Watching the future church

Local author Mary DeTurris Poust wrote about spending three days with 23,000 teenagers at the recent National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis. Her column in Catholic New York is headlined Watching the Future Church in Action:

Sitting on the 50-yard line of the packed stadium, I was overwhelmed by the willingness of these teens to open themselves up to a faith experience like none other. They prayed the Divine Office in song and dance, they sat it total silence during lectio divina, they stood on line by the hundreds at the nearby convention center to go to confession, they rushed to Victory Park to ask the 30 bishops in attendance to sign their bishop trading cards, and they went to adoration and diocesan Masses and one workshop after another.
. . .
At the closing Mass, after an awesome procession of almost 300 priests and deacons, 175 seminarians and eight bishops—a sight that left the kids wide-eyed with gratitude and excitement—the teens were told to take out their cell phones and text the words “called to glory” (the theme of the event) to all of their contacts, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. As screens glowed in the darkness and kids clicked “send,” there was a powerful sense of what’s to come for all of us, and I couldn’t help but smile and look forward with anticipation to what this group of Catholic teens will one day do to shape our Church and our world.

The surveys and headlines may tell us things look bleak, but, from where I was sitting amid a sea of teens in hats and T-shirts emblazoned with the words and signs of their faith, the view was bright and clear and brimming with hope.

The rest of the column is here.