World Youth Day
Tags : catholic, Church, media, ReligionCategories : Personal |
Getting a bit sick of all the negative press coverage surrounding the Catholic World Youth Day festival in Sydney at the moment. The condescending and patronizing tone they are taking, giving the impression that all the people attending are some sort of simpletons, and that the Church is full of perverts. The vast majority of these people are sincere and devoted Christians, and indeed the vast majority of Catholic priests are decent men who have given their lives to serve God - so it is unfair for the media to focus so much on the sins of a tiny minority and tarnish the reputation of the bulk of the church.
Hundreds of thousands of young Christians gathered in one place surely cannot be a bad thing. I may not necessarily agree with all the beliefs of the Catholic church but I find such a huge celebration of faith tremendously inspiring. Such a huge gathering could never happen in the Protestant church. I understand the reasons for the Reformation, however it’s a shame that they couldn’t have worked it all out without breaking up the Church in the process - Unity sure was a big thing to sacrifice… For the rest of us non-Catholic Christians, I guess we’ll have to wait until Jesus returns before we can join such an immense gathering for worship. The closest thing to this in Australian Protestantism at least would be the Hillsong Conference (which was in Sydney last week - big month for religion in Sydney) - one of these years I will get around to going along. In the meantime, I admire and applaud what the Catholics are doing with their World Youth Days and give posthumous kudos to Pope John Paul II for coming up with the idea 
