Seeking in South America

In orders of magnitude, the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day is in exclusive company: the Olympic Games, the World Cup, Egyptian protests. Attendance for these events is measured in millions.

Planners for the World Youth Day currently going on in Rio de Janeiro say they have been planning for 2 million. That many traveled to Spain two years ago for the previous World Youth Day. Five million gathered with Pope John Paul II in the Philippines in 1995.

Pope Francis, who is in Brazil celebrating his first World Youth Day as head of the Catholic Church, has had important words for the pilgrims who have traveled, from near and far, to be with him. His exhortation to reject the idols of money, power, and success that the world sets before us ought to be particularly resonant in our own culture, too often enamored with the gilded glamor of riches and fame.

Since others can speak more knowledgeably to the particular goings-on, to the theological points that may arise, and the rest, I will stick, for the moment, to the observation above: sheer size.

Yes, World Youth Day is a decidedly big-C Catholic event. But I wonder if it does not betray a more small-c catholic feeling. Many Catholics have traveled to Rio to see Il Papa and to commune with coreligionists—but how many have gone because they are aware of how small, how flimsy, how thin so much of life is? How many have gone out of a desire for something more?

I suspect that that feeling is not restricted to Catholics. And if it is not, it points to the limitations, slowly being exposed, of our culture—of its scientism and its materialism and its narrow hyper-rationalism. If millions of young people, of whatever religion or no religion, are recognizing those limitations, then perhaps there is a chance to push them back, and to craft a politics and a culture that recognize that there is more to each of us than his net worth or his chemical makeup.