Bruno Ferrero and Marianna Pacucci have different but complementary views on the matter of protecting teenagers’ faith.
BRUNO FERRERO WRITES…
Around the age of fifteen, a young person is thirsty for freedom and independence and starts casting a critical eye on the baggage of ideas they have inherited. Christian convictions and practices get called into question.
The doubt, contradictions, exaggeration and confusion, that reign in the young person’s mind seem to dominate: Why was I baptised when I was not able to give my opinion? What is the difference between and reincarnation? One religion is as good as another: the important thing is to love. Religion… may be OK, but I can’t stand the Church. Parents are hypocrites. Mass is not so important: it is boring, and those who go, preach one thing and do the opposite. Hell is an invention… And that is definitely not the end of all the questions.
It is disquieting time for parents, but it is also a lovely time. Like in the parable of Jesus told, the house built on rock survives the earthquake. If the parents have been solid, the house will survive.
A growing faith
Adolescence is the time when all that has been shown begins to blossom. If the seed of faith has been sown and cultivated, it will start to grow. For this the adolescent has a right to their secret garden, where ‘their’ true ideas and personality will develop. It is as though they disappear for a while, and this should not be a source of anxiety for parents (rushing in with exhortations and advice) but rather a time of quite expectation. Meeting God is always mysterious and personal.
At this stage, the adolescent needs to break the shell of ‘religious practices’, which may have been somewhat routine, imposed, or put up with, and to find the inner sanctuary, the spring where God and the human person meet. They will find it if the parents have given them the map. You cannot command them to do certain things: Read! Study! Pray! Go to Mass! and expect that things will automatically work out.
Supporting role
The first thing to do is not to leave the young person on their own to face the first big decisions in their life. The task for parents is to accept this path with confidence and hope. The young person needs to find their parents really open to dialogue, and clear examples of living in line with their stated convictions. For this, parents and children need to be able to discuss religious questions in a tranquil manner. What happens too often at home is that arguments about faith and religion are surrounded with an embarrassing frostiness.
Search for meaning
For today’s adolescent the ways of a conventional and rule-bound religion no longer suffice. They need to feel that the load-bearing structure of moral and religious conscience has become “theirs”. The real danger is where there are no models or points of reference, and they find they have to create their own personal collage of life. If their faith has been made up of externals, ritual, rules and habits, it will be swept away by the violence of the sensations and needs of their new life.
Behind the questions the search for the meaning of life begins to loom and intrigue the teenager: How can I reach success and happiness? What is more important? Can religion and faith provide me with an answer, or are they just a dressing I can do without?
Life’s great questions present themselves to the teenager in philosophical and religious terms. Not only. While the child had no difficulty accepting there was only one answer to his questions, and that this coincided with what his parents said, the adolescent discovers with a certain amount of unease, that there are many and contradictory answers, and that faith is a personal journey.
Paradoxically the young person tends to establish a dual relationship with the religious element: on the one hand, they feel the rigidity, the repetition, the need to measure and demonstrate that which, of its very nature, cannot be measured. On the other extreme, they look for an exclusively effective, irrational emotionally satisfying relationship, totally devoid of any realism.
Not home alone!
This is why teenagers need company. Theory and sermons are of no help to them. They need people who discretely show them “hospitality”, who become a point of reference for them. This way they can discover that gentleness, beauty and a taste for living are not in opposition to the faith, just as faith and reason are not opposed to each other. And most of all, they have to discover that Jesus is not a… type of collector’s card to be glued into a child’s album, but a living, talking person.
Community of believers
It is important not to forget that the faith always has a church dimension. Becoming a member of an association, and committing themselves with other young people in activities of a voluntary nature, the young person moves forward their search for God. Sharing and comparing themselves with others like themselves who are searching for values to serve as reference points in their life, and guided and accompanied by adults (leaders, teachers, other Christians), the teenager lives an authentic experience of Church and Christianity.
In fact, within the Church that they deepen their faith. Prayer, sacramental life, listening the Word, liturgy, reflection, concrete commitment: this is the way they mature and come to that harmony between faith and life’s choices.
This is not to say that the parents’ role ends with adolescence, and they pass all responsibility over to external educators. Parents represent one of the essential pillars in the process of their children’s maturing in the faith. During adolescence the substance of the parent’s role does not change, only its form.
Young people only find their own path by trial and error, slipping up, coming to a halt, getting lost, retracing their steps… For a while they will not want to know anything about going to Mass; then, unexpectedly, after dragging themselves along thousands of torturous routes, they will rediscover the value of those religious gestures they learnt in infancy, and will adapt them to their own culture and way of living.
MARIANNA PACUCCI WRITES…
I don’t want to “protect” our teenage children’s faith! Protect the children’s faith? Maybe, but… I would prefer them to live it as a search and a challenge; to learn to believe for themselves and for others; to let themselves be loved by God.
I must confess that, when I was asked to do this particular article, I felt a bit irked. For me, the idea of protecting my children’s faith from the stormy patches in their growing up is old-fashioned. It smacks of bigotry and – most of all – it strikes me as risky. I could end up with the awful prospect of keeping alive an infantile static faith that cannot gel with a changing personality. I would also be frightened were the children to think of faith as a lifebuoy to save them from the tensions of everyday living. Too many young people treat the sacred as though it were an anaesthetic!
I have always preferred to believe that my children Sandra and Claude could live the faith as a search they are involved in, a risk they are running, something worth the effort. Many a time I even prodded and fed their religious restlessness. I wanted them to temper the openness to religion their family education had given them. They had to learn to check it out for themselves. Only that way would it be a force in their lives, directing their growth and the thousands of experiences everyday living brings them.
Question things!
It goes without saying that teenagers have their moments of religious crisis. It is useless tearing your hair out if they show they are puzzled or reject things. It is more important to encourage them actively question things, even when doubt seems stronger than faith. .For me, the proper thing was to let them know it was up to them to take personal responsibility and to question in depth the things in which they were trying to believe.
With other people
Relying on the fact that Sandra and Claude had always grown up in the parish, I simply asked them to find within the church community a space where they could feel at home, fully responsible for their experience of life, and of faith.
They chose to teach children catechism, as a sort of faith friends. It was a difficult choice, because they themselves still had to learn a lot of things, to reflect on how to develop their life more into line with the demands of the Gospel. It was also a joint decision, with all family agreeing to their taking the chance and running the task, knowing the failure could have harmed them and the children entrusted to them.
The outcome was, that they had to learn to believe not only for themselves, but also with other people. That way they experienced how it is possible to bear witness to the faith, while you yourself are still growing in a somewhat precarious and imperfect situation. And they realised that there is an invisible but strong thread joining faith and love. There definitely were times when they wanted to drop everything, either because they did not feel up to the task they were facing, or because they came across some lack of understanding or diffidence in their regard. So far, they have stuck to it, despite the difficulties. They also found that sharing the catechetical work with other young people and adults gave them a positive attitude towards difficulties of all sorts.
Progress, not perfection!
I think they have learnt that a Christian is not a person who has already reached perfection, but one who allow themselves to be loved by God and in their turn, try to place themselves at the service of others without being ashamed of their own limits.
Their faith never makes them feel superior to their peers. In so many things they are exactly the same as the others, they feel the same as they do, they have the same hopes and face the same problems as they do.
The difference is that they have spotted a new possibility. A person can develop friendship with God and dare to aspire towards a more demanding project that of holiness – without thinking they have to deny their own adolescence. They can, in fact, really savour it more deeply.
This article first appeared in the
Salesian Bulletin (April-June, 2003), a publication of the Irish Salesians.
