Pope's visit seen as forum for change

Catholic reformers see World Youth Day as opportunity to air alternative views

By ANGELA PACIENZA, Canadian Press
Saturday, February 16, 2002

The week-long gathering this summer of a half million or more young people from around the world is becoming a meeting ground for Roman Catholics looking to capitalize on the mammoth audience, one of Canada's largest ever.

Groups are already busy organizing volunteers, booking venues and designing pamphlets for use at the biennial 11-day youth conference, which culminates with an outdoor mass by the frail Pope on July 28.

One such campaign will see 10,000 condoms handed out to delegates with the message: "Don't leave it up to your guardian angel."

Washington-based Catholics for a Free Choice oppose the Roman Catholic Church's ban on condoms. The latest campaign, which has placed billboards in several North American cities, says innocent people die of AIDS because Roman Catholic bishops have banned the use of condoms.

The church says the way to prevent AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is to practise abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage.

Catholics for a Free Choice hopes to convince young Catholics to petition the church to change its policy.

Group members will not be allowed to pass out condoms at the several conference sites scattered across the city and instead will try to bump into delegates in public areas and shopping malls such the popular downtown Eaton Centre.

"We'll go wherever we think there'll be a lot of young people," Toronto organizer Kathleen Howes said.

Another group, Challenge the Church, has reserved Trinity Church, tucked behind the Eaton Centre, for a series of events including guided lectures about sexual morality, women-led liturgies, drop-in forums to chat about non-traditional views and a purple-stole vigil where women wear a cloth that recalls a priest's vestments at mass.

Women's equality, AIDS prevention and an apology for any sexual abuses by Catholic priests are among the items the Toronto-based group seeks from the church.

"Some of the views that are going to be put over about sexuality and women need to be challenged," said Joanna Manning, a Catholic teacher who is a member of Challenge the Church.

"We want to expose youth to the richness of views that exist out there."

World Youth Day organizers, who had 100,000 people from more than 115 countries registered by the end of January, say the church's message is the one that young people don't hear enough.

"The message they will hear at World Youth Day is the one they would not normally hear," Paul Kilbertus, the event's communications director, said.

He said young people hear messages such as "Use condoms" every day in the media, even in Catholic strongholds such as South and Central America.

"If anything, we are putting forward a countercultural message that people will not normally hear."

Organizers will use their power to ensure unwanted messages don't get circulated at the official venues, which include the site of the Canadian National Exhibition and Downsview Park, an old military air base north of Toronto.

Those who press for change say that if the church altered some of its traditional stands to accommodate an ever-changing world, more people would come back into the fold.

"If there's going to be any kind of change in the world, it's going to have to come from the youth and how they see things," said François Brassard of CORPUS Canada, an international group pushing for an inclusive Catholic priesthood that would allow married men and women.

"We don't agree with the narrow way in which the church is going about it and trying to recruit vocation to the priesthood within the same kind of system that we've got."

Father Brassard, a married priest in Ladysmith, B.C., teaches history because he can't officiate as a priest under church rules. He says that while the church encourages young people to get involved, it does so on its own terms and conditions.

"[The church] restricts the way people do things. It just doesn't sing to the hearts of youth today, and that's why they leave."

One such restriction, he said, is the church's demand that priests be celibate, something that has caused a well-publicized clergy crisis for decades as its priests die or marry.

"There's no freedom. We're looking for some kind of options," he said.

For Eloise Bucholtz, a mother of six from Peterborough, Ont., the church is full of contradictions.

"I've been struggling for about 15 years now as a parent and as a person," she said.

Youth days exclude many young people, including her own children, she says.

Ms. Bucholtz cites lesbians, gays and divorced young people as examples of those who would not be welcomed by the church.

"Who is the church really supporting? It's not gay and lesbian youth unless they are celibate. Youth of these days just see a lot of double standards in our church and so they just don't pay any attention."

With only a small percentage of young people attending church regularly, "the church is missing the boat by not working to welcome these people back to the church," she said.

Ms. Bucholtz also belongs to a growing group of people who, on top of seeking church reform, want the Vatican to pay the full tab for the international event and stop asking governments for financial aid.