World Youth Day

Crowds at the official opening of World Youth Day. From: www.news.com.au

Had anyone reading this blog heard of World Youth Day before about a month ago? Have the British residents amongst you heard of it at all? I don't know whether I've been sleeping under a rock for the last 32 years or whether an almighty fuss is suddenly being made of it in Australia right now but I hadn't a clue what it was until a few weeks back.

For those of you who are still clueless, it's a massive meeting of young Catholics. It happens about once every three years and it's an international event. Despite the name, "World Youth Day", it actually happens over about five days. (I always was sceptical about the story of creation happening in seven days and now I suspect it was actually thirty-five, which is still quite impressive.)

Basically hundreds of thousands of these young Catholics congregate on a city (in this case Sydney) and party and pray for a few days. That seems like such a strange combination of words to place in one sentence: Catholics, party, pray.

I will probably be flamed for this but I am astounded at the number of enthusiastic young devotees being portrayed on the news (every day). I always thought of Catholicism as the kind of religion that kids were dragged into (often literally and hungover) and given names like Mary and Bernadette and Joseph, because their parents were Catholics and their parents' parents were Catholic and no one ever questioned it. Most of the Catholics I have known stopped practising as soon as they left home, and have felt forever guilty about it, and everything else for that matter. It seems like such an old-fashioned religion somehow and I suppose I imagine young folk getting more into the relatively modern protestant denominations of Christianity, such as Pentecostalism (HillSong certainly seems popular in Australia) or not bothering at all.

World Youth Day is expecting 125,000 international visitors. The opening mass at Darling Harbour yesterday attracted over 150,000 pilgrims and the papal mass on Sunday is expected to address a congregation of half a million. According to the World Youth Day website it is the biggest event Australia has ever hosted, attracting more overseas visitors than even the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and providing Pope Benedict XVI's first ever visit to Australia. The television coverage is greater than the Tour de France and the Olympics combined, although I suppose there isn't too much to report on the Olympics at this stage. Still, I am finding the extent of the coverage of an event I had never even heard of before quite bizarre. Images flash on the screen of young people wearing their national colours and World Youth Day t-shirts shouting, singing, being generally rowdy and happy, fireworks and pop concerts, not the sort of things I ever associated with the stuffy old Roman Catholics.

It's all been a bit of an education to me really. Catholicism can be cool (in a Guy Sebastian kind of a way) and Catholic kids know how to party (as long as it all wraps up by 10pm and involves a few prayers here and there). Sydney must be a crazy place right now.

Oh, and just for the record, I think priests should be allowed to be gay. Unless they're Catholic, in which case they can be gay but celibate, merely because Roman Catholic priestly sex is against the rules.

One last thing, as we're on the subject of religion, isn't this a brilliant headline:

Mormons make missionary position clear

I love it! The best thing is, it's about young (male) mormon missionaries posing semi-naked for a calendar. Brilliant.