They seek God, but not in the Church. They’re the young Catholics of England and Wales, aged between twenty and thirty, all of them searching for God. Yet “they don’t go to Church on Sundays, they don’t participate in the services that have always punctuated the life of the Church”, says Vladimir Felzmann, chaplain to Catholic youth in England and director of a London retreat centre, the “Spec”, through which some 19,000 youngsters passed last year. “ But there’s no crisis of faith among English Catholics, there’s a crisis of religion”, Felzmann hastens to explain. Born and bred as Catholics, with a lifestyle far from the teaching of the Church behind them, and eager to undergo a conversion that may give them serenity and a new personal relationship with Jesus, not all English Catholic youth have lost their way: some have found the path to God. Such as Tom, twenty years old: he went to a Catholic school and took a degree in political science at the University of Essex. “I never doubted the existence of God he says yet God had no direct influence on my life”. At the age of nineteen he was converted, during a lecture. He was struck by the speaker’s words: “we can’t love God and at the same time love our sins”. Tom became conscious that “God could really help me to convert myself inside”. His hope for the future is that “my conversion may continue, as also the ecumenical process that is so important for us here in the UK”. Alice, twenty-five years old, is Tom’s sister. In contrast to him, she’s always had difficulty with the idea of the existence of God and has had many doubts, yet despite that, she’s always been actively involved in the Catholic Church and now she’s working full time for it. “There are few opportunities for young people in the Catholic Church that may help them to express their faith”, explains Alice. “The relation between the Church and youth is a difficult one. It’s difficult to attract young people between the ages of 18 and 30 to the Catholic Church. Once they’ve reached adulthood, they have no model to follow”. “It’s important, however, to try to ensure that they have examples to imitate continues Alice because the teachings of the Catholic Church, especially on matters of sexual morality, are not accepted by many young people. Being faithful to the Church means swimming against the tide: it means living a life that goes in the opposite direction to that of the dominant culture”.
