The Official Newspaper of the Diocese of Little Rock
FAYETTEVILLE -- People who think today's youth are not interested in religion may want to consider Callie Cole, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville who will be received into the Catholic Church at this year's Easter vigil.
Or Thomas Johnson, a 16-year-old junior at Fayetteville High School who also will come into the Church this Easter and already is planning to become a priest.
Or Jack Garrison, 16, and Brittaney Leonard, 15, who will become Catholic at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.
Those who work with teens and young adults in RCIA and campus ministries programs say interest in joining the Catholic Church remains high in this age group. This is at odds with a recent study by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life that found that people born after 1980, known as the Millennial Generation, are significantly more likely than earlier generations at that age to say they don't identify with any religious group.
More encouraging, though, is the finding that millennials are just as likely as their elders when they were young to believe in God, pray daily and profess the importance of religion in their lives.
The study, "Religion in the Millennial Generation," draws mainly on the 2008 Pew Religious Landscape Survey and the General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
Liz Tingquist, campus ministry director for the Diocese of Little Rock, said in an e-mail interview that young adults in general seem more interested in pursuing their spirituality, and many are attracted to Catholicism because of its deeply rooted traditions and history.
Also, she believes teens who are already Catholic are the best witnesses to their peers, because they "are more interested in pursuing knowledge of their faith, and their enthusiasm and passion has led them to truly embrace discipleship which leads to evangelism, which leads to conversions of friends."
She said many college conversions actually start in high school, but out of respect for their parents and their religious affiliations, these young adults wait until college to go through RCIA.
Cole, the UA freshman, can't say exactly when she decided to formally join the Church, but by spring of her senior year in high school, she said, "I knew."
Her boyfriend, Ben Ross, who was raised in the Church, looked on the Internet for colleges with RCIA programs. Originally from Little Rock, they settled on the UA at Fayetteville and the RCIA program at St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish.
Cole will be confirmed at Christ the King Church in Little Rock, with her family there and Ross as her sponsor.
Raised a Methodist, Cole attended her first Mass at Easter vigil during her junior year in 2008. Although she said she was mostly interested in the paintings and decorations, and who was there that she knew, she has attended Mass ever since.
The following week, she started attending the Catholic Youth Ministry program. Through activities there, she got to know teens from around the state and had a ready-made support group when she got to Fayetteville.
Her RCIA class consists of three UA students and one adult who is married to a faculty member, Cole said. The friends she and Ross socialize with are all Catholic, and they study together and support one another as they live out their faith.
Caryn Hoyt, who is in her third year teaching RCIA for children at St. Joseph Church in Conway, said most of the kids who take her classes are coming into the Church with their parents. But this year she has two 18-year-old girls from non-practicing Catholic families who decided on their own to get confirmed. However, they had no training in the faith and hadn't received any sacraments since baptism.
Hoyt said that with these girls, as in every class, she makes sure each student really wants confirmation and is ready for it.
"Some people become Catholic by habit," she said. "And I had to make sure this was coming from them. They had to realize for themselves that God is not 'out there' but in them. It's been a journey, but they've made it their own and expressed a desire to come in (to the Church) because they want to live a life of faith."
Tingquist noted one sign that today's youth are more in tune with their faith is a greater interest in religious vocations and an openness to that possibility.
"All you have to do is look at the number of priestly vocations in our diocese," she said. "The number of seminarians next year should top 30-plus. Also, I am speaking with more women who are seriously discerning religious life."
Johnson, the Fayetteville High School junior, had not even started RCIA before he met with the diocese's vocations director, Msgr. Scott Friend, to discuss becoming a priest.
"He told me just to go to school and get good grades, and in no time I'd be all signed up and ready to go to seminary," Johnson said.
Johnson's road into the Church has not been without challenges. His father, a Pentecostal pastor in Chicago, strongly opposes Johnson's decision to become both Catholic and a priest. As a result, Johnson said, his father barely talks to him.
His friends teased him about his desire to be a priest. His only support came from his mother, Cynthia Marzette, who came into the Church last Easter.
"I felt like I had nobody," Johnson said, "but I do have somebody, the person who started it all, Jesus Christ."
He said his mother "dragged" him to Mass in October 2008. Deeply rooted in his Pentecostal faith and knowing nothing about Catholicism, Johnson was terrified.
"I thought I was in some satanic ritual," he said. "I thought it was a huge cult, pure evil, nothing about God."
After Mass, he said, his mother turned to him in the car and said, "I just saw a vision of you in a priest's robes setting up the altar."
"I thought she was crazy and tried to forget it," he said. "I prayed about it. What would my friends think, what would my father think? At that moment, I thought Jesus was calling me to be something greater, even than just a Catholic."
This past January he went on a vocations discernment retreat, where he felt a brotherly bond with the seminary students.
"They have a supernatural calling, and I really connected with them," he said. "It opened my eyes to what a priest truly is, rather than what people think a priest is.
"I'm not going to be like Jonah and run away from the calling. I'm not going to make a mistake like he did, but stay firm in my faith."
Susan David, RCIA coordinator at the Cathedral of St. Andrew since 2004, said this year she has seen more interest from youth wanting to convert, "so our young people are going against the statistics."
Garrison, of Sherwood, was one of David's students this year. He said he can hardly wait to come into the fullness of the Church and receive Communion.
"I'm counting down the days," he said. "I'm so excited, I'm so ready."
A Catholic friend piqued Garrison's interest in the Church. He did some research on the Internet and found its teachings to be in line with what he already believed as a Christian.
"My friend took me to Mass, and I was so overwhelmed I started to cry," Garrison said. "I felt the Holy Spirit was there, and that's where I wanted to be. I just fell in love with the Church."
Garrison, like Johnson, also faced some opposition when he decided to convert. His father's family is Methodist, his mother's is Baptist, and he attends a Baptist school. He initially met with resistance from his parents and friends, but he said they've now accepted his decision.
For other teens who are thinking about becoming Catholic but worried about what their peers will think, he offers this advice: "I would tell them just to know if people start harassing you about it, just shrug it off, and if they give you a hard time, just remember it's not between you and them, it's between you and God.
"When people give me a hard time, what I would do is pray for them, that God would give them wisdom and God would give them grace. I would not want any other teenager or kid to go through what I've gone through because it hurts, words can really hurt, but keep your mind on God and your relationship with him, and it will work out."
Leonard, one of Garrison's RCIA classmates, is an eighth-grader at Bryant Middle School. Her mother, Suzanne Leonard, said she wanted her daughter to be part of a community of church members who would always be there to love and support her. Brittany Leonard's father, who died six years ago, was a non-practicing Catholic, and an uncle takes her to Mass and RCIA.
Leonard said she is looking forward to being an altar server "because I want to do something (during Mass), not just sit there on the pew."
A young lady who speaks right to the point, she has a few choice words for peers who don't think they need religion in their lives.
"I would just say, 'Get over it.'"
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