Weekly Young Adult-only Mass?
A little while ago, one of my friends suggested that there should be a parish where there is a Young Adult Mass held every week for all members of the Diocese. The idea was that it would be really nice to have a place where the younger members of the Diocese could gather knowing that there would be lots of other young adults present. There would be superb music, excellent preaching and lots of young people.
There was a time in my own journey when I would have enthusiastically embraced this idea. In fact, in our Diocese we have a similar event each year, known as “Mega Mass”, where all the young adults come together and it’s very successful. However, I think that a weekly event would be extremely problematic.
No wrinklies allowed!
Aside from the politics of selecting a parish in the Diocese and personal preferences concerning music, establishing a young adult Mass would be difficult because it’s not like you could stop those who did not fall into the young adult age range from attending. As a consequence, if the young adult Mass were mostly made up of those outside the young adult age range, it is unlikely that it would attract many more young adults.
On the other hand, if the Mass did start to attract more and more young adults, I fear that it would end up depopulating other parishes of their young adults which I think would be disastrous. Something of this dynamic often exists naturally, with one or two parishes of the diocese being known as the “young adult parish”, robbing surrounding parishes of their young adults. Who will be the next generation in these parishes?
My other serious concern with an idea like this is that it plays into a kind of ecclesial consumerism which we’ve seen very clearly in the Protestant world. Obviously, we want music to be good, preaching to be inspiring and for our churches to be filled with the young, but part of me can’t help but think that to enter into such an initiative would be to start training people to think that these are the primary things which should be used to determine what makes going to Mass important. It also sets up a problem further down the line because what happens if the music takes a bit of a downturn? What if the homilies get a little stale? What if the young adult population dips? There will always be some other church somewhere which does it better and if that’s what we’ve trained people to value most, why would they want to stay in the Catholic Church?
What are you thoughts? Would you ever want to see a Young Adult Mass every week in the Diocese?
I agree with you – I think that it is dangerous for our communities to pull Young Adults out into their own ‘exclusive’ Mass with a specific type of music. I see the reasons that they are supporting it, but I think that removing young adults from the larger community removes them from the church at large and focuses on the idea of to keep people in the faith we must entertain them.
Run and don’t stop running until you are far away from that idea! It seems harmless and not that big of a deal. Wrong!
“My other serious concern with an idea like this is that it plays into a kind of ecclesial consumerism which we’ve seen very clearly in the Protestant world.”
This is absolutely what will happen, eventually. There was a time back in the late 70’s when the protestant church was having a debate about drums in church. “Drums are of the devil and they will destroy worship.” was the argument that the older pastors made. I remember, as a young musician punk in the 80’s, how ridiculous that argument sounded. If only we had listened, but obviously our elders lost that debate the youngsters.
The consumerism problem in the protestant church, in my opinion, can be directly tied to that lost battle. It wasn’t that drums are “of the devil”, or are in and of themselves bad, it is that they opened up the door to music being super critical to our worship gatherings. We all have different musical tastes, especially the young people. If we want them to come to church we need to play music they like. And so it goes.
Younger people would leave other parishes to attend this new, hip one. That is a guarantee, unless Catholic youngsters are different that Protestants!
Hey Jim! First of all, I hope you enjoy today’s Music Monday…banjo and all 🙂
It’s interesting you cite the battle over drums as a turning point. Drums have had a presence in the Catholic Church from about the same time, but we haven’t experienced the consumerist decline. Now, drums never made such deep inroads into the Catholic Church, but I think it’s an interesting question as to why they didn’t become more prevalent and why they didn’t lead to the same kind of ecclesial consumerism seen in other parts of Christendom…
I would suggest that the main safeguard has been the presence of a deep Catholic liturgical theology. There is a concrete theology concerning the what, where and why of Catholic services, something which I would suggest is pretty absent in many Protestant denominations.
I would also suggest that another significant distinction is in the difference in attitude towards the liturgy. The Apostolic Churches (Catholic, Coptic, Eastern Orthodox) in general see the liturgy as a treasure which the current generation inherits. In contrast, I would say that in my experience, many congregations see it as something which they create as a means of unique self-expression.
“I would also suggest that another significant distinction is in the difference in attitude towards the liturgy. The Apostolic Churches (Catholic, Coptic, Eastern Orthodox) in general see the liturgy as a treasure which the current generation inherits.”
YES! I think that is a significant distinction as well as a safeguard.
“I would suggest that the main safeguard has been the presence of a deep Catholic liturgical theology. There is a concrete theology concerning the what, where and why of Catholic services, something which I would suggest is pretty absent in many Protestant denominations. ”
YES again. The Anglican church is pretty liturgical, but even the one I go to has a “terrific” rock band. I endure that part of the service though.
One of the reasons that I think an age centered service is a bad idea is because young people need old people and vice versa. A young married couple with a baby that is taking over every aspect of their lives can benefit from an older married couple who figured it out raising 4 of their own kids. A healthy congregation has a lot of babies and a lot of grey haired men and women, in my opinion.
Absolutely. Apparently with grey hair comes wisdom 🙂