to do that” themselves, he reckoned.
“I am here to embrace the hope that the lord has given us. I believe we are living in a very hopeful time,” he said.
“My experience is that young people are ready and eager to take their place. They remain generous in spirit and open and hungry for the truth of the faith. It is for us in leadership to help them to find that.”
In his own east-coast diocese, Bishop Caggiano has called a diocesan synod, the first in 34 years. In preparatory meetings with delegates, both young and old, he discovered a “vast disconnect” between what young people want and what adults think they want.
Consulting both groups, Bishop Caggiano recalled that the adults spoke of the need for the Church to engage and reach out, the need for relevant music at Mass and more appropriate language in passing on the Faith.
The youth, on the other hand, voiced their interest in the sacraments, in the celebration of Mass, in adoration and in Sacred Scripture.
But what about the unenlightened ones? The young people who are not yet in communion with the Church and those who have left the Church to one side?
Bridges
In this case, according to Bishop Caggiano, there is a need to “build bridges”. “The young people who are already engaged in the Church are in fact the bridge to the young people who are not engaged,” he told The Irish Catholic.
“That’s why we need to empower those already engaged in the life of the Church, they get it. And they may not only lead other people of their age to faith, they may help us to grow in faith too.”
Returning to the aforementioned ‘disconnect’, Bishop Caggiano believes adults too often speak out on behalf of the youth. “We have not given our young people a chance to speak for themselves. They will have more answers than we who are older care to admit,” he noted.
Technology, according to the bishop, has been a key factor in widening the gulf that now exists between young and old in the Church.
“There is something qualitatively different in the experience of young people now. Technology is a formative presence,” he said.
To remedy the situation, Bishop Caggiano suggests commissioning ‘digital missionaries’ to spread the Faith online.
“We need to appreciate that which they are experiencing. We need to ask them to put into words, to the extent that it is possible, how is it that they have allowed faith to become an effective part of their life. We need to empower them to become the digital missionaries, to go out and do to others what was done to them.”
But this plan needs structure.
“We need to make it purposeful, we need to make it conscious, we need to make it deliberative,” he said.
At the heart of Bishop Caggiano’s plan for evangelisation are three central elements. To know, worship and serve the Lord.
“Those are the three key elements we need to challenge young people.”
Focusing on the first, Bishop Caggiano highlighted the “profound difference” between knowing the Lord and knowing about the Lord.
“It is never a question of one or the other it is always both. You cannot have one effectively without the other.”
Regarding worship and adoration, the bishop raises concern for what he phrases as a “crisis of community”.
He is confident that the search for God is part of the fabric of human life. However, the bishop insists that the crisis that exists is: What you’re your community have to do with my search? Ensuring the Church’s relevance to young people is an effective antidote here, the bishop said.
Finally, addressing the topic of serving the Lord, Bishop Caggiano noted the “profound example” of Pope Francis. “The Holy Father is calling the Church to make credible, love. In an age where love is almost seen as a theoretical reality and for too many people a myth, the Holy Father is saying make love concrete and you make love credible,” he said.
“Serving the Lord is about giving love real presence in our lives. That is what the lord is asking us to do. This is the age of the witnesses,” he said.
