Franciscan at Home

The Agorà was the chief marketplace of Athens, the center of the city’s life. It was there that new ideas were discussed, the newest fashions were worn, the newest things purchased or sold. In short, it was the heart of Athenian culture. So where is the agorà for youth? All road signs point towards the media. In a recently released study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the media consumption of 8 to 18 year olds in America, they concluded: ‘Over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media by an hour and seventeen minutes daily, from 6:21 to 7:38—almost the amount of time most adults spend at work each day, except that young people use media seven days a week instead of five. Moreover, given the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time, today’s youth pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those daily 71/2 hours—an increase of almost 21/4 hours of media exposure per day over the past five years.’ The document goes on to say that the greatest increase of teen media over the past five years has been in mobile communications. 66% of people from 8 to 18 have a media-enabled cell phone, which they use more for playing games and watching movies than communicating. These are mind-blowing statistics, and they point to a harsh reality: The youth don’t consume media. Media consumes them.

Fr. Stravinskas argues that young people today are looking for a form of worship that is ennobling and uplifting, based on traditional forms of liturgy.

We hear a great deal today about ‘culture’: the youth culture, the culture of life, theculture of death, the anti-culture. And so, I would like to begin my reflections by demonstrating the connection between culture and worship. As a die-hard Latin teacher, I want to establish the etymological linkage. The word cultura (culture) comes from the word cultus (cult, as in ‘worship’). To enter into a language is to enter into the mindset of a people.

Thus, one can say that for the ancient Romans, ‘culture’ was rooted in ‘cult’ or worship. We can smirk at the Greeks and Romans of old with their thousand little gods and goddesses inhabiting the Pantheon but, for all that, they still lived within a transcendental horizon. In other words, the individual human being was answerable to a higher and ultimate authority. And within that horizon, those peoples forged impressive cultures. Similarly, within the Christian scheme of things, we find that what historians have dubbed ‘TheAge of Faith’– the high middle ages – produced a nearly unimaginable font of literature, art, music and architecture – unrivaled to this very moment.

God is not fair.

Did that get your attention?

As children, we are often taught that ‘fairness’ is the centerpiece of morality. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ gets watered down to ‘be fair to each other’. If one person gets to do something, then everyone else should as well. Isn’t the argument over homosexual marriage rooted in the question of this principle of fairness?

We confuse the virtue of justice, ‘the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor’[i] with fairness, ‘free from favor toward either or any side’[ii].

Justice is moral action based on truth; fairness is a secular notion based on equality and impartiality. Since we live in a post-modern culture that denies ‘truth’, we are taught to go to the lowest common denominator of ‘being fair’.

So it can be a shock to us when we realize that God is not fair.

In 2005, the results of a ground-breaking study of the religiosity of adolescents in the United States was published in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith. It surveyed thousands of teens from different social and religious backgrounds to try to understand what teenagers believe, and how faith plays a part in their daily life.

Catholic teenagers fared quite badly compared to their Protestant counterparts when it came to living out their faith or articulating what they believe. I remember when the study was released there was a lot of defensive posturing by youth ministers and youth ministry organizations in the U.S., but as the years have passed the study is now almost universally accepted.

Though they surveyed teens of every race, demographic, and demonization, they found one common ‘creed’ that the vast majority of adolescents subscribed to:

A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
Good people go to heaven when they die. (Smith, 162-163)

Are we communicating our love for youth and young adults in ways they understand?

There was a teen in my youth group, let’s call him David, who told me that his parent’s didn’t love him. ‘They stick me in all sorts of activities so they’ll never have to see me, when I am home they both work, and when I get frustrated with them they give me a gift - as if they can buy me off!’ But his parents had a different perspective: ‘We drive him all over the place so he can have fun at school, we work two jobs to make sure he has all he needs, and we even buy expensive gifts to let him know that we love him!’

I felt like the jailer from the classic movie Cool Hand Luke when I told them, ‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’

St. John Bosco, the patron saint for youth ministry, said that it is important ‘not only that the boys be loved, but that they know that they are loved.’[i] I am convinced that we who work with youth truly love them (we’re not in this for the money). But do they know that? Are we communicating our love for them in a way they understand?

Love must not only be communicated between a parent and child, but also between the catechist and the one receiving the faith. ‘If the child’s emotional need for love has not been met, then the theological idea of a loving God will have little meaning for the teenager.’[ii]

That last quote was from an excellent book by Gary Chapman titled The Five Love Languages of Teenagers. As the title suggests, Chapman suggests five ways we can express our love for teens. It’s important that we master all these ways, he says, because different teens experience and express love in different ways. David’s parent’s expressed their love for him by giving gifts. But David didn’t care about gifts; he wanted quality time with them.

Bob Rice asks what cultural reference-points we use in our youth ministry.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then my youth minister should have felt pretty good about himself when I started doing full-time ministry.

I was a teen in the late 80s, and after college found myself working for a parish in the mid 90s. I mostly did what I experienced as a youth. My subconscious mantra was, ‘If it worked back then, it will work now!’ So I played the games we used to play and sang a lot of the same songs. We weren’t wearing jean jackets, the girls didn’t have bangs, and we weren’t jamming out to Boy George and the Culture Club- but other than that it could have come right out of 1987.

Many of the cultural references I used were from my childhood, not theirs. I almost had a heart attack when I realized that 75% of my teens had never seen Star Wars. As opposed to updating my analogies, I immediately declared the next Sunday a movie night, and you can guess which science fiction epic I made them watch.

This went on for a few years until I realized I had fallen into one of the most common traps that plague people who work with youth and young adults: I wasn’t ministering to them as they were, I was ministering to me as I was.

‘The definitive aim of catechesis is intimacy with Christ,’ wrote John Paul II in Catechesi Traendae. At Franciscan University, we repeat that phrase so much to our students that it becomes a cliché. But the reason we repeat is so often is because it is so often forgotten. There seems to be so many other things to talk about! Our Lord’s words to the busy Martha can often be applied to our catechetical work as well: ‘You are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.’ (Luke 10:41-2)

Martha’s sister Mary sat at the feet of Jesus to have a deeper encounter with Him. How can we help our youth have the same kind of encounter today? The answer is in the Gospels.

“If youth can lead one another to sin, why not to sanctity?” So wondered St. John Bosco as he undertook his life’s work with poor boys in Turin in the 1850s. And youth ministers have asked themselves the same question ever since.

In the last issue of The Sower Jose Varickasseril highlighted Paul’s methods for catechesis. Here is a practical application of his lessons in the area of youth evangelization and catechesis. Reprinted here with permission from Celia Siriois.

Peer ministry is built on the premise that young people can indeed influence one another to the good, that they can be light and leaven in the world in which they find themselves. In many ways peer ministry is the goal toward which all youth ministry tends. It takes with radical seriousness the words of the prophet Joel echoed by Peter in his first sermon: “’And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams’” (Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28). Peter announces the good news that the saving work of Jesus has inaugurated the last days. The Spirit has been poured out on all God’s people without distinction. Now young and old alike are sent to bear witness to the gospel.

Peer ministry seeks to awaken the baptismal imagination of the young, to make them mindful of the gift and call of their Baptism. It encourages them to begin even now to participate actively and responsibly in the work of evangelization. In many ways it is a school, educating the hearts, minds and wills of young people, equipping them to make an intelligent and imaginative contribution to the Church and the world.

Estaba sentado en mi oficina, su cuerpo tenso con ansiedad. Tenía años de formación en teología, pero nada le había preparado para esto. Al hablar conmigo, lanzaba miradas alrededor de la habitación, como si esperara encontrar alguna respuesta escrita en las paredes.

“¿Cómo hago para llegarles?” preguntó con tal sinceridad que sus ojos prácticamente se llenaron de lágrimas. “Sé que les estoy hablando de la fe. Sé que lo que están escuchando es verdad. Sin embargo, es como si estuviera hablando una lengua extranjera.” Luego alzó los ojos hacia mí, en la esperanza que yo pudiera contestar su pregunta importante:

“¿En qué forma debo de hablarles a los adolescentes acerca de la fe para que me escuchen?”

Su experiencia (y frustración) es lejos de ser única. Muchos adultos quienes intentan transmitir la fe a los jóvenes tienen la impresión de que están hablando con personas de otro planeta. El Directorio General para la Catequesis nos dice que para transmitir la fe a los jóvenes, debemos de “adoptar…un carácter misionero más que el estrictamente catecumenal” (DGC 185). Como catequistas de jóvenes, no podemos visualizarnos como maestros de un grupo de “pequeños adultos”. En lugar de eso, debemos de vernos como misioneros de una cultura extranjera.

Dios no es equitativo.

¿Te llamó eso la atención?

De niños, a menudo nos enseñan que la ‘equidad’ es el meollo de la moralidad. ‘Haz a los demás lo que quisieras que te hagan a ti’ se diluye a ‘sean equitativos los unos con los otros’. Si a una persona le toca hacer algo, entonces los demás también deben de tener el derecho de hacerlo también. El argumento acerca del matrimonio entre homosexuales, ¿no tiene sus raíces en la cuestión de este principio de equidad?

Confundimos la virtud de la justicia que es, ‘la virtud moral que consiste en la voluntad constante y firme de dar a Dios y al prójimo lo que les es debido’[i] con la equidad, que significa ‘libre de favoritismo hacia un lado u otro’[ii].

La justicia es un acto moral basado en la verdad; la equidad es una noción seglar que se basa en igualdad e imparcialidad. Ya que vivimos en una cultura pos-moderna que niega la ‘verdad’, nos enseñan que tenemos que agarrar el denominador común más bajo que es ‘ser parejos’.