By Cynthia Thuma - Florida Catholic
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Monique Delancy, of Holy Redeemer Church in Liberty City, fills in her answer to "Greatest Challenges In Serving Youth" during the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Ministry Summit, held March 3 at Msgr. Edward Pace High School.
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Rosemarie Banich, archdiocesan director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, speaks to more than 200 participants in the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Ministry Summit.
MIAMI GARDENS | The youth ministry at St. Agnes Parish in Key Biscayne is growing.
Five years ago, when AnnMarie Ott, a religion teacher at St. Agnes Academy, was asked to take on leadership of the youth ministry, she encountered “kids who were really feeling boxed in,” she said. “Our first meeting, I had three kids and one of them was my son. Now, we regularly have 35 to 50 at each meeting.”
The vitality and success of her program has renewed Ott’s enthusiasm. “There’s an energy I receive back from it. There were kids who were really lost who are now going back to church and some of their families are returning, too.”
But like many of the other youth ministers who gathered for an archdiocesan Youth Ministry Summit March 3 at Msgr. Edward Pace High School, Ott said she feels a bit like she’s alone on an island.
“I have nobody to work with, nobody to help me,” she said. “I’ve been praying a lot about that.”
The summit brought more than 200 youth ministers from Key West through northern Broward County to listen to a variety of speakers who shared secrets of handing on the faith to the “P Diddy Generation” as it seeks maturity, morality and meaning in today’s world.
Ott’s position is not that unusual, said Rosemarie Banich, archdiocesan director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry.
Among the Archdiocese of Miami’s 109 parishes “not every parish has as much as one person involved in youth ministry. That’s a big gap,” said Banich. “That’s one of the reasons for hosting this summit. Other parishes may have that one person, but it’s not enough to have that one person; it’s unsustainable to have just one person.”
Archbishop Thomas Wenski opened the summit by celebrating Mass and then delivering a keynote talk.
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Frank Mercadante, one of several keynote speakers at the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Ministry Summit, holds books which he authored, "Engaging A New Generation" and "Positively Dangerous."
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Eric Gallagher, one of several keynote speakers at the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Ministry Summit, holds a book he co-authored with Jim Beckman, "Discipleship Focused Youth Ministry."
In the keynote, he cited a study of millennials – 20 and 30-somethings – that “paints a bleak picture” of the faith life of young people. Only two in 10 believe church attendance is important, and more than one-third take an anti-church stance.
“The bad news isn’t just for us Catholics,” he said. “Neither are the evangelicals doing so well.”
Some young people do leave the Catholic Church to join evangelical churches, the archbishop noted, and perhaps the Church could learn from them.
“They do put a lot more of their resources into youth ministry,” he said. “But if we consider our Catholic school system from pre-K to post-grad as a youth ministry — and why shouldn’t we? — the commitment of our resources isn’t shabby.”
The archbishop also preached a message of hope and encouragement for youth ministers as they fight the rising tide of secularism and indifference among youths.
In his homily based on the Gospel reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, he noted that not many people these days say, “God is dead,” although at one time not so long ago “it was fashionable in many circles to say so. But today we live — or many of us live — as if he didn’t matter, which is tantamount to the same thing.
“And what happens to us when we live our lives, when we organize our society as if God doesn’t matter, finds its parallel to what happened to the younger son who wasted his inheritance in a life of dissipation.”
Photographer: MARLENE QUARONI | FC
Ricardo Hermida of St. Timothy Parish in Miami fills in his answer to "What Young People Have Taught Me" during the Archdiocese of Miami Youth Ministry Summit.
“Christ is the answer to the longings of the human heart,” Archbishop Wenski said. But not the Jesus whose image is popular in the culture today, that Jesus “who demands nothing, who never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything.”
The real Jesus of the Gospels “is demanding and bold,” he continued. “And the Church, if she is to be the effective presence of Christ in the world today, cannot be ashamed or afraid of the very real demands of discipleship that Jesus boldly makes on those who would be his followers.”
The archbishop stressed that “the Church exists for the purpose of bringing the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ, the one mediator, to all men and every creature.”
Rather than focusing on new programs or methods, youth ministers — indeed all Catholics — need to focus on “helping people meet and know Jesus Christ who is the Savior; we are about ministering grace to sinners so that they know his love.”
Archbishop Wenski concluded his homily by quoting St. John Paul II: “If Christ is presented to young people as he really is, they experience him as an answer that is convincing and they can accept his message, even when it is demanding and bears the mark of the Cross.”
