VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- To involve young people in preparations for the Synod of Bishops on youth in 2018, the Vatican has released an online questionnaire to better understand the lives, attitudes and concerns of 16- to 29-year-olds around the world.
The questionnaire -- available in English, Spanish, French and Italian -- can be found on the synod's official site: youth.synod2018.va/content/synod2018/it.html and is open to any young person, regardless of faith or religious belief.
The general secretariat of the synod launched the website June 14 to share information about the October 2018 synod on "Young people, faith and vocational discernment" and to link to an online, anonymous survey asking young people about their lives and expectations.
The answers to the questionnaire, along with contributions from bishops, bishops' conferences and other church bodies, "will provide the basis for the drafting of the 'instrumentum laboris,'" or working document for the assembly, synod officials said in January.
Young people from all backgrounds are encouraged to take part in the questionnaire because every young person has "the right to be accompanied without exclusion," synod officials had said.
The list of 53 mostly multiple-choice questions is divided into seven sections: general personal information; attitudes and opinions about oneself and the world; influences and relationships; life choices; religion, faith and the church; internet use; and two final, open-ended questions. The write-in questions are an invitation to describe a positive example of how the Catholic Church can "accompany young people in their choices, which give value and fulfillment in life" and to say something about oneself that hasn't been asked in the questionnaire.
Other questions ask about living arrangements; self-image; best age to leave home and have a family; opinions about education and work; measures of success; sources of positive influence; level of confidence in public and private institutions; and political or social activism.
The section on faith looks at the importance of religion in one's life and asks, "Who Jesus is for you?" That question provides 16 choices to choose from, including "the savior," "an adversary to be fought," "an invention" and "someone who loves me." It also asks which topics -- promoting peace, defending human life, evangelization, defending truth, the environment -- are the most urgent for the church to address.
The Vatican's preparation for a synod generally includes developing a questionnaire and soliciting input from bishops' conferences, dioceses and religious orders. This is the first time the Vatican's synod organizing body put a questionnaire online and sought direct input from the public.
A synod's preparatory phase seeks to consult of "the entire people of God" to better understand young people's different situations as synod officials draft the working document. The synod on youth will be looking for ways the church can best and most effectively evangelize young people and help them make life choices corresponding to God's plan and the good of the person.
Is the Vatican going about this the wrong way? Instead of taking a leadership role, it is asking for input from young people, regardless of religion, from 16 to 29 years of age to help guide the Catholic Church to "most effectively evangelize" them. How does someone less than 29 years old know what is good for them? Even Jesus waited until "[H]e was about thirty years of age" before He began His ministry [2] and He is the Son of God Who knows God. How would an ordinary young person who does not know God as Jesus knows God know what is important, whether it is "promoting peace" or "the environment" or "defending truth" when nations of the world continue their military build-up, when the environment is suffering at the expense of greed and profit and when nobody knows the truth?
Perhaps the Vatican has lost its direction, a direct and simple path that leads to Christ, and that is why it needs input from young people, who are less and less interested in religion, including Catholicism, which is largely under the influence of Satan, producing hypocrite leaders who are in charge. Even those who are disinterested in God who may not always know what is good for them because of their youth are not stupid. When they see hypocrisy, most would not care to follow it, and many of the men, with few exceptions, who run the Catholic Church are some of the worst hypocrites, in so many ways and on so many levels, deserving no respect at all.
The leaders of the Catholic Church ought to be like Peter, the Apostle, who would rather be crucified than yield to those with different ideas and beliefs and those who were secularists, but they are not; they are a group of weaklings and cowards that is leading the Catholic Church away from Christ by failing consistently to follow two basic tenets which are to love God and neighbor [3]. Instead, they embrace power and wealth, but both are dwindling and their words have become meaningless as a result, in addition to being trite. In order to cling on to whatever that is left, Catholic leaders are prepared to do just about anything, including going the way of Judas, betraying Christ, leading Him to a second crucifixion by following the momentum generated by the masses that often lacks order, morals and legitimacy, forming a vortex that spins toward Hell as opposed to leading with Christ at the helm, empowering followers to repel the gravity of darkness and rise through Purgatory toward Heaven.
[1] http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2017/vatican-releases-online-questionnaire-for-youth.cfm
[2] http://www.usccb.org/bible/luke/3 at 23.
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22 at 36-40.
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