Youth and Heroism
I was reading an interesting thread on Why Men Hate Church, and it reminded me of a passage from a book I’m currently reading called Letters to a Doubter by Paul Claudel:
Don’t listen to those who tell you that youth is the time for enjoyment. Youth is not formed for pleasure, but for heroism. The word is not too strong. A young man must be a hero today to resist the temptations that surround him, to be the lonely believer in a despised doctrine, to face the arguments, the blasphemy, the scurrility which fill our books, our newspapers, and our streets, without giving way a finger’s breadth – to resist his family and his friends, to be one against many, to be faithful against all.I don’t recall ever hearing Catholicism presented this way before, and I found it incredibly appealing. By watering the Faith down and trying to make it "easy" and "convenient", you might actually be driving the young men away. We respond to a challenge, we aspire to courage and to heroism. Why do you think we are drawn to Star Wars and James Bond movies, why do we watch the National Football League? Why do so many young men aspire to be soldiers, quarterbacks, or astronauts when they grow up?
Why don’t we ever hear about St. Michael the Archangel casting Satan down from Heaven or St. George slaying the dragon any more? What about the Christian knights, or the martyrs who bravely faced brutal deaths for their Faith? We need to find a way to tap into this yearning for heroism to attract and retain young men in the Church today.
posted by The Jabberwock @ 12:41 AM
1 Comments:
This might be the most perfect blog post I have ever read. I wish that every Catholic and European blogger could see it.
I will definitely get a copy of these letters. I just finished (this morning) Letters from Paul Claudel, My Godfather, by Sister Agnes du Sarment, who as a non-believing Sorbonne student in the 1920s read the Claudel-Riviere correspondence as it was published in fragments in Nouvelle Revue Francaise, and was emboldened to ask for an interview with Claudel (to thank him) while he was having a short stay in Paris. This book is out of print, but I recommend it if you can find it.
How did you come to be reading Claudel?
Thanks again for your post.
Thomas
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