Living Faith: A Special Report from the Steubenville West Youth Conference

"The Catholic Church is dying. All her ancient rules and outdated traditions drive the young away. It's a faith of old, out-of-touch people who aren't enlightened like modern youth."

Chances are, we've all heard these words, or words very like them. It's become popular in the Culture of Death today to see religion, especially a religion as ancient and venerable as Roman Catholicism, as disconnected from the young and therefore disconnected from the future. The faith is dying, on its last legs, the culture says with glee, and in another generation, it will be gone entirely.

Or will it?

This past weekend, I had an amazing opportunity to attend a Steubenville Conference with my youth group in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona. The conference is one of about twenty put on across North America by the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and they serve some 50,000 high-school age teens every summer. At the behest of our beloved Editor-in-Chief [And don't you forget it! —Ed.] Damian, I decided to write about the experience. I had a notebook, a pen, and a sparkly hat to draw people in, and I interviewed five people about their faith and their experiences at the conference. In addition, I will also attempt to put down my own feelings about the conference.

The noise is deafening as the crowd files in and finds their seats. People wave flags, shout cheer routines, and even blow vuvuzelas between sessions!

CAPTION THIS: When Priest Met Punk

"My son, I know they say, 'The higher the hair, the closer to God,' but have you considered joining one of the minor orders instead?" (Picture c/o: Orthodox Christian Network) 

Salutations, Unpleasant Accents denizens! Our latest contest is up a bit more quickly that usual, because we just couldn't resist posting this picture as soon as we saw it. But first, business. The winner of our last caption contest is...

How Sickness and the Spirit Taught Me Surrender

Being sick is no fun. Being sick all the time is even less fun (that's negative numbers of fun, for all you non-math majors out there!). But that's my life, and that's been my life for four years. I have a rare disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, type 3 hypermobility, which pretty much means that my collagen, which makes up roughly 80 percent of the body's structures, is faulty and fragile. It's not at all pleasant — have you ever sprained your ankle? Imagine that kind of pain, but spread through every part of your body. Even my ribs manage to dislocate sometimes!

Me (in the center with the bad dye job), a month after my diagnosis, at the 2011 Steubenville West Youth Conference