Apologetics for Newly Confirmed/Young Adults

[DenRat]

It seems that even the newly confirmed who have had many years of CCD are still not fully grounded in their faith. Most are beginning their senior year in high school and then are off to college, where they may be bombarded from all sides (secular world to protestantism to cults). I have a son who was just confirmed.

I would like to start an informal apologetics program for confirmed teens through age 21 or so. Here are some preliminary thoughts of organization and guidelines:

1. Casual setting, perhaps in a coffeehouse or even in someone’s home. Sunday evenings might work best for 2 hours.
2. Speaker to talk about a topic for about 1/2 hour. Then open discussion/questions for another 1/2 hour. Then an hour for socialization (including food).
3. One topic per week: could be in an area of apologetics that Catholics are usually confronted with, another area of discussion could be in social issues such as abortion, dating, sex, etc. Suggestions for topics could come from the group in advance for what they are interested in.
4. While I would love to cover a topic myself, I envision a younger person speaking to the group. Someone who is not considered a “teacher” but more of a peer who the young men and women could relate to.
5. Colaborate with area parishes to get more involvement from “students” and presenters.
6. To get started, I was thinking of doing a poll in our parish to see first if there is any interest from this age group or ask my son’s friends personally if there is interest. My son expressed some mild interest. (That’s saying a lot because, well, he is a son and he is 17)

There is a program in Milwaukee for young adults called Theology on Tap that gave me the idea. I think it’s for 20-30ish age group. I’d like to get them right after confirmation.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on this. If you have tried this in your parish, what has the reaction been?

Thanks in advance for your (name removed by moderator)ut,
Denise

 

[_veritas]

I am one of the organizers of Theology on Tap in St. Paul, MN… Theology on Tap was originally developed by the archdiocese of Chicago, and has officially been done in about 40+ cities/dioceses (under the guidance of the program developers in Chicago and with their permission)–it has unofficially been done in many many more places…

While you obviously can not do the “real” TOT because of age restrictions, you can definitely use the format as a model.

The basic structure of a TOT evening is as follows -
7:00-7:30 a “holy happy half-hour”
7:30-8:30 speaker, the last 15minutes are Q&A
8:30-10:00 meet, mingle, conversation

This structure could be used anywhere, but I would recommend that you consider NOT holding your evenings in your house, or anyone else’s house… If you can find either a coffee shop, or perhaps a room in a restaurant, that would probably be more appealing to the younger crowd. Some restaurants will allow you to use their party rooms for free if you are holding the event on an “off” night… Sunday night MAY be considered an off-night, or it might not… We do our TOT on Wednesday, which is about as “off” a night as you can have , so we have never had a problem getting access to rooms.

Chicago’s Young Adult Ministry and their TOT program is at www.yamchicago.org

If you want to check out our own TOT series in St. Paul, the flyer is online at
archspm.org/family/pdfs/TonTap.PDF

Please contact me if you have any more questions

+veritas+

 

[DenRat]

Thanks for your response and information about Theology on Tap, Veritas. I hadn’t realized it was a bigger program.

I was at a funeral this morning and spoke with the organist who is also a student at Marquette University. He did a paper for theology on this subject and said it would be great to get started in our small town area. He is a very nice guy and said he would get me in touch with people who might be able to give more information.

The biggest obstacle I realized when talking to him was the “diversity” he’s been exposed to. I told him I would like the participants to get true Church teaching, etc. He said it would be good to get the “other side” as well. (As if there are two sides to Truth) I responded, for example, ordination of women wouldn’t be a topic since the pope has determined that that will never happen but that we could discuss women’s role in the Church. The response to that comment was polite but lukewarm. So much for Marquette U.

Denise

 

[Magnanimity]

I think it’s a great idea, even, I would say, a necessary program to implement. Apologetics should naturally come as a result of doing proper theology and/or philosophy. If you will note, outside of the recent slew of apologetics books from recent years (written by laymen), the great Catholic theologians of the 20th century almost always did apologetics, but it was always in the context of theology and/or philosophy. Consider the massive work by Fr. Congar, Tradition and Traditions. Well, there is just a ton of great apologetics in that work that a Catholic could use, but you sort of have to search the book for it. Because it is not, strictly speaking, an apologetical work, though it does apologetics.

What I’m getting at is this. Apologetics should be part and parcel to a good and robust Catholic theology/philosophy. It certainly was for the great 20th century Catholic theologians, to say nothing of the massive amount of great apologetics done by numerous of the Catholic doctors of the Church. (St. Thomas Aquinas comes to mind.) So, rather than merely support this initiative, I would almost beg you to get to it.
However, it would seem to be a good idea to point out all the reasons for doing such to your local parish clergy. Then just go about doing it. I’m not sure polling would be advisable, since many are not so likely to know much at all about apologetics, to say nothing of not realizing how much they need it. If it’s done well, I think you will naturally attract the numbers.

One last thing, be sure to hit the hottest topics, especially all the biggies in sexual ethics. Don’t feel confined to moral theology though. I think you should get into political apologetics too, as this will probably be a good vehicle for teaching both moral and social theology, as it has come to us from the Church’s magisterium. And please, whatever you do, they need theistic apologetics. They need to know how it is that the Church can believe in a theistic God in an age of growing pantheism and atheism. In other words, go over the Church’s best arguments for the existence of God, many of which are Thomistic. My local parish pastor did this recently, and though it was received by adults, it was received well nonetheless.