As part of their spirituality package, a short piece on Franciscan U. at Steubenville

What’s nice is to see a piece in which young people express dissatisfaction with simply going to Mass out of a sense of routine, and then respond by….depening their Catholic faith! Refreshing, that.

Even under John Paul II’s conservative successor, it is a stretch to say that young Catholics like these—whose numbers nationally are impossible to determine—represent the future of the church. Soon they will graduate into a more secular world, but they promise to stay devoted. "God is just more than somebody you visit on Sunday," says Liz Danik, 21. For those who’ve chosen this stronger flavor of Catholicism, the nourishment comes daily.

We talk about this all the time – in relationship to the work of Colleen Campbell, Tim Drake, and even WYD. As I’ve said before, the question is not…are the majority of Catholic youth like these young people? The question is…where’s the energy and leadership coming from? Where are the young people who are out, proud Catholics rooted? Where are the 20 and 30-something priests and religious and lay ministers rooted? For the most part, it’s in what I would call a more balanced, grounded experience of Catholicism that embraces the Second Vatican Council but doesn’t labor under the illusion that the Church began in 1965. So of course, then, they do represent the future of the Church. There are plenty of indifferent young Catholics, plenty of young Catholics who don’t share this "strong" brand of Catholicism described here…but they’re not the ones becoming priests and religious and (to a lesser extent) lay leaders.