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<\/a><\/div>\nNotes from the Communion and Liberation New York Encounter 2011<\/a>:<\/i><\/p>\n Often, when I attend Mass at my tiny suburban parish, I feel as if the Catholic Church is dying. Sometimes, if I go with our 11-year-old, he and I are the youngest people in a church of mostly empty pews. My husband and I face the\u00a0challenge of raising our\u00a0children in the faith when most of our neighbors do not attend any houses of worship and their children, unsurprisingly, are avowed atheists by the time they hit puberty.<\/p>\n I have an entirely new perspective on the fate of our faith after spending four-plus hours yesterday as a volunteer cashier at the coffee bar in the basement of the Manhattan Center, where the New York Encounter 2011<\/a> is taking place. The Encounter is a free four-day cultural festival sponsored by the ecclesiastical group Communion and Liberation. It\u2019s showing me\u00a0young adults who are\u00a0the next generation of faith-filled Catholics. I was most moved by the flock of at least two dozen Sisters in traditional habits. Were they\u00a0Dominicans? I accosted\u00a0one of the young ladies as she headed to\u00a0the restroom behind me. No, they were Sisters of Life, a contemplative\/active religious community of women founded in 1991 by John Cardinal O\u2019Connor for the protection and enhancement of the sacredness of every human life. There now are 78 women in this religious community. Sister Benedicta\u00a0is a novitiate. She chose her name after Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin and\u00a0Martyr, who many of us know as Edith Stein.<\/a> <\/p>\n Sister Benedicta is a chemistry graduate from Williams College. Her face glowed as she spoke to me about her vocation. She was excited about attending a talk by the daughter of J\u00e9r\u00f4me LeJeune, the French geneticist and pediatrician who discovered the genetic marker for Down\u2019s Syndrome (more on that later). When I told her I would pray for her order, she reached into the pocket of her habit and handed me a card. I will remember her face and pray for her \u2013 and all the young Catholics I am encountering this weekend. <\/p>\n
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Our customers (our 14-year-old son expertly navigated the fancy espresso machine while a group of Italian graduate students served American cofffee and tea) were mostly young people in their 20s. I met fresh-faced seminarians from Catholic University. A young mother of three from Houston. A college student who had flown up from Miami. A boarding school student from Massachusetts. A young couple from southern Indiana. And many many more. <\/p>\n