Catechesis and Superheroes for the Digital Age

Rebuilding the Church of the future is in the hands of the young. As a religious sister and pediatrician, I am deeply concerned about the physical, emotional and spiritual consequences of pandemic-related trauma, secularization, economic instability and global violence for children and youth. These realities have compromised their ability to build a post-pandemic Church of inclusion, justice and mercy.

In December 2021, the Pontifical Academy for Life recognized the impact of the COVID pandemic on the lives of children and adolescents as “a parallel pandemic” to the infection itself. It exacerbated the longstanding lack of accessible, affordable health care for all, inadequate mental health and protective services, and crucially important preventive care. It revealed systemic issues of poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation and social marginalization with higher illness and death rates among the most socially disadvantaged.

Public health advisories to “shelter in place” at home assumed one had a home and that it was safe. The stark reality is that one hundred million homeless families had been displaced by war, poverty, persecution and natural disasters. The isolation of children with stressed parents confined to small spaces as well as school closures increased physical and sexual abuse.

The pandemic produced an explosion of research in developmental traumatology on the psychiatric and psychobiological effects of overwhelming stress during the crucial periods of growth and development for infants and children. Adolescence is a period of rapid development of the brain’s socio-affective circuitry that drives a need for affirmation and high sensitivity to internet bullying and phishing.

The Synod recognizes that our first formation in faith takes place in the family. Parents hand down beliefs and form their children as moral agents. They are “first responders” to the trauma of profound disruption of the family, faith and cultural rituals necessary for children’s sense of identity and security. Historically, children heard cultural and religious stories that helped them cope with difficulties and presented models of good and bad behavior.

Tragically, quarantine increased the time young people spend on addictive social media, which bombards them with very different models and stories. Exposure to interactive screen media begins for many North American children before the age of two. By adolescence, they are fully immersed as it steals time from sleep, exercise and in-person activities. In a pathological paradox, constant virtual interactions have unmasked deep loneliness and a loss of meaning and hope.

The shift from oral tradition to screen began in the late 1800s when motion pictures provided graphic images of real heroic soldiers sacrificing their lives. By the 1930s, Walt Disney’s tamed fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson established a new secular genre with good and evil characters clearly identified. Television brought screens into the home.

I had a new insight into the magnitude of the challenge of faith formation in post-Christendom one evening during Easter week. As I channel-surfed my television, the only program about Easter was on the “religion channel.” Strangely, there was massive hype about a rerun of the visually amazing initial Harry Potter film from the book series written between 1997 and 2007. As of 2023, it became the best-selling book series in history, selling over 600 million copies. Published in 85 languages, the total franchise is estimated at $25 billion! It presents coming of age and fantasy issues in dark themes of prejudice, corruption, madness and fearful death. How can faith formation compete? The Synod concluded, “The synodal culture needs to become more intergenerational, with spaces for young people to speak freely for themselves, within their families, and with their peers and pastors, including through digital channels.”

At every mass Catholics hear “the greatest story ever told,” which reveals the depth of God’s love for us in the Paschal Mystery and stories from salvation history. Today, these are among many competing, contradictory, fast-paced, interactive stories offered to youth.

The challenges are clear:

Renew inclusive, accessible Scriptural language and restore the importance of the proclamation of the Word.

Resuscitate personal encounters in the Eucharist, as a welcoming community of friends sharing a meal and giving thanks for a real incarnational presence.

Acknowledge and address the trauma of divisive polarization of beliefs and practices on the young.

Find new ways to educate youth in discernment of the perils and possibilities of the digital age, now compounded by AI, especially about the ways in which they can be manipulated.

Commit to being credible witnesses and “walk the talk” of our teaching.

Address the key ecclesial, moral and anthropological questions of our time raised in the Synod.

Recognize youth violence around the world as a cry for help: build on the courage and selflessness youth showed during pandemic as aid to isolated and vulnerable persons and on their concern for the environment.

Promote resilience to the inevitable traumas of life in prayerful, generous communities.

Rebuilding the Church of the future requires the formation of a new generation of superheroes, rooted in the hope of the incarnation and resurrection and powered by the Holy Spirit. “Make it so.”

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Sister Nuala Kenny, emerita professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., is a pediatrician and physician ethicist.