Life Teen Problems Go Beyond the Rubrics

by Leila M. Lawler

As a result of a meeting between Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona (where the Life Teen movement was founded) and Cardinal Arinze of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship, some changes have been ordered in the way Mass is celebrated in Life Teen, to bring it in line with the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). Anyone who has experienced a Life Teen Mass knows that the program brings many innovations to the liturgy. Some people, like myself, strenuously object to Life Teen. Others argue that the liturgy changes and should be able to accommodate various styles, including those attractive to young people.

How much would it take to change the liturgical practices of Life Teen for orthodox Catholics to be happy?

I personally would never be happy with Life Teen no matter how orthodox their liturgy, and here's why.

Life Teen is a movement that purports to bring the Mass to teens, to evangelize them and help them to live their Catholic faith more fully. I believe that most people involved are motivated by this desire and have good intentions. I think that for the most part the movement tries to adhere to the Catechism of the Catholic Church; and if you visit the Life Teen web site you will find fairly orthodox answers to questions regarding faith and morals posed by teens. I suppose it is possible that the Life Teen liturgy could be brought into conformity with the letter of the GIRM.

Nevertheless, I think this movement is profoundly and fundamentally flawed because it does two things. First, it separates young persons at the most decisive stage of their lives from their families. Second, it panders to the teenager's inclination to live in a mentality of entertainment.

What we call a teenager — as if that term connotes a species separate from the rest of us — is really a person on a trajectory from his youth to his adulthood. In the teen years that person is discovering who he is in relation to the family he was born in and the world he is entering. The Church, through Catholic culture built by priests and families, has always striven to integrate all the stages of life, passing along the faith by this means.

In the history of the faith one would never find a situation in parishes in which worship was restricted by age, nor would one find some members of the family taken apart from others on a regular basis.

Until now.

In parishes where Life Teen is fully implemented according to its founder's vision, young people worship apart from their families every Sunday. In these parishes, in fact, you often find a "family Mass" geared toward infants and children, a Saturday afternoon Mass geared toward elders, and a Life Teen Mass on Sunday afternoons (right at Sunday dinnertime) for the teens. Every single Sunday.

(Each one of these liturgies is celebrated in a "style" that would be unwelcome to the congregations targeted for the others. The teens find the children's Mass silly, as do the elders. The elders are not able to relate to the noise of the Life Teen, the drums and synthesizer, and the anticipatory Mass on Saturday is so deliberately low-key that all but the elderly find it soporific.)

Yet the Holy Father teaches, in Familiaris Consortio (18) — as the Church has always taught — that the family is God's plan, His school, for love.

The love between husband and wife and…between members of the same family — between parents and children, brothers and sisters and relatives and members of the household — is given life and sustenance by an unceasing inner dynamism leading the family to ever deeper and more intense communion, which is the foundation and soul of the community of marriage and the family.

God's plan for society is for all ages in the family to worship together.The Holy Father goes on to address the issue of ministering to one member ofthe family (say, the teenager, as Life Teen claims to do) this way:

A form of missionary activity can be exercised even within the family. This happens when some member of the family does not have the faith or does not practice it with consistency. In such a case the other members must give him or her a living witness of their own faith in order to encourage and support him or her along the path towards full acceptance of Christ the Savior. (54) .

But how would this take place if the members of the family never encounter each other at worship? If on Sunday — which is meant by the Creator to be the one day when life slows down and family members set aside time to enjoy each other — we have a Church-instituted day of more rushing about, more separation from each other, then what have we gained? And how do we blame the world?

The Pope writes, in Dies Domini (52):

Sharing in the Eucharist is the heart of Sunday, but the duty to keep Sunday holy cannot be reduced to this. In fact, the Lord's Day is lived well if it is marked from beginning to end by grateful and active remembrance of God's saving work. This commits each of Christ's disciples to shape the other moments of the day — those outside the liturgical context: family life, social relationships, moments of relaxation — in such a way that the peace and joy of the Risen Lord will emerge in the ordinary events of life. For example, the relaxed gathering of parents and children can be an opportunity not only to listen to one another but also to share a few formative and more reflective moments.

It might be objected that parents today don't see their role this way. Society is so fragmented, parents are so distracted, and grandparents are so isolated. The only solution is to reach teens where they are, with what they know, which is entertainment experienced in isolation from everyone but one's peers. But I have never yet heard of a solution to any problem that consists of more of the problem, unless one is proposing to inoculate teens against frivolity by a one-time dose. That doesn't seem to be the case with Life Teen. No, rock music, group hugs, emotional entertainment masked as liturgy — somehow these are offered as the path to meaning. In addition, the problem does not exist outside the Church's ability to act. On the contrary, if pastors saw these issues as part of their responsibility rather than givens — as problems that they should counteract rather than immutable facts of life— perhaps we would see changes in society sooner than we thought possible.

For example, what if pastors saw precisely the issue of entertainment as something they could influence by their teaching? What if they imparted to their flock the reality that Catholic culture has always emphasized work, worship, and celebration as proper human activities? Entertainment has always been considered at most a diversion: a small portion of life's events, a bit of piquancy to enhance the main dish. Taken out of proportion, a fascination with entertainment can mask a tendency to boredom and even despair.

Nowadays entertainment is perceived as the goal of life, to the point that parents willingly give their children over to its pursuit. (Maybe they are caught up in the entertainment trap themselves?) In the process, they relinquish their role, which is to guide and admonish, to keep their progeny disciplined for what God may send. In most cases, what God sends is family life for our children. How well prepared to live it will they be if their only formation has been in noise and selfish alienation from others?

Moreover, the suggestion that today's parents are too distracted seriously underestimates their true longings. Most of them are anxiously, if ineptly, seeking a way to help their children find meaning. Although we might not agree that it takes a village to raise a child, it certainly takes a family, together with a Church and a community. If parents are not doing a good job, it is certainly not for lack of interest on God's part. Perhaps the lack is elsewhere.

Pastors of souls have relinquished their role in assisting families in the difficult but necessary task of raising children. In a way it's easier to give people what they want — which is just what pastors often accuse parents of doing with their kids. If priests are not convinced that parents have the grace of state to deal with their children, even almost-grown children, maybe it does seem logical to propose some sort of alternative plan, complete with rock concerts and movie nights. And maybe parents go along with that because they in turn have lost sight of their responsibilities.

The answer to the question of what to do with teenagers in the face of supposed parental diffidence and teen alienation then becomes simple, although perhaps not easy: rather than try to step in with innovations that ultimately circumvent God's plan, help the parents. Begin with the meaning of Sunday. (Read Dies Domini, the Pope's document on Sunday worship, and Familiaris Consortio, the document on the family.)

Show them an understanding of the teen years as a time for bonding with both the younger and the older members of the family. Help them find the path of fortitude in standing against the ways of the world in matters of entertainment, chastity, and use of time. Encourage them to build a life of family prayer and worship. Teach the truths of the Catholic faith on building society. Let the family become what it is, "a community of life and love!"

This item 7191 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org