Catholic World News News Feature

Changing Life Teen to comply with the GIRM July 21, 2004

Are the liturgical changes recently mandated for the Life Teen Mass really a response to the new GIRM or have they been necessary all along? And will teens and youth ministers comply?

The Life Teen youth ministry program is often cited as one of the most successful of its kind in the United States for evangelizing and catechizing Catholic teens. Founded 19 years ago in the Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, it is now present in about 840 parishes in the US and 11 other countries. Yet, for all its prolific reach, there has always been some controversy surrounding the centerpiece of the Life Teen experience, the Life Teen Mass.

Liturgical observers have questioned the program's liturgical innovations, which include:

• Calling up the teens into the sanctuary to surround the altar during the Eucharistic Canon.
• The use of pop-style music for hymns, as well as the playing of music during the Eucharistic Prayer.
• The nightclub atmosphere that usually precedes the Mass, with banter between priests, youth ministers, and musicians evoking that of late-night TV shows.
• The replacement of the usual dismissal prayer of priest or deacon-- for example, "The Mass is ended, go in peace."-- with a new phrase chanted by the entire congregation, "The Mass never ends, it must be lived."
• Skits enacted by youth ministers and teens during the homily or at the end of Mass.

This is, by no means, a comprehensive list, but it enumerates those most frequently cited, and neither are such innovations universal, as many Life Teen programs add or subtract them at will. I am very familiar with all of them, however, because I was a Life Teen youth ministry volunteer for several years in my own parish. Yet, when I objected to any of these practices, I was usually informed that they were appropriate because (a) the Life Teen Mass was based on the Mass for Children, and (b) it was all approved by the bishop of Phoenix, who at the time was Thomas O'Brien, now resigned in disgraced and convicted in court of having left the scene of a fatal accident in which he hit a pedestrian.

But now things seem to be changing at Life Teen. A letter has been sent out to Life Teen parishes from Msgr. Dale Fushek, founder and director of the program, about a June meeting between Bishop Thomas Olmsted, the new bishop of Phoenix, and Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. As a result of that meeting, some changes have been ordered, ostensibly to bring Life Teen in line with the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). In the letter, Fushek says:

"1. In accordance with the new GIRM, teens are no longer to enter the sanctuary for the Eucharistic prayer. Being in the sanctuary is to be reserved for the priest celebrant, concelebrants, and those performing a specific ministry.

2. The GIRM very specifically offers three options for the end of the Mass. We are to cease using the phrase “The Mass Never Ends, It Must Be Lived” and begin using one of the three prescribed endings found in the Missal.

3. After music practice or welcoming, please make sure there is a period of silence to begin the liturgical celebration.

4. As we have always taught, please make sure the music does not in any way detract from the action at the altar, ambo, or chair.

5. Please make sure that full implementation of the GIRM is done in accordance with your Diocese and accomplished with a spirit of joy."

That all sounds goods, but there's one problem: None of this is new to the new version of the GIRM. All of these were equally proscribed by the old GIRM. So why change now? My estimation is that this has more to do with Phoenix's new bishop than it does with the new GIRM.

Bishop Olmsted is known to take a firmer doctrinal line on most matters. Earlier this year, he ordered a group of Phoenix priests to remove their names from an open letter demanding the Church and society approve of homosexuality. He later suspended one of those priests for allowing a non-Catholic to concelebrate Mass. That's a big change from the tenure of Bishop O'Brien, who led the effort at the US bishops' conference that produced the document Always Our Children , which many critics observe contradicted the Church's teaching that a homosexual orientation is intrinsically disordered. Bishop Olmsted's firmer stand on the Church's moral teachings is evidently matched with a firmer stand on her liturgical rubrics.

Apart from why these changes were made, we turn our attention to the response.

If Life Teen is as effective as claimed by its proponents, then celebrating the Mass as it is supposed to be will only enhance the program, not detract from it. Likewise, if Life Teen is really as good at catechizing teens as it claims to be, then these changes will not be a problem for those teens, but they will accept them as authentic and loving correction from competent Church authority. Fushek himself appears to anticipate resistance to the corrections: "I am sure these issues will be hard on some parishes and teens. But, let me assure you, our cooperation with Rome and the BCL will only enhance our liturgical celebrations and our mission in the Church."

Personally, when we had Life Teen at my parish, I gradually began to pull away from it as I become less and less comfortable with how things were done and I grew more and more aware of the problems. At first I stopped going into the sanctuary with the teens, and I encouraged them to kneel around the altar when they went themselves (which they did for a while, but eventually gave up). Eventually, I just stopped going all together and started going to a different Mass. And eventually so did everyone else, as the program collapsed. (The loss of a youth minister due to a lack of parish funding assuredly led to that result.)

Life Teen is supposed to be more than some innovations at Mass. It is a whole program of catechesis and social activities that should continue to be effective long after these changes have been made. I guess this is a time of testing for the whole Life Teen concept. Will the response of all those Life Teen programs be obedience? If Life Teen is the orthodox program raising up future mature and devout Catholic adults that is claimed, then it would have to be. Only time will tell.