Evangelisation: What can we tell the Young.

...for I have given them the teachings you have given to me..keep those you have given me true to your name so that they may be one like us....I passed your word on to them and the world hated them because they belong to the world no more than I belonged to the world, I am not asking ou to remove them from the world but to protect them from the Evil One, they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world, Consecrate them in truth, your world is truth......   John 17

If someone belongs to the world what does that mean?    It means that they take their values and morality from the world.   Is the world today any different from what  it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus said these words quoted by St John.   There was contraception, there was abortion, and in addition just leaving born babies somewhere to die.   There was adultery, there was divorce and unfaithfulness, there was promiscuity and homosexuality, and the abuse of the innocent.   There was slavery, there was gluttony and abuse of alcohol, there was killing and murder, and wars and riots.   Many children grew up to be part of this world and enjoy its pleasures, or to be the underclass, the slaves, men and women,  that were there to be used sexually or for some other purpose.

Jesus claimed that those whom the Father had given him were not of this world.  In other words they did not conform to its values, and were a people set apart.   They had heard his teaching and believed it came from God, because they had come to believe that Jesus was in the Father and the Father was in Jesus.   They were consecrated in the Truth given by God the Father  through Jesus Christ.   And he did not pray for them only but for those who would follow that they also would be consecrated in the Truth.

So let us ask the question first asked by Pontius Pilate.  "What is Truth?"   Truth is something that objectively conforms with the facts.    It is not a subjective analysis - I think, I believe, it is my opinion.   You may have an opinion that we can never know what is true and what is false for there are so many objections.    But that is an opinion.    Is human reason not the tool we use to question and ponder evidence as to whether something is true or false.   And if this cannot be trusted then reason itself is illogical.     But if a man comes on earth and works miracles, and claims to speak the truth and is ready to die on the Cross in support of his miracles and his truth, that surely is very powerful evidence.

Now there is one very sad fact we have to face.   Our young people are caught up in the values of the world, rather than the Truth of Christ.    I will not go into the sad history that brought this about for what we have to do is ask ourselves how to bring them back to the Truth.    We will do no good just making young people feel happy and teaching them to do good, and mentioning Jesus died for them, if they are not taught the values that Jesus died for, the Truth that he taught.   Jesus was not just giving out rules, which we must follow blindly.   He was teaching us how to build a world where true justice would flourish, where the lion would lay down with the lamb, where there would be everlasting peace.   He was not making us obedient puppets.     There was a time in my life when I suddenly came upon the world of unhappy children.   They came from homes where there was no father and a single mother worked her socks off to raise her young ones.  Some were wonderful in their care, others not so good, but they did hot have the income of a father, or the advantages of a two waged family, and the children grew up envying their friends who had both a father and a mother.   But worse, this absence of a father caused them to doubt themselves.   Did my father not like me?    Perhaps if I had not been born my mother would be better off?   In a home with a Father and Mother, the mother often gets a rest from the little ones when the Father is there to take over.   Not so the single mother?    How so many cope I do not know.     But whether the sing parent started with just a young man enjoying himself but determined to avoid any responsibility, or the breakdown of a marriage, the children suffer, and my experience has taught me this.     If a man is used to a variety of sexual partners he will find it difficult to settle down to one, and that is why adultery is Condemned by Our Lord Jesus Christ.   I used to go to a Trade Union Conference, where married men and women had left their partners to represent their workplace.    With many it was a time when they could without their partners  knowledge sleep with someone else.   By the grace of God, and only by the Grace of God, I avoided the temptation.    This behaviour also goes on at mainstream Party Conferences.   There is a book which describes how one former Prime Minister picked up his partner for the Conference but then they found they liked one another so much they remained together.     So do not wonder if politicians are so keen on abortion or divorce, or any sexual activity.    

But what does Christ have to offer?   He certainly condemned adultery and divorce.   In HIs teaching Freedom goes with Responsibility,  but in the world the Freedom they desire most is Freedom from Responsibility.     If a man decides to have  sex with a woman, he must be sure in himself that if the girl gets pregnant, he will be responsible for the child and not an abortion.   Girls growing up without a Father usually find difficulty in relationships with men, and are often easy targets, and as I have observed in many of my young friends they usually end up single mothers. just as their mother did.    But it is not their fault.   It is the fault of the rise of Marxism in our society which opposes Marriage and tries to tell us that there is not difference between single parent families and two parent families.    At the moment there is a group of well meaning young people who are telling us Black Lives Matter.   It is from their heart and I do not condemn them, but the truth is that there are just as many young white people growing up just as deprived as the black children.    Black boys just get black girls pregnant and then walk out on them, but white boys do the same.   There are boys and men who just see women as bodies.     As a former commissioner of police has said the knifing that goes on in London in Black Ghettoes is caused by the lack of parenting.   The absence of fathers.    In London mothers are scared when they allow their black children to go to school, they do not know whether on the way to school or returning their children will be attacked.    These parents do not object to police searches, it is only the political minds that object.

So what kind of a world do the young people want?   A World ruled by Christ where people take responsibility in love and marriage, or a world where sex and abortion take away responsibility and destroy love and happiness in children.   These are the questions that should be discussed in Catholic Churches and in Catholic Schools.   O yes, we can be popular and say what the young want to hear, but this is not teaching Truth.    Children must grow up to be in the world, but not  of the world.   True followers of Jesus.