Bishop R. Daniel Conlon delivered the Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Lecture last night at Elmhurst College before a crowd of around 200 people. His talk was entitled “Did Jesus Really Intend to Establish a Church?”
During the Q and A part of the evening, he answered questions about why many young adults are disengaged from the Church. Bishop Conlon said some young adults mistrust the institutional Church and don’t like the formality of the liturgies. He then asked the young adults in the audience what their thoughts were on the subject.
Several young adults pointed out the positives they see in engaging with the Church. For instance, they shared that they found community in the Church, which is what they were looking for, and one shared that some young people think the Church was a place of rules, but what she found was that the Church offers guidelines for how to live in freedom and happiness.