Love is Not...

This is part of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

Alright, after that brief little distraction, it’s time to return to our analysis of 1 Corinthians 13. We left off by saying that love is not jealous.

Historical Spotlight: Arianism

Today will be the first installment of history in this blog. Today, we’ll be talking about the first ecumenical council in the history of the world. The First Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 AD by the emperor Constantine. Before we discuss the council itself, though, we’ll begin to discuss the surrounding context in history.

Love Is...

This is part of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

Now that we've addressed the little side point of the meaning of life, we can return to our discussion of love. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians offers a very interesting commentary on love.

To Know, Love, and Serve

                Last time, we discussed what the Church can offer to people that they actually need, namely, a purpose. This time, we’ll discuss what it looks like when that purpose is lived out. There were three aspects of that purpose, to know God, to love God, and to serve God in this life.

           

What's the Point?

             This is part 5 of a series. Part 1 can be found here.

  Most of this series has been spent discussing the problem with today’s society. There is no true love to be found there. People are broken and longing for more. Society continually tries to offer them more. This more doesn’t work, and inevitably, those people end up falling flat on their faces, worse off than they were at the beginning when they had found the longing. They try to turn to what society tells them God is, this nice fuzzy feeling that they can turn to when they’ve had a bad day. This feeling leaves them just as empty as everything else society has turned them towards, and these people, longing for love, turn themselves away from the one thing that can heal them, the one thing that actually works.

The Empty Shell

This is part 3 in a series. Part one is here.

Last time, we discussed trends of young people drifting more towards orthodoxy as well as the decline of mainline Protestantism. As much as the adults in the world may try to deny it, there is a gaping hole in the hearts of young people. There is emptiness. There is a natural longing for something. This something can be filled in a multitude of ways, and the young people of the world have begun to experiment with these. The most popular ways of coping with this longing involve drugs of some sort. The natural longing of the human heart is the biggest reason for the drug epidemic in today’s world. If the government ever hopes to win the “war on drugs,” they have to eliminate the problem at its root- by filling the human longing with something. 

God is Love

This is Part 2 in a series. Part one can be found here.

Last time, I ended on discussing the new, strange shift among young people towards orthodoxy. What is this shift and why are so many people moving towards it? Orthodox Catholicism is very different from the shallow “God is love” theology that has been taught for the last forty years.

Young Love

This is Part 1 of a series of posts on this topic.

All throughout the media, there are television shows, movies, and songs that are enjoyed by teens everywhere. Most of these things have a common moment, a keystone in anything these days, in some way, the character/singer is confessing their love for another. This is happening for characters as young as approximately 13 years old. This always disturbed me, because two thirteen-year olds were confessing their undying love for each other, in the halls of their middle school. But is it true love?

Head of the Household

Today, we're going to talk about one of my favorite saints, St. Joseph. In the Catholic world, St. Joseph is a very important man, though he is often overlooked. He barely appears in scripture or tradition, and very little is actually known about him, beyond the fact that he was a carpenter and died before Jesus began his public ministry. There is a pious legend that he died in the arms of Jesus and Mary (which makes sense), and this story is the reason that he is the patron saint of a peaceful death.

Why You Need God

             I recently came across a CNN article that basically claimed that destroying and abandoning God saved a man and helped him to realize that he doesn’t need God for his life to have a purpose, because he can then contemplate just how unlikely and magical his very existence is.

Structured Ministry

We’ve been examining the current trend in America among young people losing their faith. In this last part of that series, we’ll look at some of the logistics that the programs can use to try to keep students engaged.

To Teach a Youth Group

                This time around, as a part of this series of posts, we’ll take a look at some specific things youth ministry programs can focus on to retain their students. Last time we talked about how the structure of the program can be more conducive to a high retention, this time we’ll delve into what each night should look like.

              

Lazy Sundays

Sunday Mass is an unpopular practice among small children. It’s also unpopular among older children whose school makes them go to Mass during the week. It's also unpopular among adults who would rather be watching the football/basketball/baseball/insert-sport-of-choice-here. Basically, it's unpopular all around. Why should we have to go to Mass on Sunday? We went last week, and it'll be the exact same thing. Hey, it's the same thing every week, we may as well only go on Christmas and Easter, because those are "special" days.

Encountering the Nones

                The first two posts in this series have been on the trend of atheism and losing religion among Christians in America. Last time, I talked specifically about what people in general could do to keep young people in their churches. This time, I’ll talk about what I think a youth ministry program should look like in order to reach these young people.

                First off, “young people” is a term that is FAR too broad for any sort of specific details. Middle schoolers are now being referred to as young people. I disagree with this classification. Likewise, young adult ministries are reaching out to people over the age of 35. To my mind, young people are those in high school and college. This is the demographic “youth ministry” should be concerned with. Middle school may not be “children’s ministry,” but a 12-year-old should not be treated the same as an 18-year-old. Likewise, a senior in college is nowhere near the same person as a 35-year-old married person with four children. They are VASTLY different demographics.

                Instead, “youth ministry” should stretch from age ranges of about 15, or a freshman in high school, to about 25, an older senior undergraduate student. Many of the problems youth ministry programs deal with would be resolved with this small change. The problem of how to reach both 35-year-olds and 12-year-olds with the same content is completely dissolved. Instead, it’s a simple window of approximately 10 years, where people are having similar experiences at similar points in their lives. While a freshman in high school will not have the same sort of struggles as a senior undergrad, it will be much easier for the senior to relate to that freshman.

                What to do with those ends of the demographic that have been lopped off? Middle school should still be counted with the “children’s” ministry. (Maybe change that name to “grade school” ministry or something. No, it’s not a pretty name, but nobody gets offended by being grouped with younger kids). Meanwhile, those adults outside of their undergraduate programs? They’re considered full-fledged adults by the US government, the parishes in the US should probably recognize that and treat them accordingly. After all, many of them will be starting families very soon, if they haven’t already. They should be welcomed into the adult ministry programs.

                Meanwhile, what should the youth ministers look like in an ideal program? There should be a variety of them. Some young, fresh out of college, some old, ready to retire. Some should be able to quote the catechism at the drop of a hat, some should be ready to launch into prayer with any soul that looks even remotely sad. However, all of them, ALL of them, should be authentic witnesses to the Gospel. No matter where they are on their faith journey, they MUST be good role models for the students to look up to and emulate. This was how the faith was first spread. People were told the basics of the Gospel, then had examples to look up to on how that faith was lived out.

                Now, what should these youth ministry programs do? They should, first off, lose the gimmicks. I understand icebreaker games at the beginning of the year. That’s fine. But when April and May roll around and an hour of the hour and a half program is spent playing games and socializing, something is wrong in the priority list. Content is incredibly important. These young people can go anywhere in the world to socialize and play icebreaker games. The most important part of this whole thing is offering something that the rest of the world doesn’t offer. That’s the ONLY thing Christianity has to offer over anything else in the world.

                And that’s what these youth ministry programs need to emphasize. They don’t need a gimmick to draw these young people in. They don’t need to propose everything in the world to the students. They have the infinite God of the universe. That’s what students need to truly encounter. They need to be given opportunities to encounter Christ, our very God. This doesn’t require

retreats, though those are generally pretty good options. This means explaining to students how to best take the most from the Mass, how to make the most out of prayer, or how to best live the faith they hold in small things.

                But the most important thing for these programs to realize is that in the end, the most important and most effective way to get through to these young people is through the example of each other. It doesn’t matter how “cool” or “relatable” the youth ministers are, the example of each other is most important.

And Then There Were None

Last time, we discussed the rising trend of young people not identifying with any faith. Here, I'm going to propose a few ways to fix that. (For the old post, click here)

          I think the best way would be to begin to take these questions seriously. If a young person comes asking a serious question with a complicated answer, don’t sugarcoat it. They are honest questions in need of an honest answer. A much more important, and probably more successful, way of keeping them Catholic, though, is to treat them as adults.

Why are young people so serious about sports or school? In athletic circumstances, high school students are treated as adults. They are forced to commit to commit to practices and games, and at the beginning of the season, the coach makes it clear that the athletes will be treated as adults. They will get the privileges, but will also have the same expectations. In school, the students, especially seniors, are treated as though they are ready, and in fact about to, go out into the real world and begin their lives. They are made to believe that they need to learn how to act around adults and how to get their act together. They are told that this is what the world will be like and people will expect so much of them. The answers they gave in middle school are no longer good enough. Proof is demanded of everything they claim. Simply saying “my dad told me” or “the teacher said so” doesn’t work on tests anymore. The world is throwing stress at them, demanding that they handle it like grown adults. School administrators tell them they are expected to act like adults. Teachers talk to the students as adults. Parents give their children more and more freedom and at the same time demand more and more responsibility. Students are getting jobs where employers are demanding them to act as professionals. In each area of their lives, young people are having more and more demanded of them, and at the same time, they are being treated more and more as adults.

In the spirit of trying to reach young people, many parishes across the country have tried to reach young people in a different manner, though. Youth ministry programs have opened up to try to reach these people. In parishes where these programs don’t exist, they

An example of a gimmick right here.

are pushed as being the best possible way to reach them. In theory, these would work. Unfortunately, the methods of dealing with the youth are often different than the methods of the more prevalent influences in their lives. Often, in the youth ministry programs, the young people are treated as being still children. The people will show up to one or two of the meetings, then when they realize that this is being directed towards middle school-age students.  The youth ministers use little gimmicks that they were taught in their workshops on how to work with children.

As a young person, I’ve been on a number of retreats, and none of them have been the same, but I can say that the ones that are the most disappointing are the ones that are put on by my Catholic high school. Each retreat uses a different gimmick to try to get the kids to connect with Christ. After the retreat, the campus ministry team meets with the youth who helped lead the retreat. Each time, the questions are the same. “What went well? What should we change? Is there anything we should add?” I’d suggest getting rid of the gimmicks. Let the young people encounter the fullness of the Church. Will they understand it? Certainly not the first time. But the awe-inspiring wisdom and sheer immensity of the Church will keep them coming back until they do.

Rise of the Nones

            A recent CNN poll showed a rather disconcerting trend among people in the US. A growing number of people have identified themselves as a “none” when asked about their religious affiliation, but the last poll made headlines when it became apparent that about a third of young people identified themselves as a none. Where did this trend come from? What happened to the usually so religious US?

A number of people with more knowledge and influence than I have already made their own more professional opinions. Here, I offer my take on it, speaking as a young person and watching my peers turn away from the faiths of their parents.

It seems to me that the number one reason young people leave religion is that they are bored of it. To Catholics with a firm grasp on the Eucharist, this is unthinkable. But to the vast majority of people out there, church is nothing special. If anything, it’s something that’s nice for their mothers and children. Religion is something that is a nice story, it’s great for people who needed some sort of consolation for what happens after death or to explain the hard questions children ask, but in today’s enlightened society, religion is no longer necessary. Once they hit around fifteen or sixteen years old, many of my peers have determined that they no longer need religion. They decide that it is time to end the feel-good fuzziness. It’s no longer good enough to answer questions with “because God made them that way.” Now is the age of science and rationalism and everything can be explained.

Unfortunately, the Church’s method of dealing with young people doesn’t help this much at all. At Catholic high schools, the priests are told that they will be ministering to “young people.” This can unfortunately refer to a very large range of people, all of whom are very different. It encompasses eighth graders, who are still trying to understand algebra, and college students, who are beginning to get married and plan their lives independent of their parents.

From this age

To this age- and beyond

It is this very dilemma that leads to the mis-evangelization of this demographic. At “youth Masses,” many of the homilies are meant to encourage young people and try to get them to live out their faith in a world hostile to it. This method works brilliantly on retreats where the youth are having a radical encounter with their faith. But these homilies don’t work every Sunday. As young people grow older and become more cynical, the homilies about living your faith become meaningless as more and more difficult questions are asked. In many places, instead of answering the questions and encouraging the young people to keep searching for truth, the answers are dumbed down until they barely make any sense. This may have worked for children, but when these simplified answers are given to seniors in high school and beyond, many of them take it as a personal insult to their intelligence and begin to hate the people who give them the basic answers. It starts the train of denial in their minds and they begin to seek out ways to undermine the authority of those who fail to meet their standards of intelligence.

This may seem somewhat cynical, but it has proven true at least a dozen times, in my limited experience. So what can the Church do to retain these nones? That will be the topic of discussion for the next post.