Meeting Him in St. Louis: A Papal Postcard
Daniel Philpott
April 1, 1999
The Pope is a hierarchical codger. He speaks with a Parkinson's slur and with a Polish accent, not the cool English kind. He admonishes kids to abstain from sex until marriage, and he stoops, squints, shuffles, preaches, and moralizes like a didactic schoolmarm. But in late January, 20,000 teens packed out a St. Louis concert hall and screamed for him.
One reporter likened the youth rally to a rock concert. An exaggerated simile, I think, but not wholly off. No teen held up a lighter, but some of their moist eyes did catch the industrial light from the ceiling. No one yelled "Freebird," but the one kid in every crowd did fulminate "Viva il Papa!" when all other spectators sat silent. The youth mostly disciplined their delirium. They paced their screams, holding them to the end of the Holy Father's sentences, almost liturgically, as responses to his calls—his lamentation of teen suicide, his invitation to chastity, his plea to follow Jesus Christ, and his swing of a hockey stick, their gift to him. But maybe my account is too crotchety: One teen, speaking to a local reporter after the rally, compared her experience to a Billy Idol concert.
Why do youth get so excited over the Pope? Because he helped end Communism? Probably not. As a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I recently entertained this question from a freshman in my foreign policy course: "So, like, this class is really interesting and everything, but could you explain to me what this whole Cold War thing is that you keep talking about?"
It is hard to imagine the Pope's exhortations to virtuous adolescence captivating them, either. Polls show that solid majorities of young Catholics dissent from his teachings on sexuality and authority.
The Pope ...
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