Pope may find willing ear among young U.S. Catholics

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Pope Benedict may find a particularly receptive audience during his U.S. visit next week among some younger Catholics who have come of age seeking a stronger and perhaps more conservative religious identity.

Many want something other than the Roman Catholic Church of their parents, who lived through the period after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) when Latin was dropped for English and Gregorian chant swapped for guitar Masses, experts say.

Their ranks are swelled by immigrants from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere who brought with them a more traditional piety that highlights some prayers and processions that seem somewhat out-of-date to Catholic baby boomers.

The pope's visit to a country whose 67 million Catholics represent its largest religious denomination runs from April 15 to 20, with about a dozen events in Washington and New York.

"In general, there is among young people -- 30 or younger -- a growing desire for a reassertion of Catholic distinctiveness," said Mathew Schmalz, associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

But they are not simply turning back the clock to the 1950s.

This is the "John Paul II generation" that supports the late pope's mix of doctrinal conservativism and Church authority with what Schmalz called "more radical concerns of Christian witness -- social justice, right to life.

"It can and often does play out with what might be called conservative (philosophy) but not always," he added.

"In some ways it's being different from our parents. Catholicism struggled a very long time in American society to become assimilated and accepted. In the 1960s, it was," he said.

"Many young people growing up looking for identity feel that exploring their own religious tradition is a source of identity ... In some ways it's a reaction against parents who have been assimilated too much," Schmalz said.

PARISH LIFE

One reason for this search is that many young Catholics were not brought up with a strong sense of religious identity, in contrast to parents and grandparents who were altar boys or procession flower girls, ate no meat on Fridays and thought it was a sin to enter a synagogue or a Protestant church.

"You get a lot of searching. One challenge is that parish life is not as central as it was 30 or 40 years ago," he said.

That searching is found across most U.S. religions, according to a recent Pew Forum survey that found one in 10 Americans describing themselves as former Catholics. Yet new adherents to the faith, especially from immigrant populations, have kept the size of the denomination roughly the same.

Matthew Bunson, general editor of The Catholic Almanac, agrees there are a growing number of young Catholics who tend to be more conservative than their elders, and for whom some of Benedict's more traditional views may have appeal.

How many there are and how conservative they are hard to measure. Older priests report some interest among some younger priests and lay people for the old Latin Mass that Benedict has promoted, but say only a very small minority seems strongly committed to these traditions.

A "watershed moment" in U.S. Catholicism, he said, occurred in 1993 at the World Youth Day in Denver that drew crowds of young people beyond expectations.

"The enthusiasm was an indicator of just how clear and interested young American Catholics are," Bunson said. The credit, he said, goes to John Paul -- the only pope many who are now young adults ever knew because of his 27 years in the post -- and the "consistency of his message."

The effect has followed Pope Benedict, he said, with as many as 1 million people expected at the next World Youth Day in Sydney later this year. The number of young people at Benedict's audiences in Rome, he added, "is striking."

Tom Peterson, founder and president of Catholics Come Home, Inc., a nonprofit group that targets former Catholics with media messages, said young people often seek "a more conservative and more authentic kind of faith ... the church that Jesus started 2,000 years ago can be authentic."

He said there has been increased enrollment at more conservative U.S. Catholic centers of higher learning.

Dan Bartley, president of Voice of the Faithful, a group formed in response to the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the U.S. Church and still critical of it for its actions, said some young people "undoubtedly do find the clarity and certainty of the conservative perspective appealing."

But he said the Christian message is a radical one because it calls "for complete transformation of oneself."

"We believe it will appeal to a generation of young people who are looking for moral clarity and certainty. We call for Catholics of all ages to move beyond the labels of 'conservative' or 'liberal.'"

(Editing by Philip Barbara and Xavier Briand)