Back to the Future

by Father John McCloskey

Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking American journalist who witnessed the early years of Soviet communism, is best know for his statement, "I have seen the future and it works." Future events have proved him tragically wrong, as history continues to show.

I recently returned from a summer program in Poland, where I served as chaplain to a group of American college students organized by centers of Opus Dei in the U.S. In a spirit of Christian solidarity, the students were giving their time to help build a school for handicapped children in a poor parish in rural Silesia. Steffen's statement came frequently to mind, but never more so than on August 15, as I participated in the Sixth World Day of Youth in Czetochowa. There I witnessed the zeal and enthusiasm of well over one million young people in support of the Church, the Holy Father, and the Black Virgin.

The Holy Father has a plan for the future of the West as well as the East, which has been clearly laid out in his magisterial statements during his pontificate. An important element of that plan can be summed up as "the re-evangelization of the West." With the collapse of Marxism and the gradual reintegration of the martyred countries of Eastern Europe and elements of the former Soviet empire into the West, he foresees a titanic struggle for the soul of Europe (and North America) between zealous Catholicism and a secular materialist vision of man, the lasting remnant of the ideology of the French Revolution that was so evident as I walked the streets of London, Munich, Vienna, and Rome this summer.

Hence the importance of the marvelous events of August 14-15 in Czetochowa. I was present at a four-hour outdoors Mass concelebrated with the Holy Father by dozens of bishops and hundreds of priests and attended by a throng of youth from all corners of Western and Eastern Europe, including tens of thousands from the soon to be liberated Soviet Union, and surprisingly large contingents from other countries.

It is a truism to speak about youth as "the hope of the future," but it is clear that the Holy Father and his faithful collaborators plan to build this "civilization of love" from the ground up. This World Day of Youth with its theme of divine filiation was an important beginning.

This was probably the largest gathering of youth in history where alcohol and drug abuse were absent and the favorite songs and music were religious. What was much more noticeable was the tens of thousands who could be seen confessing their sins to bishops and priests in the days prior to the Vigil and Mass. There was no talk of democracy in the Church with all its attendant themes.

Mass was long, reverent, and completely sung with an impressive silence at the moment of consecration. The pope gave a lengthy sermon challenging the young to build "the new civilization of love" and to reject the false idols of materialism leading to the destruction of both family and society. The event ended with the singing of the "Regina Coeli," liturgically out of season but somehow appropriate given the Pentecostal nature of the event. The Holy Father, obviously pleased and exhilarated by the vista before him, greeted the young people in dozens of languages receiving the proportionate applause.

An important step has been taken. The gathering of hundreds of thousands of young people from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, united in one Faith, under one Vicar, who came together in the Sacrament of unity and thanksgiving to honor the Black Virgin of Czetochowa. We can look forward with renewed hope to the millennium and beyond. All present could repeat the refrain from Belloc's Ballade to Our Lady of Czetochowa: "This is the faith that I have held and hold, and this is that in which I mean to die."

First appeared in Crisis Magazine in the November, 1991, issue.