Part of my role at school is to help to build the connections between the school and the parishes from which the majority of our students come. While at ACYMC, I attended a workshop conducted by Nicole Allen and Jonathan Zarb from Penola Catholic College in Victoria.
It is interesting that the two presenters were from a school, but the title of the workshop placed parishes first, suggesting that the drive to make the connection was coming from the parishes, however, in a significant number of places around Australia, the drive to connect is coming from schools. And this was evident in the presentation given in this particular workshop. As I reflect further on the title, I have come to the conclusion that parish must come before school, even theologically. I have heard it said at school that the only parish many of our students know is the school, which is a sad reflection on us as educators if we simply accept this as the reality and our goal. The school can never be a parish. To make it into one is to add to the injustices that lead to students being disengaged from their parishes.
Nicole and Jonathan began by asking the following questions:
- Where have you come from?
- What is your role?
- What are your hopes for this workshop?
Through the responses to the questions, I discovered an amazing array of people in this workshop, all of them looking for some answers: from a principal of a school connected to. 41 parishes, to people working in parishes, people from cities, country centres, from schools, priests, representatives from all around the country and from New Zealand.
The position adopted by the presenters can be summarised as follows: The Catholic school participates in the Church's mission of evangelization through its curriculum, which presents a synthesis of faith, life and culture. (TCSTTM) The ecclesial dimension of the school is intrinsic to it's identity. The teacher's vocation is to participate in the mission to evangelize all who form the community of the school. Part of the work of evangelization at school is to affirm the place of parish in the life of the Christian and to help parishes develop through the presence and participation of the students.
In a brief overview of Religious Education, they stated that the teaching of RE in Victoria has been supported by the development of resources which address the informational aspect of the curriculum. At present, there is a growing awareness of the need for formation of students to be a part of the RE curriculum, just as it is a significant part of the overall curriculum, and a defining characteristic of the ethos of a Catholic school. A significant aspect of formation is the building of connections between school and parish.
Parish culture in the past was a dominant feature in the lives of Catholics. The university hall is a good illustration of this. It was opened in 1903 and it must have been a magnificent venue in it's day and the centre of Catholic social life for many decades. That it is now a university hall suggests that there have been some significant changes in the life of the Church in Melbourne. The Cathedral is less than a kilometer away from the university campus and it has it's own gathering spaces which are less obvious than the Cathedral Hall would have been in the first half of the twentieth century. The Cathedral space is much smaller and more functional.
I have used this illustration to communicate the point made by Nicole and Jonathan: that today, the parish is no longer the social hub of Catholics. People are more mobile. The consumer mentality dominates people's perceptions and attitudes towards belonging and participation in Church and parish. In the second half of the last century, there was a significant decrease in commitment to parish life. Catholics in Australia have become disengaged from parish life.
So what has caused the change? Jonathan attributed the change to the presence of controversies that have rocked the Church and have contributed to changes in Church culture. I think this is too simplistic, a point made by Nicole and Jonathan when they acknowledged the significant contributions made by the keynote speakers. Dr Bob McCarty put it well when he said that the territory had changed, but we forgot to change the map. As a consequence people lost their way. We now have to change our maps and that is what this workshop was about.
Nicole and Jonathan had asked themselves, "How can schools and parish come together?" What they presented was their attempts to answer the question, their efforts to redraw the map so that parish would once again figure prominently in the lives of students.
Our story contains the seeds not only of our faith, but also of how we can bring school and parish together. This is a thought worthy of pursuit but not now.
Here are some ideas that they presented:
1. Parish day
Focusing on students in Years 8 and 11, they have created a "back to parish" programme. Teachers from the school worked with parish representatives to devise a set of activites that would help students gain some insights into the part that parish can play in the life of a Catholic. On a designated day, the students start their school day in a parish where the program is run by parish members. The activities run for a few hours. Then they are taken back to school where they are debriefed before returning to the normal school programme. The experience is given to all students, including those who are not Catholics, but excluding those who are active in other Christian churches. Those students are given an alternative programme, which is conducted back at school and which focuses on their own church/parish experience.
The success of the programme depends largely on the knowledge and skills of the parish representatives. What they planned did not work in every parish because of this factor, therefore, the programme has met with mixed success up to now. One of the positive outcomes of the programme has been the growing realization in parishes of the priority that needs to be given to having a well-designed youth ministry programme.
These ideas resonate well with my experience at Kolbe. We have established a meeting structure, which we call PCM (Parish Community Meeting). Representatives of the parishes and the school meet at least twice each Term to share what is happening in the school and the parishes that relates to the evangelization of youth. The parishes are represented by the parish priests. Occasionally, other parish members come along, especially when they want to carry out a parish project that would benefit from the involvement of the school. The school is represented by the principal and key members of the Ministry Team.
One initiative discussed at our last PCM was the planning of a Pastor's Day, that is, a period given over to a gathering of students with their parish priests. This is a small step to take, but an important one. Our parish priests are already known in the school. They lead us in the celebration of Mass four times a week and they provide opportunities for our school community to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
The Penola College initiative has merit. I will take back to our Ministry Team and to the next PCM and discuss the possibility of establishing the programme in 2011, involving our middle school (Years 7-9) and our Student Ministry Team. We have started collaborating with one parish to provide support for their efforts to re-start their youth group. Our support will be ongoing and we hope to extend it into neighbouring parishes. Our PCM discussions of this commitment has led to the decision to hold inter-parish youth events and to share the staging of these among the parishes.
What follows next is a fusion of memories of what they shared next with us and my own experiences. I recall being trapped in my own thoughts about possibilities back at Kolbe and of scrambling madly to catch key words and phrases so that I would not forget the important points being made by Nicole and Jonathan.
2. Celebrating Eucharist in a youth context
The title "Enlightened!" was used to refer to a youth Mass celebrated at 11 am on a Sunday, once every month. It originated in a church related activity that enthused a group of students enough to have them decide to deepen their understanding of their faith through meeting monthly and through participating together in celebrating Mass together. Other students have joined in. One outcome has been that school leaders become youth leaders in parishes.
Perhaps this experience of parish Eucharist is linked to their reference to what they called the "FYRE" Mass (For Youth REignite). They made reference to the experience of a "high energy celebration of Eucharist" which the students took back to school and then used the experience as a springboard for translating it into similar experiences in their parishes as well as at school.
I link their words to my perceptions of the work of groups like NET and DYMT. They use retreat experiences to ignite and enthuse young people (and older young people like me). We have worked with DYMT at school for some years now and the most apparent moments of grace in school life have been inspired by contact with the Team through their holiday retreats, which they run in Perth. I have tapped into the energy and enthusiasm created in these young people in school to keep our YCS group and our Student Ministry Team stumbling along, I haven't yet begun to think about how to link these students to parish life.
Nicole explained that their first efforts in creating these opportunities were time-consuming and required a lot of effort, but now that they have defined roles and tasks and the commitment of students is there, the organization of monthly Masses is much easier. What was not clear from their account was how extensive the programme is. I return to the decision made by the members of our PCM to create inter-parish events.
Some years ago, we set up an annual inter-parish event called "Altitude", which focused on building interest in sharing faith among youth through high energy games, team work, witnessing to faith in Jesus and commitment to parish life. Unfortunately, the workload was not evenly shared across the three parishes involved and the venture failed. It is likely that we will return to Altitude early next year. Our PCM will be the starting point when we meet in October. I will work on having representatives of the three parishes present at the meeting.
3. Sacramental programme
A sacramental programme is offered at Penola every 2 years with weekly classes that run the whole year after school. This is an inter-parish activity, which involves the parish priests. The participants come from all years of the student body. The programme that they have developed fits somewhere between RCIA and RCIC. The partnership between school and parish is critical to the success of this venture.
I know of at least one other school that runs a sacramental programme every two years. Theirs is based on the RCIC. We tried to run one this year, but the students who were approached decided that they were not ready to enter the sacramental life of the Church. One of my tasks over the next term is to plan a sacramental programme linked to the parishes and run after school, much like that operating at Penola College.
4. Youth groups at school
At Penola, they have set up youth group at school, which meets at lunch time with a programme that includes worship, prayer, etc. I will have to find out more about this programme and how it relates to the connections between parish and school.
My experience of lunchtime youth group meetings has been quite frustrating to say the least. Kolbe's Student Ministry Team meets at lunchtime, as does the YCS group. While the former has meetings that are very practical in nature - planning and review meetings - the latter group ought to be conducting the Review of Life, a method of reflection that requires much more time than the 30 minutes available at lunchtime. There have been some informal discussions at parish and diocesan levels about moving the group to a parish, so that the students will have more time for reviewing. My fear is that the group will remain immature and eventually die through lack of interest because all it can accomplish In a short period of time is social in character and orientation. YCS is much more than that.
5. Attending youth events
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| Stand Up Day at St Bernadette's | |
Nicole and Jonathan made reference to the importance of youth events in developing the connections between school and parish. In Perth, diocesan youth events are becoming more frequent: WYD-related activities, YCS gatherings, inter-parish youth groups run by different Church groups, such as DYMT and Young Vinnies, camps and retreats at a diocesan level, and the activities of parish youth groups. How the school relates to these attempts to evangelize youth impacts on the degree to which these initiatives are successful.
In the past, Kolbe has been negligent in promoting diocesan efforts to evangelize youth. For instance, we have decided to do nothing about World Youth Day. We use the timing of it and the expense as excuses for doing nothing. There is more than a hint of the consumerist mentality in our attitude towards WYD. I wonder if things would change in students' lives - and our own, too - if we made a commitment to being more proactive in youth ministry?
6. Youth ministers spending time in class
One of the many blessings I received through attending the ACYMC was meeting people who do some of the work that I do, but without the teaching component. They focus on creating faith experiences for students, ranging from gatherings at school, retreats, parish events and the reception of the sacraments. Jonathan spoke about his experiences of visiting classrooms at Penola. His curriculum is directly related to faith sharing, to catechesis. Well, that is how it came across to me. This reminds me of our efforts some years ago to have a wandering minstrel at Kolbe. He was employed to wander around the school and to teach Christian songs to Pastoral Care groups so that they could sing them at Mass. Such activities depend on the skills of the youth minister.
Concluding remarks
One of the highlights of ACYMC for me was Dr Bob McCarty's advice to give youth good memories of Church. The link between faith and memory in the lives of adolescents is the fire in the heart of my doctoral thesis. It was also a point emphasized by Nicole and Jonathan. Good experiences energize people to commit themselves to continuing their efforts to build on those experiences. It was clear from comments made by Nicole (and borne out by my own experiences) that the beginning stages of any educational initiative require careful planning, follow up and review. In the Jocist movements, we speak about "Do before, do with, and do after."
So having recalled and reflected on the workshop, what is it all meant to be about? Jesus said, "Come, follow me." When I was blessed by the opportunity to work with Fr Gerard Holohan (now the Bishop of Bunbury), I came to the view that the Church is about family, parish and school - in that order. Nothing has happened to change that view. So what should I do to promote parish life amongst the Kolbe students and their families?
My training in YCS (being taught by students) inclines me towards reviewing the needs of Kolbe's students tom arrive at specific actions and a detailed plan of action. From an educational perspective, it means conducting a needs analysis to determine a plan of action that will involve curriculum change. So, a two-pronged approach. Stay tuned for more!!
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The youth come along to Church youth groups for fun, for meaning, and for identity. This reminds me of the four F's of Catholic youth ministry as told by Derek Boylen, one-time director of Catholic youth ministry in Perth: Friends, Fun, Food and Faith. I have tended to chant Derek's mantra, especially as an AA to the Kolbe YCS group. Those who are involved in Catholic youth ministry know the truth in their comments about the search for fun things to do with friends in a safe environment. There's a great image of two Year 9 boys from Kolbe at a recent youth event held in the St Bernadette's Hall in Port Kennedy. They are good mates. The youth ministry team in the parish did a great job structuring a night that was fun and challenging. The focus was on coming to understand and appreciate the Christian response to poverty. 
