Thousands of young adults — not all of them Catholic — gather once a year to pursue Christ at SEEK, a young-adult Catholic conference that strengthens community while forming young adults through talks, resources and prayer opportunities.  

SEEK is one of many evangelization efforts in the Catholic Church that have sprung up in recent years. The conference is known for bringing an extraordinary number of college students together, largely through the work of the missionaries of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). This year, SEEK’s three locations totaled more than 21,000 attendees in Salt Lake City, Washington and Cologne, Germany. 

But SEEK is just one long weekend, kicking off the new year. Leading voices in education spoke with the Register about what SEEK has to offer and how Catholics can continue to evangelize young adults for the rest of the year.  

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, who recently wrote a pastoral letter on education, tied the increasing number of conversions on college campuses to a need for something more than what secular society offers.  

“The secular understanding of happiness and contentment and fulfillment and human flourishing isn't doing it for people,” Bishop Conley said. “They’re looking for something more.” 

SEEK is often a formative and fulfilling experience for “seekers,” those who are looking for that “something more.”  

“When they experience something more, at a place like this, or if they meet someone who's coming from a place like this, who is filled with joy, filled with purpose, filled with hope and normal: They want that,” Bishop Conley reflected. “They say, ‘What is it? What do you have? I don’t have that in my life.’”  

“That’s why I think we’re seeing a surge at the Easter vigils on college campuses, a surge of conversions to the Catholic faith,” Bishop Conley continued.  

Franciscan Father Dave Pivonka, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville — which prioritizes evangelization and faith formation — said that being gathered in a community of faith at SEEK is “a great blessing.”   

“The reality is, I’m very blessed to be at Franciscan because we’re surrounded in a community of faith, but the reality is a lot of these young kids, that is not their experience,” he reflected. “So for them to be in a place where they’re around peers who have the same desires for growth and personal holiness, it’s always a great blessing.”   

As president of a Catholic college, Father Pivonka believes that having a faith community plays a central role in Catholic education. He recalled a quote from Pope St. John Paul II, who said that a Catholic university should be a faith community and an academic community.  

“If one of those is missing, I think it’s difficult to live a life of faith,” Father Pivonka said.  

“The human person was created to be in relationship,” Father Pivonka continued. “So one of the core values of the university is community. It’s not an accident that Jesus sent people out two by two. It’s not an accident that he gathered 12 people or that he gathered 72.” 

Father Pivonka highlighted the core value of “encounter,” a charism at Franciscan University in Ohio.   

“There’s something about individuals, human persons, coming together and encountering, ultimately, the Lord, but also one another,” Father Pivonka said. “We think that there’s a beautifully unique opportunity at a Catholic university to have an encounter: an encounter with Christ, an encounter with the other person.”  

 

Truth, Goodness and Beauty 

While Father Pivonka emphasized faith and academic community, Bishop Conley highlighted the importance of truth, goodness and beauty in education. 

“I think education is a very important component in the New Evangelization because we also have to have an intellectual conversion — because we are meant to seek truth, and goodness, and beauty,” Bishop Conley said. “Truth, goodness and beauty are best experienced through the great tradition, the great Catholic intellectual tradition, whether it be through literature, poetry, art, music, architecture.”  

In his recent pastoral letter on education, Bishop Conley credited his experience with the liberal arts as a university student as a driving force behind his conversion to Catholicism, in addition to the grace of God.  

“All of these treasures that are found in the Catholic Church are part of our heritage and part of our patrimony,” Bishop Conley said. “They’re timeless and they’re perennial, in the sense that it doesn’t matter what age or what culture they’re discovered in — they always bear fruit.” 

“Instead of looking to the next best thing, the next trendy thing, we have in our own treasure chest these gems that all they need to be is brought out again, and they have their perennial effect,” Bishop Conley said.  

Students are looking for not just answers to their questions, but “they’re also looking for wonder,” Bishop Conley continued.  

“That’s what the great Catholic intellectual tradition provides: an immersion into the best that’s ever been said or written by human beings,” Bishop Conley said. 

“We can’t dumb down the faith,” he continued. “We have to challenge young people because they’re capable, actually capable of the highest ideals in learning, the greatest of the intellectual tradition, whether it be in literature, art, the STEM courses.” 

Reaching Young Men and Women  

A recent study found that young women are leaving religion at higher rates than young men for the first time in decades, a phenomenon known as the “Gen-Z Flip.”   

As young men trend more religious than in past decades, young women are becoming increasingly irreligious — maintaining staunchly “pro-choice” views and sometimes delving into “deconstruction.” Often championed by young women on social media, deconstruction is an umbrella term for the process of leaving the faith that ranges from criticism of Christian teaching to the unpacking of questionable or toxic treatment by Church leaders or members. 

When asked how we can reach young women, especially those who have had negative experiences with the Church, Father Pivonka said that faith “has to be centered on a personal encounter with a person of Christ.”  

“The teachings of the Church, obviously, are beautiful, but there’s a danger that an individual’s faith can be simply an intellectual exercise,” he noted.  

But, ultimately, this issue, Father Pivonka reflected, “goes back to community.”  

“We need to be able to walk with these kids,” he said. “We have to be willing to get messy, and sometimes you’re frustrated — and, honestly, sometimes we have our heart broken.” 

When asked how we can continue to reach young men who have an apparent desire to pursue faith, Father Pivonka noted that men need both community and challenge.   

“We have a population of young men who have not been fathered well, who have not had a good example of a man in their life, a male in their life, that loved them, that challenged them, that disciplined them, and, ultimately, that discipled them,” Father Pivonka said. “Men need to disciple men.”  

“And the reality is young men desire that: They desire that relationship; they desire that challenge,” he continued.  

But there are still cultural challenges for young men, like online influencers who offer a reaction to the secular culture that is anti-marriage and anti-Christian values.  

When asked about this, Father Pivonka noted that in an age that characterizes different forms of masculinity, ultimately “God is searching for a man after God’s own heart.”  

Father Pivonka highlighted the example of David, who had “a heart that is willing to sacrifice, a heart which is willing to repent, a heart which is willing to look out for the other, a heart which is willing to protect the marginalized.” 

“Young men are up for that challenge” of sacrificial faith, Father Pivonka observed, adding that this is “contrary to what the culture says” to them.  

“The reality is that young men have hearts that desire to be challenged, that desire an adventure, and then they find that in the faith — that’s obviously what their heart is looking for,” Father Pivonka said.  

“Contrary to what the world says, they don’t want comfort,” he said. “I love what Benedict XVI said: ‘We’re not meant for comfort.’ This spiritual life isn’t about comfort, but it’s ultimately about sacrifice. It’s ultimately about faith. And young men respond to that challenge.” 

Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by The Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.