A “large group” of young people who “have no contacts with the Church”, a “considerable group” of young people who “participate in one or more Church-run activity”, and a “small group that is closely involved in the life of the Church”: the relation of the young with the ecclesial community can, in the view of the Dutch bishops, be summed up in these three main categories, which each comprise very heterogeneous worlds. The proclamation of the faith in the youth world in the Netherlands only has “success” if it is founded on “a personal contact”, and the Christian message only has a grip on the young if it tackles spiritual and social questions “based on shared values” (justice, authenticity, pluralism, respect, solidarity, care for the environment, service). What needs to be avoided, according to the Dutch bishops, is a kind of “frontal opposition” between the young and the Church, which in the view of the young “speaks too much in stereotypes”. A Church “open, honest, credible and clear”, more “skilled” in the art of listening and also able to enter into dialogue with the “great freedom” of the new generations in the relational and sexual spheres: this is the identikit traced by the Dutch bishops for the young, who are attracted by “beauty, mysticism and spirituality” but who are also in need of “witnesses” able to speak “the language of the heart, which is far more important that any analytical and rational language”. The commitment of the new generations is always based on “a free choice” and young people have a need to “balance the culture of efficiency and profit” in which they are immersed with a proposal of faith that comes from “small communities” based on “mutual friendship”, in which they may express “what they experience in their search for faith”: only thus may the Church “create communion, and become accessible to the richness of the gifts of persons of all ages, nationalities and languages”.
