Catholic and Loving it!

I wrote recently about the "closure of Catholic Youth Services earlier this year" and the subsequent 'research' which is "to determine the current provision for youth ministry within the Dioceses, and directions for further development".

I won't lie to you, I'm pessimistic (now there's a surprise). Bishop Kieran Conry, the man whose name is down to supervise this research has his name on the front page of the reclaimthefuture.org.uk website. He and his interim team will speak with the existing Diocesan Youth Services and ask how things are and they will all reply "great thanks" and then they will be asked about future development. "More of the same please.." they will reply. "Only this time, can it be less religious looking..." National Youth Sunday 2009 will be entitled "SimplyCafod" and will come with liturgical suggestions such as getting somebody's mum to say mass in the garden in vestments made from bin-bags.

As has been pointed out before - it's one thing to write a blog criticising those who are working with young people, quite another thing to say something constructive.

So, here goes. Here's my attempt to talk... constructively... about youth ministry...

General Formation

I think we can all agree that youth services and youth work in general exists to fulfil a need. Otherwise there is, quite literally, no need for them (duh). If we can identify the need then we can identify what youth work services are for and then (my favourite part) we can figure out what went wrong and fix it.

Beginning with the wider concept of formation. Formation begins as a baby when we first experience the love of our parents and continues throughout our lives. It consists of learning (as we are evangelised and receive catechises) but also spiritual growth as our prayer life develops and we partake in the sacraments. The ultimate goal of formation is to form ourselves in the image of Christ.

Charting our Formation

I find the following visualisation is very helpful, it's not perfect, but it's helpful.

We can't measure formation empirically (like we measure height or weight) but we are all aware of different levels of formation. A five year old who has just learned the Our Father clearly has 'less' formation than a thirty year old priest. We talk about people being 'well formed' or who have 'not had much formation'.

I think that allows us to draw the following chart...

I hope I didn't lose you there. Charts like this (usually with distance and time) are a part of GCSE physics (I know, because I recently helped Ella's brother with his revision) but many of you may not have been to school for a while so allow me to explain.

The chart above has two axis, along the horizontal axis we have 'Age' and along the vertical we have 'Formation'. The line traces the amount of formation a typical Catholic might have received according to their age.

At the left hand side you can see young Catholics begin life with no formation and rapidly get lots and lots (hence the steep curve). They are constantly learning hymns and how to pray, about love and friendship, about Noah's ark and Jesus and so on.

As the Chart progresses it levels out. For much of adult life (the right hand end) much less formation happens. I'm not saying that's how it should be, I'm saying that's how it is. For most Catholics, most of their formation occurred when they were a child.

If this were an inspirational blog entry, I would now ask you to break in to groups and talk about what your own chart would look like. Joking aside, I would be interested to see what other people's charts might look like.

Now, I'm going to mark up that chart a little bit...

The Required Formation Line

I spoke earlier about a five year old having less formation than a priest. Somewhere in between I think we can say there is a line that is crossed, a 'level of formation' which is required to get by in life as a Catholic adult. I don't want to get in to a discussion right now about what formation is required for a Catholic to survive in a very hostile secular adult world. The point is, that there is a level of formation required.

The grey line on the chart marks this point. The point where our formation crosses that line and we become mature Catholics, perhaps it happens at confirmation, perhaps not until we are much older. Clearly a child who just completed their first communion preparation is below that line (contraception? what's that?) while one would hope that most adult Catholics are above it. I would suggest that any adult who is below that line is probably going to end up a lapsed Catholic sooner or later.

Think about this for a moment - what level of formation are you at? Are you over this line or under it? What sort of formation do you think a person needs to survive as a Catholic in a hostile secular world?

The Age Line

The vertical blue line on the other hand, marks the age at which a person has to live in the adult world. Don't mistake this line for the age at which a person is an adult. If you are fourteen when your friend turns to you and tells you she is thinking of having an abortion - bang - you have hit that line. For most people I would guess that line is around sixteen (when you can buy beer, have sex and get an abortion) but perhaps for some it is older. Certainly it is getting younger and younger and we are kidding ourselves if we think it is anywhere close to thirty-five.

Again, it might help you to stop and think about your own life. When did you cross that blue line? When did you hit an adult challenge to your faith? How old were you when, for instance, you started taking yourself to Mass?

Limits

The interesting thing is this. The blue age line creates a hard limit by which the grey line needs to be met. If we don't have enough formation to survive in the adult world, by the time we need to live in the adult world - we're going to have problems.

That's the real challenge of youth work, that limit. I'm, sure all of us can think of friends who have hit the wrong line first, perhaps it was us. Maybe they got a boyfriend and had sex before they understood the Churches teaching on human sexuality or maybe they still found mass boring (because they didn't understand it) at an age when they were expected to go to adult masses. Maybe they met an atheist friend with clever arguments... You get the idea...

The two lines form two areas...

I think this chart is really nice because it shows neatly the relationship between youth work and adult formation.

The Two Areas

The yellow area is the shortfall between the formation required to survive and function as a mature Catholic. The youth work exists to make this yellow area as small as possible.

The green area is the extra formation above the bare minimum. Adult formation exists to make this green area as big as possible.

The Adult Formation people, in order to make their area as big as possible, should be grabbing young people as soon as they are over that grey line. If a seventeen year old can cope with a diocesan training day for extraordinary ministers or a talk on the creed, they should be encouraged to go.

The Youth Department, in order to make their area as small as possible, should see the conversion of young people in to young adults as their primary aim. They should be looking at what adult formation are doing and asking "how can we prepare young people for that?

The Two Tasks of Youth Ministry

Diocesan Youth Services, Chaplaincy Teams, Youth Officers, Parish Youth Groups, Youth Masses and Children's Liturgies all exist for only one reason and one reason only: That yellow triangle.

People are not born adults which is why youth ministry exists to achieve two vital goals: Bridging the gap and closing the Gap.

Bridging the Gap

The requirement for bridging the gap is most extreme when we are little children. Little children can't follow readings, can't understand homilies, don't want to keep quiet, need to ask questions. We bridge that gap by giving them children's liturgies - a place where they don't have to keep quiet, can ask questions, get a simple explanation of the readings.

As we get older, the need to bridge the gap should get smaller. Older children can follow readings, though perhaps they struggle to understand the homily and socialise with old people. So we bridge the gap with youth groups where they can socialise with one another and where the priest can preach to their level.

By the time a child is turning in to an adult, the bridge should be getting imperceptibly small. They should be getting better and better at following readings, understanding homilies, socialising with old people and so on. If the bridges are getting bigger and bigger - something is seriously wrong.

Closing the Gap

We can't compensate for the gap forever. We can make the mass simpler, but we can't make the arguments for remaining chaste simpler. We can't ask the atheists to kindly write books with easier arguments in them. Eventually, young people will need to get by as adults.

Closing the gap means forming our young people so that they need less and less bridges. If they find mass boring, we need to teach them to appreciate the mass more for what it is and not for it's entertainment value. If they struggle with the Churches teaching on human sexuality, we need to teach them to understand it.

Closing the gap is vital. Closing the gap means giving young people the formation they need to be confident adult Catholics with a firm grasp of the Catholic faith. Able not to just to understand it, but to appreciate it and live it and want to share it.

What Went Wrong

The above charts were hypothetical. The chart below is, sadly, very real. The chart below shows the formation of, well, pretty much my entire generation and the children in our Catholic schools to this very day...

Firstly. Formation is not continuous - many parishes have no children's liturgies or what they do have is just colouring in sessions, no Catechism classes like the Indian children have. Religious Education in schools is a joke. Formation occurs only in sudden bursts around the time of sacramental preparation. Three times - first communion/confession is the first, confirmation is the second and (for some) marriage preparation is the last.

See that red arrow?

That is the key. Right there. That's what we need to fix. That shortfall.

Formation is totally inadequate. Young Catholics are completely unprepared for adult life. The secular world hits them like a freight train. That shortfall is the reason pretty much everybody I went to school with no longer goes to mass.

That red arrow is their inability to reconcile suffering with an all loving God, it's their inability to understand the Church's teaching on marriage, it's the way they find mass boring (because they don't understand it), it's the way their history is so bad that they read Dan Brown and think 'oooh, how interesting', I always wondered if the Church might have albino assassins.

The Main Problem in Youth Ministry Today

The mistake we have made is simple, we have done everything precisely backwards:

Our bridges (which should be temporary) are permanent.
Our gap closing formation (which should be permanent) is temporary.

Our bridges (children's liturgies, youth groups, simple language, etc) should be temporary. They should be short term things that young people grow out of. Instead, we are attempting to make them permanent. Instead of young people growing up to join the adult world, we are trying to pull down the adult world to meet young people, even when the young people are thirty and have kids of their own.

This is exemplified by the Diocesan Youth Manager who on hearing the Pope lead the Lord's prayer in Latin did not say "we need to be forming young people to deal with this" but instead said that the Pope "came across as exclusive". Better that the entire worldwide Church refrains from using any Latin (a permanent bridging of the gap) than young people are formed to learn a few Latin prayers.

Meanwhile, our formation (which should be formation for life) is temporary. Instead of forming young people so that they can cope with all the challenges ahead, we form them for their first communion so that they can cope with saying "Amen" when the priest says "The Body of Christ". We form them for that but we don't form them for waking up one Sunday morning at university and wondering "Why do I even bother going to Mass?"

Turning Things Around

If we are going to fix youth ministry, we need to literally turn it on it's head.

We need to begin to see bridging the gap as temporary (you can't go to children's liturgy forever) and closing the gap with formation as a permanent. We need to start asking ourselves "okay, so these kids need entertainment during mass, how are we going to make sure that's not still true when they turn eighteen?"

We need to begin to see formation as permanent. Formation needs to stop being a last minute elastoplast job where we teach kids a couple of prayers by rote in the hope that they don't embarrass us too much when they make their first communion. The formation we give today needs to serve our young people for the rest of their lives.

A Quick Example

It's really very simple. When we spot a shortfall in formation (let's imagine young people can't say basic Latin prayers with the Pope) we need to do one of two things.

a) If the young people are really incapable (because they are six, or deaf, or law graduates) then we bridge the gap. Temporarily. While we work towards a time when...

b) If the young people are capable of learning "Hello, My name is John" in French at school then they can probably learn a few Latin prayers as well. Help them to stop depending on the bridge.

So what now?

Two things need to be done. Firstly, We need to find out exactly what that red arrow up there represents. A list could be made of everything from "People find Mass is boring because they don't understand what's going on" to "People disagree with the Church on... [whatever]".

Second - just this: Start making an effort to form our young people so that those problems are no longer problems. If young people find Mass boring, we should be seeing teaching from the youth service on how to help young people appreciate mass for what is it (and not how much fun it is).

I don't really have much to say beyond that. This is supposed to be a blog not a piece of coursework - my final point is this. That people are not falling away from the Church because they don't understand the importance of living simply, they are falling away because they don't understand the mass and because they don't understand Humanae Vitae.

I will be confident that youth work is being done properly when instead of using her space in the Middlesbrough voice to bash Latin, the Youth Manager begins to use it to write articles like "How to get the most out of a boring Mass" or "Why I won't be having sex until I'm married". Heavens, even "I believe in God" would be a start.

As the previous two Popes have pointed out. Young people thrive on challenges. We need to challenge them to (literally) reach for the heavens, to stand up as heroes and saints against the problems the world is going to bring.

As Chesterton observed: It's easy for a dead fish to go with the current, but it takes something alive to go against it.

Let's not repeat the last twenty years all over again. Let's have decent youth ministry that brings our kids up to swim against the current.

Because the current is getting stronger.