Are We Becoming Less Able to Connect to Other People?

Here is something I am concerned about. . . Are we citizens of the United States of America gradually as a society becoming more and more self-enclosed as individuals, each of us in our own little hermetically sealed worlds? Are we becoming less able on a person-to-person level to "connect" on a deep level with our fellow human beings?

Sadly, I suspect we are.

I hope I am wrong about this, but in my observation, younger adults today seem less capable of truly opening themselves up to the inner personal worlds of other people than perhaps was the case, say, 20 years ago. I don't mean a mere superficial connection, but something deeper and more significant.

Now, I suspect that this has always been a weakness of American society. But, nonetheless, I think it may be getting worse.

Why do today's teens and twentysomething adults seem to be so solipsistic in the way they travel the journey of life? Well, in part (I wouldn't claim to have anything like a full answer to this), perhaps it has to do with how today's American culture is such that it provides the conditions in which a young person's life can very easily be extremely self-centered and excessively self-involved.

Think about it. We can now control almost every waking moment of the day to a remarkably large degree so that we are constantly bathed in a universe of our own personal preferences. If we want to live this way, seldom do we have to endure moments not filled with some sort of pleasurable diversion of our own choosing. And it is largely technology that has made this possible. Computers and the internet, cell phones, mp3 players, video games, etc., are changing some of us into persons who do not know what it is like not to have idle moments always accompanied by our favorite music, favorite games, internet surfing, messaging, etc. We are seemingly masters of our own interior worlds. In other words, our inner experience of life as human persons is more and more filled with self--with being able to please our desires in some way during large stretches of our days. Our lives are like private movies accompanied by sound tracks of our own personal choosing.

So, we go through the day listening to music or radio, texting, surfing, or watching our favorite TV shows (which we record on DVR so we can watch them exactly when most convenient), etc. Ironically, we are often around other people, but we have no significant human connection with them. We are protagonists in a one-man show. The people physically near us for so much of our day might as well be on another continent. We rarely open a space for others to "break-in" to the carefully self-controlled sound track of our personal lives.

We have ready access to amazing technology that enables easy person-to-person communication. But it seems, as we are more "wired" electronically and thus able to text a friend any time of day no matter where he is on the planet, we are more and more distant from the human beings around us. We are islands, or ships, moving on long ocean voyages, crossing paths, but each ship is going to its own private destination.

I believe we are becoming as a society even less able than in the past--especially young people--to have truly significant and meaningful interpersonal connections with other persons. We may relate to many people in a day, but it is often very shallow, insignificant, detached. If we do communicate to people we care about and have more significant relationships with, it is frequently in a manner that we control--when we want and in the manner we want.

Are we (especially young Americans) losing the so-important human ability to "connect" to other human beings on a genuinely heart-to-heart level?

Because we can keep ourselves so amused and occupied by a running soundtrack of our choosing, I fear we can only dimly recognize the incredible depths of meaning and power of interpersonal relations of which the human person is capable. We think the high degree of control over our immediate conscious environment gives us great freedom. But do we consider that in reality, this is making us less human, less persons who can relate to others on a real and profound level, and more like automatons? Can we, any more, grasp the value and nuance of the authentic interior world of another human person? Can we truly connect heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit? Do we notice when we are merely talking at others or tuning them out, paying more attention to an ongoing effort to constantly satisfy our own interior desires to be entertained and pleasantly diverted?

We should be on guard for the person-diminishing scourge of solipsism and ask ourselves, do we really listen to others, do we really want to know them, do we want to serve others more than ourselves? And it should, as so often, be clear that we must be always begging our Savior for the many graces we need to turn away from a life of self-enclosure and instead open the door of our hearts to others. Let us try to diminish our preoccupation with tweaking the soundtracks for our own lives and permit other persons the opportunity to play songs of their choosing on the stage of our souls.

Isolation and Today's Culture

Here is an example of the sort of simply delivered wisdom for which Fr. Groeschel is known. He makes a point that I think is very relevant for the lives of many single adults.

What do young adult Catholics need? [5]

They need the most energetic, charismatic, vigorously dynamic, larger-than-life speakers and leaders that can possibly be found!

Actually, no.

Not every single person involved with speaking to young adults or leading young adult groups has to be a human dynamo of "youthful" pizazz and zippiness. To try to acheive this is a mistake.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having such people involved. Their energy and enthusiasm can be a great help. But not everyone involved needs to be like this.

I speak here from direct experience. Young adults will indeed listen to and respond to speakers who are not human Energizer bunnies. What matters more than sheer energy is that speakers and leaders

1) deeply care about young adults (whether they still be one or not) and like being around them,
2) can identify with and empathize with young adults and their needs,
3) have basic public speaking skills,
4) know and love their Catholic faith and can communicate their faith with hope and joy,
5) are authentic,
6) for those in leadership, that they have basic leadership skills, and
7) pray for and with those whom they serve.

To expand on no. 3, it is fine if a person is not necessarily the greatest speaker in the world. But they do have to be at least decent--capable of being understood and of communicating ideas with clarity and conviction. As important as they are, style and delivery are not everything. A mediocre public speaker who is extremely sincere and honest and has a great message can still be very effective. Also, naturally quiet, introverted people can be excellent public speakers (in fact, many Dominicans are actually introverts by nature). One does not have to be a "force of nature" with a great deal of charm and gregariousness to be able to hold the attention of an audience (the joy of no. 4 can be quiet joy, which can have its own special power). I have seen the reality of this demonstrated many times. And besides, no matter how great a speaker is, it is not likely that he (or she) will be able to pluck the heartstrings of every audience member. Different speaker personalities will effect people in different ways. Considering the audience, quiet, introspective types can even be put-off by highly exuberant personalities. So it is a good thing not to always seek the dynamos as speakers.

A good variety of speaker personalities with consistently high quality, meaningful, relevant content, coming from earnest and loving hearts--this is what will work over the long term. Maintaining a standard of good public speaking need not translate into presenters that all have the same style.

What do young adult Catholics need? [4]

So, at this point, I will make a few basic remarks addressing how parishes might begin to do a better job of addressing the most important needs of young adults.

I should say that I think most of these are fairly obvious, given the needs. Also, I won't try in this post to be detailed or exhaustive. I simply want to indicate a few things I believe would be important.

And so here are a few ideas. To my mind, it would be very helpful for American young adults if parishes tried to do more of the following:

Cultivate community--meaningful community, deep-rooted community. Help young adults to form bonds, relationships, and friendships with others that go beyond the trivial and superficial.

Provide guidance in becoming a person of prayer. This helps to bring more stability, self-identity, and self-knowledge into one's life, not to mention provides a healthy reminder of one's place in the world and of life's purpose.

Provide opportunities to serve people in need alongside other young adults. In addition to benefiting others, this helps build community and strengthen one's relationship to Christ.

Provide guidance in vocational discernment. Although a person is employed, in today's culture he (or she) often does not find his place in society until some years after his first or second job. Those with possible vocations to the priesthood or religious life need support and assistance in testing such indications.

Provide catechesis in areas of particular need for young adults. This could include almost anything, but certainly there are areas of particular relevance for young adults. These would include marriage and sexuality and learning more about the nature and content of revelation as it concerns the state of fallen mankind, the relationship between creation and God, man’s place in creation, and the purpose of man’s earthly life as designed by God.

Provide guidance in coming closer to Christ. This, of course, is part of any parish's basic mission to all the people it serves. Nonetheless, young adults are often lacking in this area. For example, the sacraments are all about coming closer to Christ. But, despite religious instruction received in their childhood, many young adult Catholics do not know how the sacraments are truly instruments of grace and healing, and intimacy with Christ.


Looking back at this basic list, it does seem almost too basic, perhaps too obvious. Yet, in my experience of the Catholic Church in America, only a few parishes reach out to adults in a regular fashion along these lines.

I would add something that is also extremely important: finding the right people to work with young adults is vital to the fruitfulness of the effort. Sometimes, it seems as though local Church leaders lose sight of this. You can have a great program outlined on paper, but with the wrong people in charge it will not last long. Outreach to young adults should be, above all, sincere and well-informed. Leaders should be well-educated and well-formed in the faith. They should be good examples of persons on the journey toward ever greater intimacy with Christ. They should have an evident love and concern for young adults. And, they should be good public speakers. Careful selection of group leaders cannot be overlooked in establishing a vibrant young adult ministry. More can be said about this but I will leave at this for now.

What do young adult Catholics need? [3]

I have been thinking more about number 4 of my last post and I want to qualify this a bit.

I do think it is true that many young adults are emotionally and/or psychologically immature compared to my grandparents' generation. And, I still hold that an unbalanced (and directionless) tendency toward excessive navel-gazing, losing oneself in a detached inner world, is bound up with this (note: I do not deny in any way that properly contextualized and purposeful self-examination is very important). However, the aspect I want to qualify is my comment about young people being too emotionally excitable and/or excitable about the wrong things--things that do not warrant a highly emotional response.

Indeed, some adults do suffer from this trait. But, there are also many who suffer from the opposite--something that can be referred to as insensitivity.

Just as there are young people whose emotions are too easily or inappropriately roused, there are young people who do not react strongly to things when decency demands that they should. A lack of passion about things which ought to stir up passion is just as, if not more, problematic as the opposite.

What do young adult Catholics need? [2]

In my previous post I gave some ideas as to why young adult Catholics are not, generally speaking, very engaged in their faith--and especially not engaged in the activities of their local parishes.

Now, to continue this line of thinking about what young adult Catholics need, two movements present themselves for exposition. The first: What realities do young adult Catholics face that are most relevant for Catholic parishes? The second: How might parishes begin to do a better job of addressing them? In this post I will take up the first.

The following realities (in no particular order) are things which I think are especially pressing issues for American young adults. Some of this, of course, comes by way of my own life experience, and some comes by way of observation.

Many single young adults experience the following:

1. A sense of isolation. This is in the form of being only very weakly connected to people with whom they regularly associate. And this, in spite of the fact that a typical young adult may have many acquaintances (hundreds of Facebook friends!), even many of what they refer to as friends. But sadly, these relationships, while fun at times and a source of enjoyment on some level, are not very deep. These connections are, in the end, thin and tenuous, easily broken and then discarded in the ever-growing bin of defunct relationships. For many, their day-to-day circle of human relationships is like standing next to a moving walkway at a busy airport--a constantly moving stream of faces, approaching, passing by, and receding as quickly as they came, the supply of new unfamiliar faces never ending. Another way to characterize this is to say that they lack meaningful community.

2. A lack of stability and a poor sense of personal identity. These are two sides of the same coin, and are related to no. 1. In order to have a firm sense of self-identity--of who you are in the world--you need to have some measure of stability. A significant component of our self-image is shaped by how other people respond and interact with us. But, when our lives as young adults have not had the benefit of a stable presence of a few people (in addition to immediate family) who have known us for a significant time of our lives, it is harder (though not impossible) to receive a meaningful reflection of ourselves through the eyes of others. This complicates the solidification of a secure self-image that should be firming up in early adulthood. Many young adults are able to give an impression that they are confident and secure in themselves. But I suspect despite appearances this is often not the case. In the secret realm of the inner reaches of their own hearts, they are still yearning to know themselves.

3. A desire for some sort of spirituality (or, religion, if they are not put off by the term), yet at the same time feeling at a loss for how to proceed. Another way to characterize this might be to say that young adults sense a need to be connected to something beyond, and greater than, themselves. They need to pray (even if they don't prefer this term). Their souls are not at peace, and at some level this disquiet yearns for resolution.

4. Emotional and/or psychological immaturity. I'm not sure how to describe or substantiate this. But, I think it is true. In part, I suggest this is rooted in our society's overemphasis on turning inward into ourselves. We are told to look inside for the keys to many of the most important things in life, things like identity, morals, purpose, etc. While this is partly true--it is not entirely true. And people who attempt to look only inward to find the roots of all they need for a joyful and stable life are eventually going to become, ironically, scattered, rootless, unselfpossessing individuals. This is not because being self-reflective is bad--within reason it is good. However, it must be regularly balanced and accompanied by other meaningful and deep relationships (with other people, and, most importantly, with God). Young adults tend, I think, to have overly vulnerable, and/or too-easily-influenced emotional lives. They have been shaped by a youth culture that seems to place a priority on readily experiencing highly charged emotional reactions to life. However, this culture encourages emotional drama that is disproportionate to the realities evoking the response. A certain superficiality to human emotional life is ingrained via the off-kilter affective habits of American youth culture. This produces adults who have the psychological unease to realize, first, that emotional depth and intensity is an important and proper part of a fulfilling life, and yet, second, that their personal experience of their own emotions is often out-of-sorts in some way (either too out-of-control or too easily effected by things that are ultimately not significant or meaningful). Young adults are at a loss for how to have emotional passion in a way that is properly balanced and attuned to what is most significant in life. How to be passionate in a way that is nonetheless amicable with stability and meaningfulness and that nurtures a healthy interior life rather than contributes to anxiety and self-doubt?

5. An absent or minimal sense of purpose in life. There is a significant exception to this (and this ties in to no. 4). Some adults are so distracted and caught-up in their daily activities that they never stop to notice that they don't have a firm and hearty understanding of what the point of it all is. (Or, they have permitted themselves to acquire a habit of being satisfied with superficial thrills or distractions, such as video games, internet surfing and socializing, TV, video, etc.) But even in such cases, I would claim that they still suffer from an inner angst the cause of which they cannot pin down. Those who are conscious that they do not have a solid sense of purpose in life are still at a loss for how to resolve their ennui.

6. A desire to "make a difference," but not being sure how. Human beings who have not killed their consciences want to help other people somehow. We want to be a blessing for others. But what is the best way for each of us to make a lasting positive impact?

7. Confusion and anxiety about the meaning and purpose of marriage and the role of the family in relation to society. All the associated concerns having to do with sexuality, dating, male-female relationships, finding the right spouse, I would put under this broad subject. Also, related anxieties about how to enter into a marriage in a way that increases the likelihood of building a loving, close-knit family. How should a person approach serious problems or absences from his own family history? What can a single young adult do now before engagement and marriage that will help make him or her a better spouse, mother, or father in the future?

8. Confusion over masculinity and femininity. This is related to no. 7 but distinctive enough that I'll give it its own number. What does it mean to be a "real man"? What does it mean to be a "real woman"? How does one become more authentically masculine or feminine without adopting a stereotype or taking on traits that do not fit naturally with one's own individual personality? How do we tell the difference between authentic manhood or womanhood and their counterfeits?

9. Uncertainty about one's vocation. What is a person truly "meant" to do in life? What is our life calling; how do we discern this? Is it going to come in one moment of clarity; do we come to it gradually over time; is it different for different people? How do we best engage others to help us grow in understanding in this area? How do we elicit God's help in this, and how do we recognize His guidance?


Just a few things here! Of course, not every young and single adult is troubled by all of these. And the degree to which any one of these issues impacts a person varies. But, I do think they are truly serious issues for many. How might the Church become better at serving young adults in these and other areas of great need?

What do young adult Catholics need?

As a single adult Catholic and former Dominican seminarian, and ever since my conversion to Catholicism, I have been interested in the matter of how to reach Catholic young adults to help them go deeper in their faith. It is a vexing issue. Single Catholic adults (especially those in their 20's and 30's), especially men, tend to be rather scarce in a typical parish. There are a lot more Catholic young adults out there than usually attend Sunday Mass. Sadly, a significant portion of Catholics cease regularly practicing their faith during high school or college. At some point, when out on their own, their faith becomes secondary to other concerns.

In many Catholic parishes single adults seem to slip through the cracks. In this post I would like to offer suggestions as to why. Here are a few of my thoughts on this:

1. First, there are simply a lot more single adults than there used to be. A few generations back, most people married in their early-to-mid twenties. Now, the age at which most people marry has increased to the late twenties. Many more people are single into their 30's than used to be the case 3 or 4 decades ago. This phenomenon of waiting longer to marry has increased the number of single adults.

2. A "typical" American parish, it seems to me (and there are notable exceptions), operates according to a model of life that is in some ways no longer relevant in 21st century America. Many parishes still seem to act as though all Catholics go to Catholic school or CCD, receive solid catechesis, are confirmed, live their faith uninterrupted, and get married and begin having children in their early 20's. Increasingly, this is not the case and should not be presumed. In other words, the old pattern of parish ministry--still often in place--did not try to do anything specific for single young adults because parishes 50 years ago did not have many of them. They still operate as though single adults are not a significant part of society. But this approach is by now very outdated.

3. Young adult Catholics are not aware of peers who take their faith seriously and would not know where to find them if they wanted to.

4. When a more specific outreach to single adults is attempted--whether at the parish or diocesan level--it is often poorly done. Such attempts tend to be downright silly and/or superficial and unserious. People tasked with such ministry are sometimes poorly matched for it. Out-of-touch, gimmick-laden cheerleaders who seem to have an excessive need to be seen as youthful and dynamic are not the best personality types for long term success with young adults. (I don't mean to imply that energy is a bad thing, but manufactured energy can be seen through.) Another shortcoming can be not perceiving what single adults most need and desire from the Church. Tailoring a ministry according to needs and desires the target group is not much concerned with is not likely to bear lasting fruit.

5. Older Church attitudes presumed that Catholics would remain practicing Catholics. This may have been true in a bygone era. Once beyond the teenage years there was no particular reason to worry that a large segment of adults would stop practicing the faith. The old way of doing things simply did not envision that many (most?) Catholics would--as young adults--grow distant from the Church. Parishes are not in the habit of welcoming such people back to the Church because they used to be able to assume they had never left.

6. Many families of origin of now-adult Catholics are less attached to their Catholic faith than was true of older generations. This has resulted in young adults whose connection to Catholicism is on shaky ground from the day they first leave home.

7. The post-WWII era of mass communication by electronic media has amplified the ability of skeptics and those who despise the Church to attack the faith on many fronts and in many ways. Youth culture has become increasingly isolated from the adult world, is increasingly indifferent or hostile to Christianity, and has come to have an increasingly longer reach into the attitudes of young adults.

8. People are much more mobile than they used to be. Years ago, even if a person remained single into his late 20's he probably still lived in the vicinity of his childhood home and thus had the support of parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and friends from childhood. However, nowadays, many single young adults move away from their hometowns. They are alone in a new city and have comparatively little support. Parishes in the past could safely assume that the few adults who were still unmarried had abundant support for their faith from their nearby families and friends. The Church still functions from within this old point-of-view in which it was not necessary to envision large numbers of single adults living in places beyond the easy reach of their family support networks. Thus, many parishes do not adequately recognize a large and growing segment of society that needs special help and support from the Church.

9. When young adult ministries do manage to have some success, often as not, they are not based in parishes. Even thriving extra-parish young adult ministries seem to fall short of being able to strengthen the connection and integration of young adults into their own parishes. Such ministries, though fruitful for a time, tend to be too personality-based and unstable over the long haul. And, ministries which do have some success with young adults don't seem to have many ties with other similarly successful groups. This hinders the potential for others to benefit from those who are successful. Theology on Tap seems to be the only (non-parish) young adult ministry that has some measure of genuinely helpful national cohesion. And this is a specific, limited type of ministry which while it works well has much it cannot do. Much more needs to be done in parishes.

With these background thoughts in place I will attempt in future posts to identify those needs and desires of Catholic young adults that parishes should be striving to address.