Start with something sexual:

“In contrast, `every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2370).

In the Nov. issue of Commonweal, a reformist Catholic magazine, the cover article features this headline: “Young American Catholics/Who are They and What Do They Want?”

Well, we may not know what young Catholics want, but, for starters, we know that young Catholics do not want things like paragraph 2370. The paragraph represents much of what young Catholics find dismaying about their Church. Back to the magazine.

The article, written by former Saint Louis University professor James T. Fisher, is a brief reflection on the complexities and ambiguities characterizing the religious life of today’s young Catholics. Fisher’s reflection, sufficiently insightful to stir dozing teens at a dinner table, ultimately concludes, though he does not say it directly, that the situation with young Catholics is . . . complex and ambiguous.

The indirect conclusion, which Fisher probably does not endorse, is that the situation with young Catholics is potentially very disturbing.

Fisher, recalling his days at SLU, says his students “clearly embraced the centrality of the sacraments to their faith and regarded service to the disadvantaged as a key component of Catholic practice.” However, young Catholics “convey a belief that authority generates its own validity and does not simply proceed from the claims of `tradition.’ They know that knowledge is power and that once unleashed its trajectory cannot be reversed.”

Which is why, Fisher argues, the future of stem-cell research will not incite revulsion at the killing of embryos for young Catholics but instead will generate worry over the “real issues” such as the “allocation of resources and control of the means of reproduction.”

Oh dear. If Fisher is correct-he probably is but let us hope otherwise-in his assumption about young Catholics, it means science, not religion, is the primary determinant shaping their morality. In this moral formula, mere capability to do something and a concomitant craze to do it render unnecessary questions about whether we should. It “cannot be reversed” so it should be accommodated.

Fisher’s point about the power of knowledge is especially pertinent in light of last week’s announcement that a Massachusetts company, Advanced Cell, Inc., has cloned the first human embryo. The company, which attaches messianic stature to itself, has published the how-to information because it believes it will do great things. Dr. Michael West, leader of the cloning effort, said on numerous Sunday morning talk-shows that the information must be shared because it improves the chance that the technology will enable the curing of diseases.

Perhaps it will. But there is a larger issue: What if a third-world rogue scientist, supported by a desperate woman (her family may need money), uses the technology to clone a human being? Does that surpass the threshold of reversal so crucial for young Catholics’ accommodation? Is the cloning of a human being something young Catholics will have to, or should, assimilate into the power-of-knowledge calculus cited by Fisher?

In a matter as extraordinary as the cloning of human beings, the failure of young Catholics to put up an intellectual fight has been abetted, in part, by the Church itself. The failure betrays itself in the nine-month tragedy that is the confirmation program.

Confirmation programs (not all, but most) are as intellectually rigorous as the pre-flight safety monologue mechanically issued by flight attendants. Teenagers are confirmed into the Catholic Church believing that Catholicism distilled is nothing more than “love your neighbor.” Weepy testimonies and artificial prayer sessions are what pass for instruction about the Catholic faith.

Young Catholics thus enter the world knowing almost nothing about the reasons for the sacraments, the importance of the pope, the intellectual and theological justification for the real presence or the Church’s conception of sexuality. Confirmation classes do not need to be Augustinian in depth, but they do need to be sufficiently educational to ensure that young Catholics know the rudiments of their faith. Only then is dissension with official doctrine legitimate.

Many young Catholics have a rich liturgical life and a magnificent devotion to society’s disadvantaged, but if young Catholics actually modify their morality based on what “knowledge” is and is not “powerful,” then the successor of John Paul II will have far more to worry about than angry professors protesting a mandate.

Matt Emerson is a sophomore studying political science.