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

By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer

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who brought with them a more traditional piety that highlights some prayers and processions that seem somewhat out-of-date to Catholic baby boomers.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.