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Nothing is worse than feeling alone and thinking that no one understands or you do not belong. Let’s talk about the elephant and gorilla in the room: disaffiliation! Aside from the current crisis of faith, we also have social and relational turmoil, particularly with our Hispanic/Latino young adults. Even though we are more digitally connected than ever, our young adults seem most disconnected from God and each other.
We may be familiar with the rise of the “nones.” According to the Pew Research Center, the fastest-growing religious category is the “unaffiliated,” which includes 28 percent of all U.S. adults. Being “religiously unaffiliated” goes against our very nature. It is simply dismantling us as a people of God, and alarmingly, this is happening particularly among our Latino young adults: 49 percent of U.S.-born Latinos ages 18 to 29 claim to be unaffiliated.
We were not created to be alone and “unaffiliated.” God desires us to be united with him and our sisters and brothers in the human family. A friend once told a youth minister gathering: “People want to serve after they have been served. People care after they’ve been cared about or for. People invest when they’ve been invested in.”
This is the challenge of disaffiliation and the subsequent vocational crisis. In his apostolic exhortation “Christus Vivit,” Pope Francis proposes that the word vocation can only be understood in the context of a relationship first with God and then with one another. We have been made in the imago Dei, and our lives are relational. Accepting these truths, he writes, “makes us realize that nothing is the result of pure chance but that everything in our lives can become a way of responding to the Lord, who has a wonderful plan for us.”
If we keep “unaffiliating” ourselves, we will see the most extraordinary form of nihilism the world has ever seen. God calls us to turn away from our nihilistic/narcissistic mindset and teach our young adults the actual value and meaning of life as a community.
Toward this end, Latino young adult ministry must be more than just programming and events. As my brother bishops reminded us in the pastoral statement “Sons and Daughters of Light,” we, the church, should engage young adults. The challenge is how to engage when young adults are disengaging.
Pope Francis understands this. “I dream of a ‘missionary option,’” he writes in the apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium.” “That is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”
This means we are called to meet Latino young adults where they are. We must meet and involve their families (and minister to them), parish communities and the community at large. At the heart of ministering to young adults are caring, supportive relationships where they can have an incarnational experience of the good news in the flesh, or, as a mentor once put it, the “theology of ‘hanging out.’” It takes an entire church to “Listen, Teach, Send” (which is the title of the new national pastoral framework for ministries with youth and young adults) and to practice acompañamientoas Jesus taught us on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35).
We must all be involved, from the hierarchy to the laity. First, we must invest in ministry with young Latinos at all levels. Not only financially but also in terms of our time. Our dioceses and parishes need to make a more concerted effort for Latinos with strong catechesis and youth ministry programs. The sad reality is that 97 percent of our young Latino Catholics are not in our Catholic schools. This fact should be a couple of flares across the bark of Peter in the United States.
Second, we must intentionally serve U.S.-born, U.S.-raised young Latinos in our ministries. I know a lot about this since I fall into this category, but “one size does not fit all.”
Finally, we need to be bold, authentic and unafraid as we reach out to our young Latinos in “at-risk” situations like the “unaffiliated,” those who are homeless, imprisoned or involved with gangs, or those who struggle with addictions and the like. Let’s get to work!
