Dear Reader, On December 5-8, 2017, the World Youth Alliance (WYA) and Centro Internazionale di Animazione Missionaria (CIAM) hosted a Youth Synod Colloquium in Rome with exceptional youth leaders from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia who have completed WYA’s foundational training in the dignity of the person and now serve as national committee leaders and trainers in their own countries. The colloquium addressed challenges of cultural and political upheaval, while still addressing the personal questions of vocation and what it means to choose to live in counter-cultural ways, through commitment to a vocation, commitment to self-giving service, and the intersection of the personal and public challenges that these options raise. The richness of the philosophical and theological work of Saint John Paul II, heightened by his deep love and care for youth, provided the foundational readings for the study seminar. The intention was to assess the effectiveness of Saint John Paul II’s philosophical anthropology as a universal language for discussion of the human person and vocation, as well as to evaluate its effectiveness in engaging inter-religious dialogue. At the conclusion of the colloquium, the participants noted the universal nature of Saint John Paul II’s philosophical anthropology, and the power that these concepts and language provided to them in articulating common experiences, challenges, and vocational struggles. I’m delighted to share with you the essays of the participants and a reflection from Fr. Ezra Sullivan, OP, professor of moral theology at the Angelicum, who joined the seminar to provide important content and additional reflections to the youth participants. He gave a paper on natural philosophy as a foundation for understanding categories of moral action and the formation of virtuous habits. We would like to thank CIAM for the collaboration and the youth participants for their meaningful contribution. Please enjoy reading the publication. Best, Lord Leomer Pomperada President World Youth Alliance 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Fr. Ezra Sullivan: Anthropology and Morals 3 Doreen Nakato: The African Youth and Marriage 13 Cynthia Wangari Maingi: Learning to See Again 23 Joseph Habamahirwe: The Role of Family Today 31 Sarah Ogbewey: Reflections Of Self 41 Hichem Ouertani: A World Youth Alliance Lifestyle 53 Said Ousaka: A Personal Reflection of WYA Impact on Reference to 63 John Paul II’s Ideas Angel de la Flor: The Purposes 72 Anne Mimille Guzman: Weightless Waiting: Finding Affirmation Whilst the 83 Struggle to Become Satria Rizaldi Alchatib: Universalizing the Culture of Human Person: 94 A Love Essential From Marriage Life Laksh Sharma: Perspective 104 Aseel Awwad: The Original Plans of God 111 2 Fr. Ezra Sullivan: Anthropology and Morals World Youth Alliance, Rome Forum, 6 December 2017 “There was once a tree … and she loved a little boy.” Thus begins Shel Silverstein’s book, The Giving Tree.1 In less than sixty-five pages, he unfolds a story that has spoken to the hearts of millions of readers in more than thirty different languages. But the book remains enigmatic. Some have listed The Giving Tree as among the best books ever written for youngsters, whereas others describe it as “one of the most divisive books in children’s literature.”2 Why is the story so controversial? Why have people proposed to ban it from schools? The answer will help us on our journey to understand the nature of human beings and morality. I will recount the basics of the story for those who have not heard it before; for those who have, I invite you to remember and join me in the retelling. There was once a tree … and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. […] And when he was tired he would sleep in her shade. And the boy love the tree … very much. And the tree was happy. But time went by. And the boy grew older. And the tree was often alone. Over time, the boy decides he’s too busy to play in the branches of the tree: he wants money. So he takes the apples and sells them. And the tree was happy. After some time, he returns and he cuts off the branches to make a house. And the tree was happy. After more time, he returns and says he’s old and to play. So he cuts down the trunk of the tree to make a boat. “And the tree was happy … but not really.” After even more time, he returns again and the tree laments that it has no apples, no branches, no trunk to give. “I wish that I could give you something,” it says, “but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump.” “I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.” “Well,” said the tree, “an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.” And the boy did. And the tree was happy. Before we get to discussing metaphors, analogies, or any moral of the story, I would like to look at the action of the characters minus the anthropomorphisms. If we consider the activity of the tree and the boy, some similarities and contrasts present themselves to us. We can note first that there some things the boy and the tree both share: they are living beings. The illustrations depict the boy aging through time: from a lad of seven or eight, to a teen, then a young man, and finally an elder of eighty or so. The age of the tree is less clear; it is already mature when the 1 Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 2 Elizabeth Bird, “Top 100 Picture Books #85: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” May 18, 2012. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/05/18/top-100-picture-books-85-the-giving- 2 Elizabeth Bird, “Top 100 Picture Books #85: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” May 18, 2012. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/05/18/top-100-picture-books-85-the-giving- tree-by-shel-silverstein/ 3 story begins. However, we know that trees, indeed, all living thing grow and develop through time: that is part of what distinguishes them from non-living things such as the rocks and the boy’s hat. Plants adapt to their environments in creative ways: the roots of a cypress will grip the face of a cliff while its branches grow down-windward, and a patch of moss ekes out life in the depths of an ill-lit cave. Growth, of course, implies nourishment, and this entails natural reproduction: “For anything that has reached its normal development and which is unmutilated […] the most natural act is the production of another like itself,” Aristotle observes.3 The tree produces fruit whose seeds will develop into other trees. Meanwhile, the boy eats apples and tumbles in the weeds with a girl, hinting at reproductive desires. The differences between the boy and the tree are telling. The boy moves wherever he wills, but the tree is fixed, literally rooted in place. If the tree were to pick up and amble about, it would no longer be a plant. Neither does the tree have powers of sensation: when branches are snipped, and her trunk is sawn off, there is no pain. In contrast, animals have a natural spontaneity and flexibility that transcends that of plants, while retaining the perfections held by plants and non-organic matter: animals possess powers of nutrition and reproduction, and, in addition, sensation and locomotion. Suppose we place a dog in the story. Fido would be able to eat, sniff, walk, and feel excitement, just like the boy. But the boy is not a tree, and he is not a dog. This leads us to consider what the boy is, and how that is different from what the tree is. St Antoninus, a Dominican bishop of great influence in Renaissance Florence, invites us to ask along with the greatest thinkers in the West: “What is a human?” In the view of Antoninus, one can rightly call a human “a little world,” but also “like dust that is blown by the wind.”4 Of great dignity but somehow fragile and subject to the storms of life. We can notice that what the boy is does not change over time. He remains a human being throughout his life-span: despite physical changes such as growing taller, gaining wrinkles, and so on, he continues to be himself. Likewise, the tree remains itself over time, and doesn’t change into a different kind of thing. No matter how one prunes and shapes the tree, it cannot become a boy even if it is carved up to look like one: it takes a fairy godmother and the effort of virtue to transform Pinocchio into a real boy. “Whatness” is the intrinsic principle that what makes a boy “this” kind of thing as differentiated from other kinds of things, such as trees, apples, and dogs. Living things exist as organized wholes, and what they are somehow limits and directs their growth and shape and activity. Even more than a symphony orchestra, a living being possesses a singular harmony among all its parts, a harmony that ensures unity and organization, so that the being continually strives to remain what it naturally is through time and circumstances.