A

as a candidate for Confirmation at St. Matthias School in Somerset, NJ, I distinctly remember participating in a program known as “Service WorX.” All Confirmation candidates were required to participate in this program, presumably in the hopes of demonstrating the program’s motto: “Faith without works is dead.” Written in bold letters on the back of our program T-shirts, this motto embodied a central tenet of the Catholic faith—to do good works in the world is to be faithful to the Catholic tradition.

Since Pope Leo XIII’s publication of Rerum Novarum in 1891, Catholics have become increasingly cognizant of the Church’s social teaching. Today, most Catholics are likely to recognize the importance of the preferential option for the poor, the protection of human dignity, the respect for the gift of life, and other dimensions of the Church’s social witness. In the United States, attention to Catholic social teaching has become particularly widespread in recent years, especially among students at Catholic colleges and universities. At Boston College, for instance, students can often find innovative courses that apply Catholic social teaching to pertinent issues of economic injustice, racial discrimination, environmental degradation, and more.

Catholics must witness to a faith that does justice in the world. My hope for the future Church, however, is that we also not forget other dimensions of the faith that are equally important. As the American Church in particular continues to minister to the poor, immigrants, women in crisis pregnancies, and others on the margin, I hope that we will also embrace the sacraments, the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the Church’s focus on community.

Fortunately, the Church need not choose one path over the other. We need not choose an exclusive emphasis on social issues over an appreciation of the sacraments, nor an exclusive emphasis on the sacraments over the pursuit of social justice. Rather, we must remember what makes the Church the Church, in all of its depth and complexity.

Focusing the Church’s pastoral attention somewhere between these two extremes is not just a personal preference but based on real experience and concrete evidence.

I n 2020, the C21 Center launched the Student Voices Project to better understand how Boston College students understand their faith. Between November 2020 and October 2021, the Project engaged with nearly 550 students through small focus groups and online surveys. In this initial phase of the Project, Boston College students expressed hope that the Church would help them develop a greater understanding of how the Catholic spiritual and intellectual traditions can make sense of their lived experiences.

For example, a majority of respondents expressed their appreciation for Boston College’s distinctive academic programs because they integrate the Church’s spiritual and intellectual traditions with contemporary issues. In many cases, students noted particularly positive experiences with Boston College’s Complex Problems and Enduring Questions courses—multidisciplinary courses taught by faculty in two academic d isciplines that integrate, for instance, faith and reason, evolutionary biology and biblical narratives, or Catholic theology and neuroscience.

Beyond the Church’s intellectual tradition, the Student Voices Project demonstrated that students desire a sense of community on campus around their faith. Whether involving community-based events after Mass or intentional service programs, respondents repeatedly emphasized the importance of the Church’s understanding of community. Importantly, this emphasis on community was held alongside equally emphatic support for promoting a faith that does justice.

When Pope Francis announced the Synod on Synodality—a major part of his broader plan to create a “listening Church”—the C21 Center placed the Student Voices Project in service of the Synod. With the goal of listening to the experiences of high school and college-aged students from around the United States, the national phase of the Project engaged an additional 1,000 students through online surveys. Hailing from 26 schools in 14 states, over 95% of the respondents to the Project’s national phase were of high school age. This offered the C21 Center a unique opportunity to identify common themes in the hopes of high school and college-aged students.

Not unlike their college-aged peers, high school students expressed a desire for greater understanding of their faith and a sense of meaning in practicing it. Similarly, high school respondents to the Project’s national survey articulated their hope for greater community around their faith, in addition to more direct engagement from Church leaders around pressing social issues.

In both iterations of the Project, students expressed hope that the Church would accompany them in a pastorally responsive way, one that helps them understand what the Church teaches, why the Church believes it, and why (and how) it should matter in their lives. Put more simply, students wanted to talk about difficult issues, not merely be talked to about them.

Placed amidst the backdrop of their emphasis on inclusion and belonging, students who participated in both phases of the Project demonstrated interest in an intellectually and spiritually robust faith that does justice in the world.

As the Synod on Synodality continues, it is critical that we think more intently about the experiences of young people in the Church, not least so that the Church can understand how to accompany the next generation on its faith journey. Though many headlines about young people in the Church are focused on social issues alone, conversations with students at Catholic high schools, colleges, and universities through programs like the Student Voices Project reveal that the Church must balance the distinctive social, intellectual, and spiritual features of the Catholic faith.

Doing so means witnessing to a faith that does justice, but it also means embracing the sacraments, prayer, the Church’s rich intellectual tradition, and the Church’s unique emphasis on community.

I have great hope for the Church’s future, but our success in witnessing to the full message of the Gospel will be tethered to whether Catholic institutions and “we” the Church remember not to overemphasize some aspects of the Catholic tradition at the expense of others.

Embracing Christ’s exhortation to “make disciples of all nations,” then, requires us to witness to what makes the Church the Church. ■

Dennis J. Wieboldt III is an M.A. candidate in history at Boston College and the co-director of the Student Voices Project. A 2022 graduate of Boston College, he has been a member of the Church in the 21st Century Center’s Advisory Committee for three years.

The Church in the 21st Century Center recently concluded its two-year-long study, the Student Voices Project, of how Catholic high school and college students understand their Catholic faith. Now, as Catholic educators explore new ways to reinforce their mission and Catholic identity, the Center is ready to share its free diagnostic tool, used in the study, to help them learn more about how their students understand their faith.

Are you interested?

Please contact the C21 Center to begin the conversation: church21@bc.edu

To learn more about the Student Voices Project, and read the executive summary and full report that were submitted to the Synod on Synodality, visit: bc.edu/futurechurch.