Keller @ Large: Pope's Challenge To Young Adults

BOSTON (CBS) - As Pope Francis began his current trip to Cuba and America the other day, he had something very important to say to young adults about two trademark pitfalls of their generation – apathy and cynicism.

The Pope had an admonition for those who have abandoned their dreams at a young age: "Don't be wimpy." And he revealed his pet name for young people without hope: "a young retired person. There are young people who seem to have retired at 22 years old…. They are young people with existential sadness, they are young people who have committed their lives to a basic defeatism."

In our culture, this can take many forms.

We're all familiar with the phenomenon of the "eternal adolescent," twenty- and even thirty-somethings who prefer to defer adult life as long as they can and just veg out in their parents' basement, literally or figuratively.

In politics, we are constantly reminded of how many people have given up on positive change, and don't even bother to vote because, hey, what difference does it make?

And then there's the most awful manifestation of defeatism, young people who give themselves over to drugs, alcohol, or the mindless addictions offered by technology that makes it easy to live in a virtual world or "communicate" without ever really making human contact.

The Pope's advice to the "existentially sad" -- "be capable of creating social friendship."

And I don't think he means adding more Facebook friends.

Every generation needs a challenge. Seems to me Pope Francis just laid out a big one for the younger generation to meet.

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