I’ve been meaning to highlight Archbishop Chaput’s evidently controversial address on youth and young adult ministry (as it’s called in these parts). ‘Banshee linked to it below, so I thought I’d use this occasion to give it a post of its own. As is usually the case with +Chaput, all of the address is worth reading, but this paragraph stood out:
We only fool ourselves if we think that a mere gathering of young people is a sign of good ministry. Religious groups, like any other group, can be cliquish, self-indulgent, lazy and fruitless, heavy on talk and light on real conversion and mission. Healthy Catholic life demands excellence, self-denial, love for the Church and her teachings, a disciplined focus on the needs of others, and an ongoing hunger for knowing and doing God’s will. Our Newman Centers and campus ministries need to be, in effect, boot camps for this kind of vigorous Christianity.
Archbishop Schnurr arrived here over two years ago promising that “YYAM” would a priority. What has changed? The Newman Center for UC is still run by the New Age malcontents at St. Monica-St. George, and Wright State’s priestly chaplain is still a throwback to the 70s who speaks of “being church.” After being told an interdiction was underway at Xavier University, “Mike” Graham’s backsliding took place without so much as a peep from downtown, and Ken Overberg still kicks sand on dogma from the Bellarmine lectern. And my alma mater the University of Dayton is … still the University of Dayton. Am I missing some positive developments out there? The only one I can think of is the appointment of Sean Ater, who ran IHM’s dynamic youth ministry program, to the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis. Are there other examples of “vigor” that I’ve overlooked?
14 January 2013 at 12:12 pm
You want vigor? Go to the Y!
The response to this, if any, will be classic chancery bureaucratese.
14 January 2013 at 5:28 pm
Note: Commenting on this site requires a consistent online identity and a valid email address. If the latter looks bogus, your comment will most likely be removed. (And if you come off like a troll, zinging your hosts or our guests, it certainly will be removed.)
14 January 2013 at 9:42 pm
And an email address that starts with “foofoomagoo” doesn’t cut the mustard. But I suppose you can keep trying.
14 January 2013 at 7:15 pm
There has been nothing publicly to indicate that the archdiocese has the appetite for taking on the Marianists (UD), Jesuits (XU), Sisters of Charity (Mount St. Joseph College), or the Ursuline Sisters (Chatfield College) even though it is well within its right. The more amazing thing is the Newman Centers in the archdiocese (which the archdiocese does have direct oversight, unlike the colleges ran by the religious orders), continue as business as usual without reform.
15 January 2013 at 5:36 pm
Let me caveat the previous comment with the fact that my only personal experience with a local Newman Center was at UC. Looking back it was very disappointing to say the least.
14 January 2013 at 8:15 pm
Fr. Burns isn’t a throwback to the Seventies. He has a lot of strong influences from the Eighties and Nineties, but no further back than that — which is exactly what you’d expect of a guy that age, whether traditionalist or not. (Other than the influences of all the ages back to Day One, which is what any orthodox priest should have.) Of course, it’s possible that what the parishes I was in, got in the Eighties and Nineties, other parishes in Cincy got as far back as the Seventies.
But yeah, if he were from the Seventies, there’d be a whole different set of things going on.
For example, we wouldn’t be using a hymnal; we’d be using mimeo’d copies of a few favored new songs. These favored songs would change every year when the music ministry could afford to buy new records. (Although in my parish, this was restricted to the downstairs folk Mass in the undercroft, which my parents avoided.) Rather than Father picking out a few simple vestments, altar linens, etc. and being rather minimalist about them, there’d be huge amounts of bizarrely decorated vestments and linens showing up, with even huger numbers of banners for the various liturgical seasons. And we’d all be standing around the altar and eating weird breads made out of non-liturgically appropriate substances, many of which would be erroneously attributed to ancient Israel or Eastern Christianity.
(And Seventies and Eighties traditionalism had its own set of preoccupations, but we won’t get into that.)
So now, I must contemplate exactly what an Old Fart I am, to be able to distinguish these things so clearly.
14 January 2013 at 8:28 pm
I’d stipulate the 80s, when most of the bad liturgy, theology, and ecclesiology was institutionalized, is the worse decade anyway. You are a treasure regardless, ‘banshee.