The Pope and "Emerging Youth Cultures".

The Holy Father has made some provocative statements.

About youth amidst the "widespread climate of instability", as well as an "educational emergency"...

"The uncertainty and fragility that characterize so many young people often pushes them to the margins, making them almost invisible and absent from society's cultural and historical processes. … The affective and emotional sphere, … strongly affected by this climate … gives birth to apparently contradictory phenomena like the spectacularization of private life and a narcissistic selfishness. Even the religious dimension, the experience of faith and membership in the Church are often lived from an individualistic and emotional perspective."
 

I find the terminology similar to what was said about babyboomers in the late 1960's, to that which  marketers dubbed a "Youthquake".  Obviously this time around things are much different ...

"We cannot, therefore, be content with reading the cultural phenomena of the youth according to consolidated paradigms, paradigms that have become cliches. Nor can we analyse them in ways that are no longer useful, that are based on outdated and inadequate cultural categories. Ultimately, we are facing a very complex but fascinating reality that must be thoroughly understood and loved with great empathy, a reality wherein we must pay very close attention to the bottom lines and to what is to come." - VISNews
 

"What is to come." 

What is to come?  I wonder.

Perhaps, by stepping outside our paradigms, we can now all move beyond calling the Pope a 'rockstar' and stop trying to promote him as some hip-hop-pop-culture idol for youth.  That really got old with Blessed John Paul.