WHERE'S THE BEEF?

I have a confession to make: I've lost my taste for soup kitchens. Well, I don't have a problem with soup kitchens per se. But I do have a problem with the prominent role they play in the church's ministry to my generation. While I'm sure there are places where youth ministry is diverse and stimulating (I'm told that Yale has an excellent program), my experience has been that most youth programs begin and end with trips to the soup kitchen and other social-justice activities. And it's gotten to the point where we are neglecting other parts of the tradition--particularly our intellectual heritage.

Take my experience. When I was a student at Princeton in the mid-1990s, there were two options for Catholic students: join the traditional campus ministry or sign up with the local branch of Opus Dei. Like most people, I chose the former. Campus ministry consisted of daily Mass, the occasional Friday night social, and weekly trips to the soup kitchen.

In general, there was no encouragement to read magazines like Commonweal or America. No weekly Catholic roundtable, except for a periodic discussion of Catholic social teaching. No regular speakers. And that wasn't for a lack of resources. Albert Raboteau, Paul Sigmund, and the medical ethicist James Keenan, S.J., were just a few of the luminaries then on campus.

If you wanted to hear prominent Catholic speakers on a regular basis you had to attend the Jacques Maritain Society's lectures, which featured the likes of George Rutler and Henry Hyde. (I'll leave it to you to figure out who sponsored those talks.)

I don't want to pick on Princeton. I'm afraid the situation is much the same on many campuses. Like most young Catholics, I went to a secular school, so I didn't have access to the rich stock of Catholic professors available at, say, Fordham or Notre Dame. But it seems to me that, even at Catholic schools, there isn't enough effort to incorporate what goes on in the classroom into ministry programs. Theology departments dispense reading lists. Campus ministries run trips to Ecuador. But I think we do a disservice to separate the two. Book learning should be part of the messy business of faith, and should therefore have a place in campus efforts to nurture that faith.

Things aren't much better for young people who have graduated from college. Most Catholic activities for young adults involve making sandwiches. Any and all "intellectual" events seem to be sponsored by conservatives. My choices living in New York City were basically to volunteer at Covenant House or hear George Weigel at the Union League Club.

When you think about it, it's easy to see why social justice has taken over youth ministry. For one reason, it's engaging. Who can argue with feeding the hungry and clothing the needy? At a time in life when young Catholics often find themselves forced to defend their church to skeptics, it's no wonder they are drawn to a part of the tradition that has self-evident appeal.

That fact isn't lost on Catholic chaplains and youth ministers. They, understandably, want to find ways to connect with young Catholics, so they concentrate on action for social justice and hand out copies of Dead Man Walking and the National Catholic Reporter. If it packs the pews, why not give it more play?

But at what cost? Most Catholics my age have grossly neglected the church's intellectual tradition. Writers like Flannery O'Connor, Georges Bernanos, and Oscar Hijuelos are unread. Thinkers like John Tracy Ellis and John Courtney Murray are unmined. Young conservative Catholics have a pretty good handle on this heritage, but they shouldn't have all the fun.

But--as some of my friends might ask--how can we spend our days stalking card catalogues while children go hungry? Think of it this way. The church's intellectual and social-justice traditions are not separate, but part of the same cloth. Some of the church's best intellectual work has been done in the field of social justice. Conversely, a commitment to the poor is incomplete if it does not include an educational or intellectual component. As the editor of this magazine wrote recently: "In the spirit of gospel values, all Catholics should signal support for the poor, the 'other,' the marginalized, but a naive romanticism must not lead us to suppose that the poor, the 'other,' the marginalized have needs any different from our own: to grow in wisdom and in grace, to learn, and to 'learn how to learn.'"

I don't mean to minimize the importance of social justice. I'm glad so many people find it compelling. (I do, too.) And it goes without saying that it's an indispensable part of the faith. But ours is a catholic tradition. Over the years, people have found their way in through many different doors. Sure, there were many who arrived via Dorothy Day. But there are others who were inspired by Newman or Greene or O'Connor. Why should things be any different today? The majority of young Catholics are highly educated. Maybe the best way to get through to them is to let them see the whole package. You've shown us Dan Berrigan and Helen Prejean. Now let's see the rest.

Maurice Timothy Reidy is a reporter for the Hartford Courant.