By John L. Allen Jr. - from the National Catholic Reporter
Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Madrid for what is officially the 26th edition of World Youth Day, a total which includes off-year events organized, at least in theory, at the diocesan level. Counting just the massive international gatherings headlined by the pope, Madrid is the 12th World Youth Day since John Paul II launched the tradition in Rome in 1985.
Collectively, those gatherings have generated crowds in excess of 15 million people, making World Youth Day the Olympic Games of world religion: The largest regularly held international religious event on the planet.
“World Youth Day” is, of course, one of those charming bits of Catholic vocabulary that endures despite having thoroughly outlived its accuracy. It was a single day back in 1985, but it’s morphed into a week-long jamboree composed of pilgrimage and devotion, catechesis, liturgies and the sacraments, and even Lollapalooza-style pop festivals. (The lineup includes “PriestBand,” an all-priest septet associated with the Emmanuel Community, which only performs at World Youth Days. Where else can you catch seven guys in Roman collars sounding like Bon Jovi while belting out tunes such as “We Sing for Jesus”?)
From a media point of view, the instinct is to look for what’s new about a particular World Youth Day, to which the only honest answer is “not much.” By now, the template is pretty well set; what changes isn’t so much the show, but the audience.
That said, there are a few interesting storylines this time around.
For one thing, World Youth Day 2011 comes as the world flirts with financial apocalypse, and Spain’s banking crisis and staggering unemployment rate form one of the front lines. That’s generated controversy about the cost of the event, though organizers insist it’s being covered through private grants and participant fees rather than public funds.
Nevertheless, some 150 groups, including atheists and secular leftists, have organized a protest under the slogan, “Papal visit, not with my taxes!” That could provide a bit of street theater; on Wednesday, media reports indicated that Spanish police had arrested a young Mexican who apparently was planning to launch tear gas against the anti-papal brigades.
For another, this is Benedict XVI’s first trip to Spain in what is now clearly a post-Zapatero era. For a decade, socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has done battle with the church on every conceivable front, making him the bogeyman of the European Catholic imagination. Yet weakened by economic implosion and perceptions of corruption, Zapatero has announced he won’t stand for a third term and has called elections for November, hinting at a possible reframing of Spain’s (and perhaps Europe’s) culture wars.
On Monday, I’ll offer an overview of whatever news flashes arise. Here, I want to focus on the forest that World Youth Day represents, rather than its individual trees. The big picture is the following: World Youth Day offers the clearest possible proof that the Evangelical movement coursing through Catholicism today is not simply a “top-down” phenomenon, but also a strong “bottom-up” force.
No comments:
Post a Comment