The Greatest Truth of Youth Ministry

Perhaps a more proper conclusion to my recent series “The Five Lies of Youth Ministry” would be to conclude in hope, a hope the Church constantly calls us to renew in ourselves and in our parishes.

Recently in his World Youth Day remarks, Pope Francis declared to the young people, “What is it I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!... I want to see the Church get closer to the people!”

            Powerful words from the pontiff, those—words that should trouble the bureaucracy and planned programming of diocesan directors. They are words which call forth not a stagnant institution, but a living, breathing being. They call forth a being with a freedom, a freedom which makes the sureties of the world merely contingent. Those words of Francis renounce what his predecessor referred to negatively as “a certain euphoric, post-conciliar solidarity.” They call forth a generation not of reformers or restorers who look to the past with nostalgia or to the future with undue optimism. Rather, they call forth a generation of saints who “remains faithful to the today of the Church” yet “moves forward toward the consummation of history, [who] looks ahead to the Lord who is coming “ (Benedict, 1985).

            And in these years and those ahead, while we never deny the temptations and threats ever present to the Church, we see that perhaps the true fruits of Vatican II are finally beginning to shine. And that is one of the greatest truths of youth ministry today. For it has become apparent that these fruits are not even rightly attributed to the council, but to the Spirit. We all too easily forget that in the bleak decades of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the Spirit still moved, still worked within the Church. Though sometimes the Spirit shouts, this time it grew in silence. And this silent growth was among the young people. And it grew like any other organism—sporadically, unpredictably, and vibrantly.

This evening, I read the following excerpt from an interview with Pope Benedict (then Joseph Ratzinger) in 1985. My prayer remains that these words, and the words of his successor, continue to call forth a generation of martyrs for the Church. The pontiff-emeritus explains:

What is hopeful at the level of the universal Church is the rise of new movements which nobody had planned and which nobody has called into being, but which have sprung spontaneously from the inner vitality of the faith itself. What is manifested in them—albeit subdued—is something like a pentecostal season in the Church… I am now, to an increasing degree, meeting young people in whom there is a wholehearted adhesion to the whole faith of the Church, young people who want to live this faith fully and who bear in themselves a great missionary élan. The intense life of prayer present in these movements does not imply a flight into interiority or a withdrawal into the private sphere, but simply a full and undivided catholicity. The joy of the faith that one senses here has something contagious about it. Here new vocations to the priesthood and to the religious orders are now growing spontaneously.

            What is striking is that all this fervor was not elaborated by any office of pastoral planning, but somehow it sprang forth by itself. As a consequence of this fact, the planning offices—just when they want to be very progressive—don’t know just what to do with them. They don’t fit into their plan. Thus while tensions rise in connection with their incorporation into the present forms of institutions, there is absolutely no tension with the hierarchical Church as such.

            What is emerging here is a new generation of the Church which I am watching with great hope. I find it marvelous that the Spirit is once more stronger than our programs and brings himself into play in an altogether different way than we had imagined. In this sense the renewal, in a subdued but effective way, is afoot. Old forms that had run aground in self-contradiction and in the taste for negations are leaving the stage, and the new is making headway. Naturally it does not yet have its full voice in the great debate of dominant ideas. It grows in silence. Our task—the task of the officeholders in the Church and of theologians—is to keep the door open to them, to prepare room for them.”

Yes the Church is alive, and it is alive in her young people. Rise up, young Church. The Lord goes with you. Remember that the opposite of “conservative” in the Church is not “progressive,” but, as Benedict explains, “the opposite of conservative is missionary.” And this missionary spirit we see in our young people. Thus the greatest truth of youth ministry: that young people, more than any other age or generation, have a pilgrim spirit. While children and adults are tempted to complacency in established ways, young people are always on the journey, always in via. And until youth ministry joins them on this pilgrimage, it will continue to be left behind as simply another outdated and unresponsive program. The young people have grown in silence for decades now. And now they have grown too many, and are beginning to make a mess of things. And what a glorious mess it is.

Why Catholics Believe in Predestination

In some remarks offered in 2001, the then Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) asserted:

Pelagianism, so fashionable today in its different, sophisticated manifestations, underneath it all, is a remake of the Tower of Babel… You can prove that God exists, but you will never be able, using the force of persuasion, to make anyone encounter God. This is pure grace. Pure grace. In history, from its very beginning until today, grace always primerea, grace always comes first, then comes all the rest.

Pelagianism, one of the earliest yet ever-present heresies against the Church: the idea that man can merit his own salvation. It is a heresy which the Church has fought century after century and continues to fight today. Just ask your average devout Catholic the rather important question “How are you saved?” and you will undoubtedly get an answer which the Church Fathers and Councils would have declared anathema: “Jesus’ death and my hard work!” Well, you’ve got the first part right…

            For some strange reason, Catholics in the last 500 years have developed a severe allergy to the term “predestination.” Whether out of fear of sounding protestant or out of fear of reality, the word has vanished from theology texts and Catholic education in an astounding fashion. It has gotten to the point where most Catholics would proudly assert, “We don’t believe in predestination. We believe in free will.” Newsflash: Jesus and St. Paul and every Church Father and every legitimate medieval theologian believed in predestination. Christ says, “You did not choose me but I chose you” (Jn. 15:16). Paul writes: “Those whom He [God] predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). Augustine writes: “This is the changeless truth concerning predestination… Therefore they were elected before the foundation of the world with that predestination in which God foreknew what He Himself would do; but they were elected out of the world with that calling whereby God fulfilled that which He predestined.” And, as if we needed another source, St. Thomas writes, “No one can harm those whom God advances; but God advances the predestined who love him. Therefore, nothing can harm them, but everything works for their good.”

            So predestination is real, and Catholics do believe in it. But what is it? Many have tried to offer weak and incorrect definitions of “predestination” in order to avoid sounding like a Calvinist. But the truth of the matter is that some Calvinist conceptions of predestination are taken right from Catholic theologians. We’re closer than we think.

            Predestination is, hearkening again to the Angelic Doctor, the fact that “a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed as it were, by God.” And “the reason of that direction pre-exists in God” (See question xxiii of the Summa). This does not mean that all men are loved equally by God and that he helps them along on their self-motivated journey to heaven. Quite the contrary. God loves some men more than others (gasp). As such, by His grace, he draws them to heaven. Period. Oh, and those whom he draws to heaven, will end up in heaven. And He picks them not on account of their merits or what they have done or will do. He picks them before they are made. Thus the reason for their “election” is not rooted in their human action, but rooted in a reason which “pre-exists in God.” God only knows why the predestined are predestined.

            Queue objections: “But then man has no free will!” False. Free will and predestination are not mutually exclusive. Freedom is not the ability to run from God, but rather the ability to pursue the good, namely God. And that freedom—true freedom—is never hindered by Divine Providence. After all, the Church teaches that man is most perfectly free in heaven. And heaven is a place he can never leave. In a sense, man is most free when he is imprisoned in the will of God.

            “But that makes God the author of evil!” False. God, as creator of the world, keeps all things in existence, and as such everything that happens, happens according to his will. Obviously, we would hesitate to say that God could not prevent evil (then God would cease to be omnipotent), yet at the same time we would not say that God causes evil (then God would cease to be omni-benevolent). Therefore, we must resign ourselves to the fact that, while God positively wills the good, he negatively wills evil—“negative” here meaning that God simply “allows” evil, though he could, in reality, prevent it.

            “But does God, then, damn people to hell?” I refer again to the “negative will.” God does not positively will souls to hell (the Church does not teach “double predestination”), but he obviously allows souls to fall into hell, and this is all a part of his Divine plan.

            For the sake of brevity and in order to maintain some semblance of scope for this piece, I will not go further into objections. Entire books can, and have been, written on the questions surrounding predestination, and theologians and entire orders have fought over the details of the doctrine (see the 16^th Century De Auxiliis Controversy between the Jesuits and Dominicans).  For our present purposes, however, I hope to focus simply on this truth implicit in the doctrine: the primacy of grace. We as Catholics need to stop thinking that we earn our salvation, that heaven is a reward for hard work. The reason we exist is God’s grace, and therefore the reason we are saved is God’s grace. Sola gratia, grace alone. This should neither shock us nor entice us to sloth. Nor should it prompt the ridiculous statement “I was saved on this day…” We do not know the elect. To know that would be to know the mind of God. And I think it is safe to say from our musings in the paragraphs above that none of us have a grasp on that.

            And while saints and theologians have cautioned preaching the doctrine of predestination for fear of lost piety in souls, I find myself justified by the present and former pontiff, who have brought the fight against Pelagianism once again to center stage. As Benedict wrote: “You cannot make yourself a disciple—it is an event of election, a free decision of the Lord’s will, which in turn is anchored in his communion of will with the Father.” That is why we must educate the faithful on the primacy of grace. For we cannot be disciples without it. And in the end, discipleship is all that matters.

Please offer any questions or comments below. For more information regarding this doctrine, see St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae: Prima Pars, Question XXIII; see also St. Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Paul’s epistles, specifically Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians. Reliable articles on “divine providence” and “predestination” can also be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia at newadvent.org.

-        

The Five Lies of Youth Ministry: Part Five - "It's About the Heart, Not the Head"

Our faith is not about rules and regulations. Our faith is about an experience; it is about making the connection between our heads and our hearts. We need less theologizing and more evangelizing, less ratio and more fides. We need our young people to know Jesus in their hearts, not their heads.

This is, perhaps, the most dangerous and subtle of all the lies, and it is for that reason that I conclude this series with it. The reason being that I agree with almost the entirety of the statement above: our faith is not about rules, but an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. We must make the connection between our heads and hearts. And we must evangelize before we catechize. Yet there is a dichotomy developed in the “lie” which has done incredible damage to youth ministry in the last forty years. In fact, this lie has crippled along with it modern science, philosophy, and, perhaps most fatally, theology. The lie is this: that we need more fides and less ratio—more faith and less reason—as if the two could be separated. I assure you, they cannot.

            Our young people are being raised within a rather strange spectrum of theology. On the one hand, there is an over-intellectualization of the faith among some. Here the faith is in danger of becoming just another academic discipline. It is something simply to be studied. It lacks any power and dynamism. It does not change lives and hearts, but only serves as an historical reality, which can be compared and contrasted with other historical realities. It ceases to live and grow. In this understanding, the Church appears to be a stagnant and bureaucratic organization rather than a living and breathing organism.

            On the other hand, there are those who have made faith a sentiment, who have abandoned all doctrine and dogma for the sake of a shallow emotivism. Cardinal John Henry Newman diagnosed this state in his own day, writing that “it has become fashionable to say that Faith is, not an acceptance of revealed doctrine, not an act of the intellect, but a feeling, an emotion, an affection, an appetency.” This epidemic most directly threatens our young people today, even more so than the first, and threatens to drag them into a state of tolerant mediocrity, in which heresy and Truth are joined together under the mark “opinion,” and human scandals are put on par with the scandal of the cross.

            The resolution to this issue is not impossible, though it is elusive. The resolution is a proper view of the mystery of redemption, in which Christ came to unite faith and reason, the heart and the mind. Pope Benedict writes,

[In Christ] the world is now seen as something rational: It emerges from eternal reason, and this creative reason is the only true power over the world and in the world. Faith in the one God is the only thing that truly liberates the world and makes it “rational.” When faith is absent, the world only appears to be more rational. In reality the indeterminable powers of chance now claim their due… to establish the world in the light of the ratio that comes from eternal creative reason and its saving goodness and refers back to it—that is a permanent, central task of the messengers of Jesus Christ.

Reason is not and never was opposed to faith. In fact, faith by definition is an intellectual ascent! That is why Archbishop Sheen was so confident to say that those who hate the Catholic Church are those who know nothing about her. The intellect, properly ordered, leads to the Truth. Cardinal Newman writes: “Right reason, that is, Reason rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic Faith, and plants it there, and teaches it in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance.” Reason and faith are so closely united, that St. Thomas asserts the beatific vision to be a “vision of the intellect,” before which all human senses fail.

            Therefore, it becomes apparent that youth ministry must seek to bring young people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ through both faith and reason. Intellectual formation should never be abandoned for more popular and emotive methods. Young people must be trained to know the Truths of the faith in their minds, which are less likely to be swayed than their feelings. In this way, even when they wander far from the cor Jesu, they will look back on their Catholic faith like Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited, as a terrible inconvenience they wish were not true but cannot deny with their being. And thus they will be drawn back, like a twitch upon the thread.

            Youth ministers must seek in their mission to reveal to young people the whole person of Jesus Christ. And they should pray with the great Saint Josemaria Escriva, that young people with their hearts and minds “may seek Christ, may find Christ, may love Christ.” May God bless you.

The Five Lies of Youth Ministry: Part Four - "The Youth Mass"

Young people need a Mass to call their own. That way, the songs, the sermon, and the overall “feel” can pander to their wants and needs. That way, in claiming this youth Mass as their own, they may claim Jesus Christ as their own.

The primary assumption underlying most modern liturgical discussion is this: that liturgy, specifically the Mass, is man’s gift to God. This could not be further from reality. The Mass, interesting enough, is God’s gift to man. Now, I understand that most high school students receive this gift the same way they receive socks and underwear from their mother on Christmas. But they’ll thank her when they run out.

            Liturgy is God’s gift to man, and as such it cannot be changed or tampered with. We are not called to use imagination or creativity when participating in the liturgy. Why? Because the Mass is a participation in the heavenly liturgy! When we attend Mass, we become a part of a liturgy that never ceases, that operates 24/7 with all the saints and angels in heaven (#thingsnevertaughtincatholicgradeschool). That is the mystery we enter into. And now we see how silly it sounds when we whine about how long the Mass is or how we wish the priest would “spice it up” here and there. We do not need to “make the Mass more relevant.” Things eternal are always relevant.

            Since the Second Vatican Council, this has not changed. In fact, this hasn’t changed since the Last Supper. What has changed are the human and cultural aspects which we bring to the Mass—songs, instruments, etc. Now, I am not advocating that organ and chant are the only way to go (although I do think, as does the Church, that they ought be given a pride of place). I have been to beautiful and reverent Masses with contemporary worship music accompanied by guitars and a drum set (though, admittedly, they have been few and far between). The issue instead remains the concept of a “youth Mass.” The phrase in and of itself indicates two things: the first is that the Mass is for, by, and about the youth. The second, more indirectly, is that “regular Mass” is for “old people.”

            Beyond the phraseology, the youth Mass does two things which I believe harmful not only to a youth ministry program, but also to parish life. The first: it often (of course, not always) separates young people from their families at Mass. “So long as they’re all going to Mass” sounds the counterargument. Yet the Sabbath is more than just getting everyone in Church. The Sabbath is, as Pope Benedict writes, about “re-forming, one day a week, the circle of family and household… it is not just a matter of personal piety; it is the core of the social order.” To separate families on the holiest of days is to disrespect the very purpose of that sacred day. And this should not be taken lightly.

            The second side effect of the youth Mass is this: it further separates the young people from the old, and promptly distinguishes that concocted age of “adolescence.” Young people must remain close to their elders, in order that they may grow all the more rapidly and steadily in virtue. And young people must not forget their witness before the elders themselves. Young people at Mass serve as a beacon of hope for the Church, and their prayer reasserts the prophecy of Christ, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” They offer a promise—that the sacraments will continue for the next generation. This witness, too, should not be taken lightly.

            A final note. Perhaps instead of “crafting a Mass” for young people, we teach them the beauty that already resides in the liturgy. I am a firm believer that young people—all people—can recognize beauty, even though they may refuse to acknowledge it. When we teach them the mystery of the Mass, and when we pray the liturgy as Christ and His Church has ordained it, we do not need to worry about numbers and young people. Young people yearn for reality and truth. And they will go to death to find it. Let us remind them that the heart of the liturgy is not music or a nice sermon. The heart of the liturgy is Christ Himself in the Eucharist. The heart of the liturgy is unchanging.

            I came across this image today. It is of a young boy in tears because he could not receive communion at Mass. He was too young.

            I do not think our high school students are too young to yearn for the Eucharist with no strings attached. They do not need an incentive. They just need to be refocused to the eternal. And that is the mission of youth ministry.