Some 2,400 years ago, Aristotle observed that young people are reckless and want to have fun. Adult leaders of youth would do well to borrow a leaf from his Rhetoric, Book II regarding the fact that different audiences respond differently to the same approaches. The methods used to present appealing arguments to adults do not necessarily work with youth.
Msgr. Douglas Raun is pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Rio Rancho, a growing city of 54,000 just northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The parish, with some 3,000 registered families, has effectively implemented a four-year CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) model in two disparate parishes in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe over the last decade.
The cornerstone of the CYO is the junior year (eleventh grade) Confirmation preparation program. Students are required to attend CYO only if they wish to be prepared for the sacrament of Confirmation. The third year of high school was selected for Confirmation preparation because Msgr. Raun observed that Confirmation was often seen as “graduation” from church, rather than the commencement of an adult Catholic life in Christ. His idea was to give the teens time to mature and appreciate the sacrament. An added bonus is that these upperclassmen give very good examples to their younger peers simply by virtue of being present on CYO night. Finally, if a teen were to skip junior-year CYO, he or she would still have a chance to reconsider and join the Confirmation class as a senior.
Msgr. Raun’s CYO concept was launched in the mid-1980s while he was pastor of the Estancia Valley Catholic Parish. This cluster of mission churches around the mother church in Moriarty, some forty-five miles east of Albuquerque, covers over one thousand square miles. A total of 1,500 families are registered at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Moriarty; Sts. Peter and Paul, Estancia; San Antonio, Tajique; and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Edgewood. CYOs meet weekly in Moriarty, Estancia, and Edgewood.
The three-pronged program strives to meet the social, prayer, and intellectual needs of adolescents at each session. The assumption is that anything less comprehensive is deficient. The first half hour or so of the 7 to 9 p.m. format is spent singing or playing large group games (remember Aristotle!). Yes, it can be tough to get teens to sing. But with a couple of teens who enjoy singing in the choir, or, failing that, once a group has gone on a retreat where songs are sung, the necessary spark will exist to ignite sing-alongs. It helps to have excellent musicians accompanying the singing. Ask the teens-many of them are musically talented.
With regard to the games, be aware that teens can be brutally critical of “stupid” games. The idea is to get them interacting with one another, and to let their guards down just a little bit. Announcements and an opening prayer follow. Whatever particular teen or family needs are known to the adult leadership are mentioned by the leaders if the young people do not express the needs themselves. We make sure to ask the individual for permission to pray aloud for their intentions, since teens are so easily embarrassed.
Then the large group breaks into small groups according either to grade or cluster of grades. This decision is a function both of the number of teens and the number of catechists. For example, during the 1996-97 year in Rio Rancho, seventy teens were prepared for Confirmation. Because we restructured the existing program, we grandfathered in freshmen, sophomores, and seniors who had completed the previously required first year. We had seven catechists teaching classes ranging in size from eight to fourteen students. New catechists were assigned fewer students, while more experienced catechists took larger groups.
The Estancia Valley Catholic Parish communities, by contrast, had smaller groups that did not necessarily have to be split.
The intellectual component for all four years is catechism-based. We emphasize familiarity with Catholic religious vocabulary and the basic truths of the Creed, sacraments, commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. It is not always easy to find age appropriate curricula, but with competent, truth?loving, teen?loving catechists, we were able to adapt creatively the Catechism of the Catholic Church to meet our needs.
The second component, prayer, focuses on the students’ mastery of Catholic prayers, including Mass responses, the practice of personal and spontaneous prayer, familiarity with Scripture, and involvement with special liturgical and cultural celebrations such as the Living Stations of the Cross on Good Friday andLas Posadas in Advent.
The teens are highly visible and appreciated members of the parish family. They lead hundreds of people through the streets of Rio Rancho, dressed in costume as men and women of Jerusalem, or Roman soldiers, with one young man taking the role of Jesus and carrying a heavy wooden cross that his father built for the occasion.
Likewise, they play a leadership role when they re-enact Joseph and Mary’s search for lodging on a cold winter’s night in Las Posadas, a traditional Hispanic novena. We requested and were loaned a burro, which the young woman playing Mary rode, and other animals for a live manger scene (complete with teen shepherds and maidens). The teens’ parents brought food for a potluck feast shared by hundreds of parishioners.
Beyond these large-scale prayer events, we work to expand the teens’ awareness of the Mystical Body of Christ through Work of Mercy missions. They straddle the third component-the social-because teens enjoy going on road trips together. A minimum of twenty Work of Mercy hours are required for Confirmation, but any teen is welcome on any Work of Mercy mission.
Our teens have risen well before dawn on many a morning, including Thanksgiving, and served breakfast to homeless persons with the Little Brothers of the Good Shepherd in downtown Albuquerque. They’ve spent Saturday afternoons playing with sick kids at University Hospital’s pediatric ward. They’ve collected food and clothing for the people of Chichilta, New Mexico, a mission site on the nearby Navajo reservation, where they’ve driven out to remote hogans on treacherous mud roads with Mother Teresa’s sisters. They’ve also helped the Missionaries of Charity in Gallup, New Mexico, at San Martin’s hospitality center, where they prepared and served food to homeless, intoxicated, and often ungrateful men and women. They’ve washed and folded bedclothes and pajamas and cleaned dishes and floors.
They’ve made holy hours after working with the sisters. They’ve prepared food for Dismas House, a home in Albuquerque for paroled ex-offenders, and shared the family-style meal with the residents. They’ve visited the elderly and the lonely. They’re spotted in the perpetual adoration chapel and at daily Mass.
These teens have learned the corporal and spiritual works of mercy by performing them. We always visit Our Lord present in the Eucharist before a mission and reflect that we are about to go forth to serve him (Matt. 25:25 ff.)
There is a great deal of talk today about building youth self?esteem. Consider seventeen-year-old Raul’s remark as we pulled out of University Hospital’s parking garage: “It’s been years since I’ve felt as good as I do right now.”
CYO night wraps up with social time. We have a gym at St. Thomas Aquinas where the teens can play basketball, volleyball, or dodgeball. We provide soft drinks and solicit home-baked goods from parents. There is a good sound system in the building, and the teens know that all musical selections are subject to one criterion: Anything played at CYO must be something that they would not be embarrassed to listen to if Jesus were sitting with them-because, of course, he is.
Do they gripe? Sure. As Ryan put it, “It’s almost impossible to find songs we like that meet CYO requirements.” But when they respectfully ask if a certain song may be played, we respectfully propose the above litmus test. We don’t say “no.” The teens are self-monitoring in this department. We intervene only if necessary. Naturally, our hope is that this approach will assist them in developing discernment about their movie, video, and television selections as well. Further, we have gradually introduced our youth to Christian artists, some of whom they now enjoy a great deal.
We also go hiking, camping, and horseback riding in the mountains; visit historic and holy places; go ice-skating, in-line skating, biking, and skiing. We joined a group from Arizona and traveled out to Newport Beach, California, with some one thousand other youth, where our teens taught their new friends some of their favorite retreat songs during a long wait for a lost bus. This is a good example of effective peer ministry.
The highlight of the Confirmation year is a weekend retreat, conducted by the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, who have a retreat facility on their farm in rural west Texas. We hire buses, depart on Friday afternoon, and return on Sunday afternoon. The retreat is so powerful (and so much fun) that the returning teens convince their peers of its value.
The Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ sisters utilize outstanding praise music, witness, Scripture study, and unsettling videos about the physical and spiritual dangers of fornication, negative peer pressure, etc. By the time we reach the Saturday afternoon penance service, Msgr. Raun has generally already heard dozens of good confessions.
On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we invite the teens to do a little witnessing of their own. They are asked to share their thoughts regarding the best part of the retreat and their advice for their peers. The first witness is a sister, who invariably picks an outspoken teen to go next. After that, the teen who speaks picks the next witness. This system works well. One of my favorite comments came from Shaun: “When you get home, thank your mothers for making you come.”
Again, care is taken to avoid embarrassing the teens. One of the sisters holds the microphone, and perhaps shores up the courage of a shy youngster by putting her arm around him or her. But if the youngster looks as though a panic attack is setting in (which happened once), then he or she is permitted to “pass.”
St. Thomas Aquinas points out in the Summa Theologiae that the teacher teaches when he brings the learner from what he, the learner, knows, to what he previously did not know. The teacher must work to ascertain first, through careful questioning, what the student does know, in order to help him to understand the conclusions that the faithful teacher assists him in reaching. Catholic teens are best served by believing adults who are willing and able to meet them where they are right now, not where we wish they were or think they ought to be.
Msgr. Raun asked the parishioners of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in the spring of 1996 to consider perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. A temporary chapel was constructed and perpetual adoration began on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1996. He introduced the idea of sacrificial giving in the fall of 1996, and parishioners embraced the idea, more than doubling the parish’s weekly collection. The church is filled to overflowing, so mission churches were established in school gyms at opposite comers of the city, following a city-wide evangelization project that clarified demographics.
The pastor and adult catechists have invested lots of time in the teens. We trust and love the teens. They know it. We communicate with their parents. They know this, too. Best of all, our teens are happily learning the Catholic faith and growing closer to Jesus.
Are they angels? Usually not! But they know that they are respected, and they generally respond in kind. We clearly delineate our behavioral expectations and get tough if boundaries are violated. We have to, or else we would communicate a lack of resolve to keep the youth program godly, reliable, orderly, and safe for everyone.
This model is based upon a strong pool of faithful, responsible adults who love teens enough to know when to lay down the law and when to look the other way, and who are willing to devote several hours a week to preparation, teaching, and/or chaperoning. Our catechists take their responsibility before God seriously, and they study the Catechism of the Catholic Church when they prepare classes. The catechists meet weekly to discuss the upcoming class, clarify any doctrinal issues, and share ideas and methods. These adults are often surprised at how their own understanding of the faith deepens when they generously spend time getting ready to teach. This growth in Christ Jesus is precisely what keeps these solid adults in youth ministry.