Setting tomorrow's agenda.

Every movement for social justice professes the same truism: youth is its lifeblood. The involvement of young people in such movements, however problematic to the traditionalists who appear to court it, is indeed a question of very survival.

As political science student Tobias Raschke, founder earlier this year of We Are Church Youth International, puts it: "Without vision, you have no future. It's just a matter of time before you die out."

In much of recent history, youth has been unapologetically agenda-setting on issues ranging from reproductive rights to anti-globalization. The exuberance of agit-prop and street demo has often dismayed older, wiser veterans of the self-same issues. But youth will have its day, and much contemporary debate is given over to reassessing just what is, and is not, gained by all that delirium.

These trends are perhaps less true for the Catholic church than for secular society. After all, the church never pretended to democracy. (Promoting religious freedom behind the so-called Iron Curtain was less about tearing down the Berlin Wall than reasserting the universal authority of the Vatican, as democratic youth recognized during the Cold War years.)

On the other hand, children of church reformers tend to accept and adopt their parents' religious belief. Committed young people, some of whom spoke to Conscience about these issues, are Catholic first and reformer second. This dual commitment lends them both an authority and a strength not generally seen through generations of secular activists.

To what extent, then, is contemporary youth setting an agenda for the future of church reform and for the church itself?

"Young people are confused," suggests Apollonia Lugemwa, National Women's Coordinator for the Uganda Episcopal Conference Catholic Secretariat. "Because of selfish leaders in church and government, they aren't guided or focused on their futures. Because of poverty, we don't look ahead."

This viewpoint is only partly shared by Joy Barnes, program coordinator for the Virginia-based grassroots organization Women's Ordination Conference. "Young people see that we have other options," she says. Brought up Catholic, Barnes however remembers the church as the one constant in a life spent as a US military daughter. "It's so much in my identity, even if I don't go to church regularly."

Speaking personally, she adds, "I do feel called to stay in the Catholic church. I feel called, not to ordination, but to a church which can exist if we create it ourselves." Barnes could be summarizing the idealism and democratic focus of a new generation of young Catholic activists worldwide.

"I was brought up Catholic," agrees Bolivia's Andrea Ramirez of Catolicas por el Derecho a Decidir. "I don't want to leave my religion, but I do want to live in a church that makes me feel I can be a woman with all my feelings and ideas, be happy and participate." Speaking for her generation, she adds, "I think all young people want a more human church. We have to see institutional change."

For Germany's Tobias Raschke, the connection between early family life and his own high-profile work with the We Are Church movement is even closer: his parents are not only Catholic but also longstanding church reformers. The Raschke family is as likely to be reunited at a campaign meeting as over the supper table!

"The time of the church as an agenda-setter is gone," he argues. "The hierarchy, with its focus on abortion and sexuality--things they know nothing about--they aren't in touch. To survive, the message of the church has to be positive. They have to start listening to people and paying attention to normal life. Otherwise, there will be other religions."

Joy Barnes agrees. "We know more now about other religions," she says of the range of possibilities open to her generation. "Look at the situation we have in Virginia, for instance, where female altar servers are not allowed. It's so symbolic. Can we really touch young people, draw them in to the Catholic church, when they see that what it's all about is exclusion? And are we saying that women aren't worthy to live up to the highest roles in the church?" Anticipating the standard reply to what are really only rhetorical questions, Barnes adds dismissively, "we all know what `separate but equal' means--it means 'not equal.'"

"It's hard to go to church," Raschke says of his own religious observance. "As a young person, you don't want to be in an old people's home. And that's what the church today is. Older, fat priests led by a big Catholic dictator. It's not how I imagine the way of Jesus."

Far from derailing his commitment to church reform, these criticisms seem to fuel Raschke's activism, much as fellow countryman Martin Luther was energized centuries beforehand, with indisputable consequences for the Christian world. (Offered the analogy, Raschke dismisses it.)

Nor is Joy Barnes impressed by any claim for intergenerational continuity in the US church reform movement. "I see a gap of a whole generation," she reports. "I'm younger by twenty years than the closest to me--women in their forties. It's really difficult, sometimes, to be both a newcomer and so much younger."

According to Barnes, this missing generation is particular to the church. "I don't see it in secular groups where you have participants from all ages," she says, remembering her attendance at Feminist Expo 2000 where CFFC President Frances Kissling spoke and which was attended by thousands of activists, young and old in equal measure.

"This gap partly affects how we set our agenda," Barnes continues. "Much of the time we're just following the older generation, looking at the issues they're reacting to in the church. It's why we've now started getting involved with issues that do strike a chord with young people, looking at how we can become more welcoming and inclusive and moving away from the older, middle-class, white, educated model of Catholic reform."

Meanwhile, Apollonia Lugemwa has a different perspective on the importance of intergenerational continuity in the reform movement, be it personal or organizational. Recently appointed central regional Minister for Women's Affairs and Community Development, Lugemwa smiles at the idea of any precedence for her work. "I'm just starting the reform movement," she responds, only half in jest. "We are in the wilderness."

Lugemwa's background as a Catholic, however, is little different. "Indeed, I am Catholic," she says. "But my parents' church has done so little about women's issues." Almost by way of riposte, Lugemwa has been busy organizing Catholic women across a number of campaigns and issues, starting the Women's Desk in the Archdiocese of Kampala, mobilizing Catholic women for development activities and establishing the Catholic Women's Guild.

Lugemwa's passion is evident not only in her activities but in the urgency with which she describes them. "At first it was a bit confusing because I had women's ordination and social justice in mind as the key issues," she says, recalling her participation in the 2001 Women's Ordination Worldwide conference in Dublin, Ireland. That perspective changed once Lugemwa convened the first meeting of what has become the Nyange Women's Group last November. "We have come to focus on women and reproductive health and human rights," she explains.

"Our women are dying because of ignorance," she says of this need to emphasize reproductive as well as human rights in government platforms and church programs. "Our people don't have enough information about family planning, even about the natural family planning that the church supports."

Lugemwa's motivation and drive are shared by other activists. "I love what I do. I truly believe in it," agrees Joy Barnes. However, this enthusiasm doesn't blind her to the difficulties she and other young people face in setting an agenda for our times. "But I do feel called to stay and to encourage other young people to do the same through networking, like in my work as Director of Programs with the Young Feminist Network, which organizes and empowers young women to speak out," she says.

Andrea Ramirez adds that the Catholic church needs to become more democratic and more focused on human rights if it is to appeal to young people. "We need a church that is more equal and accepts the rights of everyone, a church where we have the right to choose. We don't have this now, and this is what makes young people want to change the church."

Such change will be no overnight sensation, according to Ramirez. "You have to change the reality of your country," she explains. "It's not easy to change an institution like the Catholic church but you find some spaces to work like the progressive movement in the church and the women's movement." Ramirez is reconciled to the long-term view. "You have to go step-by-step to change the patriarchal position of the church."

But is the church willing to change? "It's difficult to change the point of view of people who think they have the answers," says Ramirez. "They don't want to change their way of thinking and they have a lot of money and power behind them. "Raschke agrees that the wealth and power of the church is a real obstacle to change. We need "a poor church," he believes.

Through her work in developing an agenda of reproductive and human rights and bringing it to groups throughout the country, Ramirez sees support for her message growing. "You have to talk with other young people and find out their feelings, what they've been thinking about their rights in the church. You have to be in a constant evaluation," she says.

"Many groups have tried to reform the church. It's a long process," agrees Tobias Raschke, who is, nonetheless, impatient with this longer view and anxious for the church to return to its roots in the teachings of Jesus. "Christianity got lost," he says. "It became more interested in hierarchy than in people. The church must go back to the good ideas of Jesus--giving hope and democracy and freedom to the people." He speaks highly of theologians who are "on the side of the poor," rather than on the side of political power. "This--with the majority of people--is where the church has to be, as the hope of the world."

While these young reformers' commitment and sense of purpose can hardly be challenged, they are not so naive as to ignore the institutional and systemic barriers of which Ramirez and Raschke speak.

"Education and awareness creation for both men and women should be church programs," says Apollonia Lugemwa. "The church should educate their own people who have trust in them." Government programs don't meet these needs either, she claims. "We have to make a start, and I have to start," Lugemwa says of her mission. "Although I'm not sworn in as a regional minister yet, I'm already on the move. We shall keep on striving."

With all his impatience and admitted pessimism about the rate of change in the church, Tobias Raschke still has ambitions to professionalize the reform movement. "We must use the peace and anti-globalization movements as models if we are to get young people involved," he believes. "And we need to learn more about campaigning, about elections and media."

In finding support for her work, Joy Barnes faces a lack of resources familiar to activists in developing countries. But in the richest country in the world, hers may be a unique dilemma. "We're considered too Catholic to be feminist and too feminist to be truly Catholic," she summarizes, adding that this perception has caused her real difficulty in securing organizational funding. "We're pushed to the margins on both sides!"

How is she meeting this challenge? "We talk about the political implications of having women's voices excluded from church leadership," she says. "We also talk about the need to have women involved at pastoral level as well as having our voices in the Vatican."

Nor does Barnes see missing youth and women as only an internal church problem. "We need to let people outside the church know how important these issues are for all of us," she concludes.

For the future, psychology student Andrea Ramirez will continue working as an activist. "Yes, I want to make Bolivia a better place for my future life, a place to get married and have a family," she says. "I want to see change, to see this become a better place to live, where you can talk and feel and be a woman and a man with all your possibilities."

If, as then-US presidential hopeful John Fitzgerald Kennedy asserted, "the young are better fitted to direct history than the old," the Catholic church may yet be in safe hands.

Ruth Riddick is founder/director of Open Door Counselling, the pioneering pregnancy counseling service that successfully sued Ireland at the European Court of Human Rights resulting in a freedom of abortion information provision in the Irish constitution.