Young, Catholic and in tension: a WYD reflection

Catholic New Times, Nov 3, 2002 by Luke Stocking

World Youth Day revealed the tension in my Catholic identity. I now daily carry this tension on my back held by a single strap across my shoulder and breast in the form of the red-and-beige, official WYD bag.

"Why do you have a WYD bag?" asks my good friend Gabe when I come to visit.

Gabe was one of the driving forces behind "Challenge the Church," a group that protested the event. There is no malice or disgust in her voice.

I do not reply "as a symbol of the tension that is my Catholic identity." My actual answer is equally true, "I don't have any other knapsack. This one serves me well."

The knapsack was part of a $255 package that was my week-long pass to the event. Faith & Light, a group connected to L'Arche to which my disabled uncle belongs, had invited my brother Travis and I to come to WYD. Rather than go with my hometown parish, I accepted the invitation and found myself in a white robe on stage at the Exhibition Place Coliseum playing the silent role of Jesus. It was honestly exhilarating to appear as our Saviour, larger than life, on the huge screens on either side of the stage before thousands of pilgrims. This was my role in a mime, acting out the beatitudes that Faith & Light and L'Arche Canada put together for the catechesis.

Lanette, the young woman with whom I was partnered with for much of the week, was so excited and nervous about going on stage before the first performance that she shed tears.

Fr. Tom McKillop, founder of the sabotaged Youth Corps, commented one day that he was surprised I wasn't out with the "Challenge the Church" folks. It would have seemed more appropriate for me to be causing controversy at Exhibition Place than to be shaking homemade "salt-of-the-earth" salt shakers and wearing "light-for-the-world" glow sticks, given that my community is the Toronto Catholic Worker in Parkdale that has had its share of conflict with the institutional church.

But participating in the salt shaker-glow stick vision of WYD was a controversial act on a personal level. I was the only one in the gay-positive Catholic Worker community who was a fully registered participant. I was given no grief for at tending this poorly attended (by the organizers' standards) and thus money-sucking spectacle of Catholic faith. My community understands, loves and accepts me. They see my tension.

I use the word "tension" sometimes so freely that I lose sight of its meaning. Here, I will attempt to articulate and recover it for myself. Tensions are the driving forces in our lives, the struggles stretching and deepening as opposed to cheapening our life experience. Where there is falsehood, there is hypocrisy; where there is truth, there is tension.

What is my tension? I am in love with the Eucharist and the patriarchal, homophobic, Roman Catholic Church that is often guilty of lip service to its radical call for economic justice. I believe that women should be allowed to fully participate in the church, and I do not condemn the homosexual act. The amount of money spent on WYD was preposterous. The bottom line is that the Catholic Church is the mother who raised me, and I will happily--and I mean happily--shake her shakers and wave her glow sticks. Nothing shall drive me away.

Don't think that going to WYD was some sort of self-sacrificial act on my part as a Catholic struggling with the institution. WYD was beautiful and full of delightful stories. The energy on the pilgrim-packed streetcars was incredible. I was told that TTC drivers, who had been reluctant to take extra shifts at first, were lining up for them by the end. There were pilgrims who came from Africa and never went back, taking the opportunity to escape their war-torn countries and to build a new life in Canada (sadly, this was one of the reasons that the Canadian government denied many people in these countries a visa to attend WYD). There were hours of blowing up 100 yellow-and-blue air mattresses that the Faith & Light/L'Arche Canada group slept on at the HMCS York (Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Naval Reserve). Precious was the soccer game we had with group members, especially when Gilles, a disabled, French-Canadian man, scored a magnificent header. The 7,000 people washing each other's feet with Jean Vanier at the session was moving. The morning rain evaporating from our soaked bodies in the sun that came out at the papal Mass was glorious. Kneeling hand-in-hand in prayer after the Eucharist with my radiant, pregnant fiancee, Joanna, was communion itself. And how inspiring were the thousands of volunteers who put their own lives on hold and lived the community of the Gospels. All of this is worthy of praise. But there needs to be completion.

I am standing on another stage, no longer dressed as Jesus but as a piece of corn, part of the Development and Peace presentation on genetically modified foods. My housemate, Genevieve, who worked for D&P, asked me to be involved. Later, we act out a classic story illustrating the difference between charity and justice. The presentation is part of a social-service requirement for the pilgrims. It is late in the afternoon and many of them are sleeping through it. Elsewhere, others are playing Frisbee. Of the thousands who supposedly attend the event, only a few hundred sign the petitions that we hand out. Some mistakenly throw garbage or change into the large plastic bags used to collect them. This is not a spectacle, and it is hard to be interested. However, there are a few who are moved, who want to know more, who want to be involved. The Gospels' call to action and transformation falls on fertile ground. It is very much the parable of the seed sower.