"What went on in Madrid is not the simulacrum, but the genuine article. ..."

This is the principal "problem" of youth, but also its great adventure. It is the time to answer the fundamental human questions. Who am I? Where do I fit? What useful work can I do? How should I live? To what great cause should I devote my life? The task of the old — parents, teachers, preachers, coaches — is to point to where those answers might be found.

Those of us who work full-time with young adults know that even the highly privileged Canadian university student is at something of a loss in answering these questions. The Internet gives you plenty of data, but little wisdom. The seductive world of social media provides hundreds of friends, but little actual friendship. The modern university, devoted to endlessly celebrating the sheer magnificence of each individual student, is rather silent about who she really is, and what she ought to do. Talented young people have an almost infinite array of options, but a mission in life is hard to find. Consequently, without a strong identity and mission, so many young people feel very much alone.

London and Madrid were dramatically drawn alternatives to the problem of being alone. On one hand there were young people who embraced a framework in which destructive violence united them in a demonstration of power. On the other were those who embraced a framework that demands something arduous of them in service to others.

The pilgrims in Madrid were given a special catechism, to which Pope Benedict wrote an introduction.

"I invite you: study this catechism," he wrote. "This catechism was not written to please you. It will not make life easy for you, because it demands of you a new life."

Youth culture offers a great deal aimed precisely at pleasing, even indulging, the young. But what the young need is a more sturdy framework than one assembled from their own appetites and immature ideas. There is plenty of bad news from Europe this summer; the good news is that its oldest framework, the Christian gospel lived fully, is still on offer, and has not lost its power to attract the young.

From Father Raymond J. de Souza's column, "Giving the young something to believe in" (National Post, August 25, 2011).