By Dr. Tricia Bruce
For several intense, surreal weeks in Rome this October, I wore a lanyard around my neck that read, “For a synodal Church,” “Synod 2021-2024” and the words “communion,” “participation” and “mission.”
The lanyard was like the best version of a fast pass at Walt Disney World: I could walk by hundreds of pilgrims in line for prayer services in St. Peter’s Square and tourists visiting the awe-inspiring St. Peter’s Basilica. With a nod and smile to Swiss guards in colorful uniforms, I could pass through the Vatican gates and into the Paul VI Audience Hall.
I – “Professoressa Tricia Bruce,” per the printed placard at my designated seat inside the hall – was there as a papal-appointed consultor to the General Secretariat of the Synod. More than 350 of us, mostly bishops and cardinals, gathered for nearly a month for the final assembly of the multiyear, globally consultative Synod on Synodality.
As current director of Springtide Research Institute, a RELAN ministry of the Lasallian Educational and Research Initiatives, I paid special attention during my time at the synod to the presence and treatment of young people – especially young people at the margins. Young people constitute a substantial part of the North American and global Catholic population and the heartbeat of the Lasallian commitment is to do what’s best for young people, Catholic and not.
Not unlike what drives the social scientific approach of Springtide, the entire notion of “synodality” engages a deep commitment to listening. Synodality welcomes diverse perspectives, activates empathy, searches for reality through perception, and makes room for both the core and the margins.
Springtide knows from listening through surveys and interviews with tens of thousands of young people ages 13-25 in the United States that skepticism toward religion and religious institutions can be strong. Our 2024 study of civic life, summarized in the report “Cultivating Care,” found that fewer than half (44%) of young people trust “organized religion” even moderately. Some 22% of young people don’t trust organized religion at all.
We also know from listening to young people that many approach their religious or spiritual identities differently – or distance themselves from formal labels and forms of participation. Among young people ages 13-25 in the United States, some 18% identify as Catholic: far fewer than the percentage who identify as “atheist,” “agnostic,” “spiritual but not religious,” or “none” (33%). Nearly half of U.S. young people (48%) rarely or never attend religious services. Two-thirds (65%) don’t currently belong to a religious community.
That situates many young people on the margins of religious communion, participation and mission – harkening back to the words on my synod lanyard. Young people don’t always feel a sense of belonging in faith communities, including Catholic ones.
Multiple years of synod consultation in the lead-up to this year’s assembly acknowledge this trend globally, such as when a document summarizing the continental stage of consultation identified young people among those too often excluded in conversation and decision-making: “Sometimes (the Church) talks about young people, but it does not talk to young people.”
(How) did the concluding 2024 Synod Assembly I attended in Rome account for the voices of young people?
For one, young people were present more than ever. Unlike prior synods of bishops, the Synod on Synodality incorporated non-bishop voting delegates, including young laypeople. Among the youngest delegates in the hall this year were two U.S. lay Catholics in their early 20s, still in college. Another of the U.S. delegates was a young priest from El Paso, Texas, with a particular commitment to those on the margins, including first-generation immigrants like himself.
And while a room full of some 350 people, as globally diverse as it is, cannot represent proportionately the voices of young people around the globe, those in the synod hall nonetheless spoke readily and frequently to the need to listen to, care for and empower young people. Recurrent in the three-minute, timed “interventions” offered by microphone in the hall were calls to meet young people online in their digital lives, to rebuild trust, to connect with families and educators, and to engage in dialogue more than monologue.
The final document of the 2024 Synod on Synodality amplifies an urgent call to accompany young people in ways resonant with the Lasallian tradition:
62. Young people also make a contribution to the synodal renewal of the Church. They are acutely aware of the values of fellowship and sharing, while rejecting paternalism or authoritarian attitudes. At times, their attitude toward the Church can come across as critical, yet often it manifests positively as a personal commitment to the creation of a welcoming community dedicated to fighting against social injustice and for care of our common home. The request that they made at the 2018 Synod on Young People to “walk together in daily life” corresponds exactly to the vision of a synodal Church. For this reason, it is fundamental that we assure them thoughtful and patient accompaniment; in particular, the proposal of “an experience of accompaniment in view of discernment”, which arose thanks to their contribution, deserves to be revisited and taken up again. It foresees companionship shared with educators, an apostolic commitment lived at the service of the neediest, and the offer of a spirituality rooted in prayer and the sacramental life (cf. Final Document of the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment”, 161).
As a sociologist, I could name imperfections in the methodologies of synodality and inefficiencies in its system of implementation. But as an in-person participant in the Synod Assembly of 2024, I come away profoundly hopeful that this journey holds the intention and promise of a more deeply inclusive global Church where young people truly belong in communion, participation and mission.
Dr. Tricia Bruce is director of Springtide Research Institute.
Read our story on Dr. Bruce’s appointment as consultor to the General Secretariat of the Synod here.