olics and the Vatican, each of which is touched upon in this paper.
The youth of the Catholic church shall find it their mission in the next generation to empower themselves as well as other less enfranchised groups within the Catholic church, and by doing so will help maintain a church that remains liturgically true to its historical doctrine and yet socially relevant and culturally sensitive to a world that is in so many ways utterly different from the time of the founding of the church.
Literature Review: Previous Examinations of the Role of Youth
It is important to note at the beginning of any consideration of the role of young people in the church that there is no simple answer as to how to engage youth in Catholicism, for to do so would be to imply that both the faith and each generation are themselves relatively simple and homogeneous entities, which common sense alone tells us is not so. Moreover, the needs of young people shift from generation to generation, and the church – while not changing essential doctrine to meet mere temporal whims -- must acknowledge these generational shifts. The fact that this paper puts forth arguments in terms of generalities for the sake of brevity and simplicity should not be construed to mean that the author is not aware of the complexities of the real world.
An important first step in asking how young people can be brought into the fold of the church is to look at this issue historically. It is essential to recognize that in asking the question "How may the church meet the needs of today's young people?" that one is at some level implying that young people of today are less likely to participate in formal church activities than they were in the past. This is an assumption that must be carefully examined, for it has the feeling of one of the eternal laments of history: One can well imagine the priests of Amun in Cairo mourning the fact that children are not as observant as their e...