World Youth Day – “Novelty Usurps Beauty”

I have spoken with several people in recent days about Pope Benedict’s wonderful messages from World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia. To be perfectly honest, I have only read one of them, his address to the youth wherein he writes,

“Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.”

Those last two phrases were striking as I see World Youth Day as the post-conciliar embodiment of novelty’s reign over beauty and subjective experience’s glorification at the expense of truth. Remnant columnist Christopher Ferrera hits the nail on the head in his article “Sydney or Sodom?” wherein he writes,

“[World Youth Day is] a rock and pop festival and co-ed sleepover with spiritual addenda… aside from the nefarious activities of more obvious enemies of faith and morals, WYD is entirely consistent with the neo-Catholic version of Roman Catholicism”

My point in this essay that draws largely from Christopher Ferrera’s article is not that World Youth Day lacks any resemblance of the traditional Catholic faith, that point is plainly evident. My point is rather that World Youth Day masquerades as the pinnacle of Catholic youth revival and a “new Pentecost” of the Church when in actuality it is defined by novelty and a glorification of subjective experience.

Fr. Peter Scott (FSSPX) of the Holy Cross Seminary writes,
“I’m not in favour of World Youth Day because of what happens and what has consistently happened since it was initiated by Pope John Paul II… It has become an occasion for a very secular approach to religion, it’s become just a happy party—a week of partying and concerts and worldly activities with very little that is truly holy and sacred and prayerful, and Catholic for that matter.”

Any commentator with a sense of objectivity cannot dispute this to be true. There may have been lines for Confession, reception of Confirmation, and Eucharistic Adoration which surely inspired many. However, sacraments and prayer are not the advertised parts of this façade – a spiritual addenda tacked onto a Woodstockesque neo-Catholic party. It is horizontal humanism at its finest. Mr. Ferrera notes these marginalized positive elements of the event, but writes that “these elements are combined with and undermined by numerous elements of the profane, some of which are in fact neo-pagan. If rapping priests and “Catholic heavy metal” do not represent a paganization of Catholic youth, then I don’t know what would.”

The most telling examples of the battle within the Church today between novelty and beauty, subjective experience and truth came during the reception of Communion. Ferrera writes, “One could not ask for a more evocative image of the state of the Church today: the Pope and his kneeler, attempting to restore some degree of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, surrounded by a vast sea of irreverence and general liturgical dissolution that he seems powerless to overcome.” The destruction of the Liturgy, the “source and summit of the Catholic life” and the heartbeat of the Church is faltering. This is not a plea for a full restoration of the Gregorian Rite of the Mass, though that is the only hope for the Church today, but rather a plea for the end of Novelty’s reign. Catholic youth are surrounded by a hostile culture that feeds on a paganism sustained by novelty and desire for constant change contrary to the attitude of Eternal Rome and the See of Peter. Ferrera continues,

“Indeed, it is time for the Church’s leadership to abandon the entire neo-Catholic project of attempting to use “liturgical reform” and pop culture to make the Faith attractive. The Catholic youth who attend World Youth Day deserve better. They deserve goodness, truth and beauty…They deserve Catholic liturgy and culture in all their magnificence, and they would respond magnificently if only this banquet were provided to them instead of the trash WYD has offered ever since ‘John Paul the Great’ invented it.”

At last a final word must mention the Juventutem movement present at World Youth Day. I admittedly do not know as much as I should about the priests who offer the traditional Mass and sacraments to attendees at World Youth Day. May God bless their apostolate as they seek to attract souls to conversion and grace in the same way every canonized saint of the Catholic Church sought souls in missionary countries. Pray that they might continue to evangelize and attract souls not with novelty and banality, but rather truth, goodness, and beauty.

While I recognize the harsh tone of this essay, I beg that none who participate in World Youth Day take offense. I have been striving to speak with charity in all matters – especially those in which I would tend to rant. However, the only defense I offer for my tone is zeal. It breaks my heart to think of the power and glory of such a movement as World Youth Day if it was invigorated with methods for saving souls and energizing youth for thousands of years.

Offer prayers and sacrifices for Benedict, our Pope, especially thought the intercession of St. Pius X – Defender of True Doctrine. Pray for the attendees of World Youth Day and their families – that despite the odds there might be an authentic Catholic revival. Continue to pray and make acts of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus who is so often neglected and offended. Especially pray through the intercession of Our Lady under the title of Immaculatta – Who Has Destroyed All Heresies to watch over the Church. And remember me as well.

Ad Meioram Dei Gloriam