Scottish Catholic Observer

Faith in action in two different generations is demonstrated in this week’s Scottish Catholic Observer with reports on both World Youth Day in Madrid and, here in Scotland, from the inaugural Grandparents’ pilgrimage to Carfin organised by the Catholic Grandparents Association.

The more cynical might say that young people starting out in life and retired or semi-retired grandparents have more time to dedicate to their Faith. That is a very telling statement on our society and the way we live our everyday, busy lives.

Reading through Scottish Catholic Observer reporter Martin Dunlop’s World Youth Day blog from Madrid online there is no mistaking the excitement and camaraderie between young pilgrims from across the globe at World Youth Day—in spite of initial language barriers—awaiting Pope Benedict XVI’s arrival.

It is difficult, however, for anyone who has not been to a World Youth Day to grasp the sheer scale of the events that took place in Madrid. Between 1.5 and two million young pilgrims are thought to have attended the closing Mass with the Holy Father at Cuatro Vientos Airfield. Anyone who had been expecting an up close and personal ceremony with the Pope, akin to what pilgrims experienced in Scotland on September 16 last year, would have been surprised and perhaps even initially disappointed. WYD had over twenty times the number of pilgrims at the Papal Mass at Bellahouston Park.

That said, it is a big step on the journey of any WYD pilgrimage to recognise the privilege of being part of something so special, something much bigger than oneself and one’s normal Faith experience. After all, at the closing Mass the Holy Father told the young Catholics of the world—‘disciples of the new evangelisation’—that ‘following Jesus in Faith means walking at his side in the communion of the Church. We cannot follow Jesus on our own.’

As Cardinal Keith O’Brien told the SCO upon his return from World Youth day this week, ‘for the young people it was not all play and no work, some intense study did take place at the Catechism classes.’ In his three days of classes, Cardinal O’Brien opted to talk directly to the young people, answering their questions rather than preaching to them, and at times found young pilgrims from his own Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and members of the Aberdeen group, in his classes along with his assigned groups from Ireland and the US. He will share his message to them in next week’s SCO.

Passing on the Faith is something Scotland’s grandparents were also thinking about this week.

“When the Church is weakened, society is weakened,” Catherine Wiley, the founder of the Catholic Grandparents Association (CGA), told the SCO. “We have a duty to build up the Church. Grandparents have no agenda. They were never as important as they are today.”

Indeed Martin Dunlop left Madrid thinking of the decline in the Faith in Europe. “It is up to us, the young people of this continent, to bring the Pope’s messages from WYD alive in our day-to-day lives as best we can,” he said.