Another World Youth Day has come and gone, and with it, all the usual speculation about what it means. Ever since the late Pope John Paul II launched the international faith festival in 1984 by welcoming 300,000 young Catholics to Rome, the chattering classes have struggled to account for its appeal. That struggle continued last week, when nearly 2 million young people confounded conventional wisdom again by descending en masse on secularized Madrid to celebrate their Catholic faith.
Why did they come, these young pilgrims from St. Louis to Sydney to Shanghai? Didn't they get the memo circulated by their wiser, more worldly elders, the one that says organized religion is out of vogue and the pope is out of touch?
Read Full Article »