HELP - New Pastor Problems

[kage_ar]

And say goodbye to your parish youth. They are going to head off to the cool Protestant youth meetings that are no doubt going on in your town or city. Some will be lured to Catholicism by Latin Masses and tradition, but most will stop attending Mass and go where the action is. Sorry, folks. I’m speaking as an ex-Protestant and I feel bad to blow your fantasy of thousands of teenagers flocking to a “traditional” Catholic church. I don’t think so. Over 1000teenagers attend the local Assembly of God youth meeting on Wednesday night, and a whole heck of a lot of them are Catholic kids. Just hope that your parish youth go there instead of just staying home and going nowhere near a church, or even worse, getting involved in somthing sinful.

I wish I had more faith in Catholic youth outreach, but to be honest, I think it needs a lot of improvement. I’ve been Catholic for about three years, and thank goodness, our parish has a vibrant LifeTeen program with hundreds of wonderful teenagers. I think when people bury their heads in the sand and say, “Bringing back the old ways will bring back the youth,” I just want to cry.

Not to derail - but, I think you speak the truth.

 

[Brendan]

This doesn’t sound “exclusive” to me, but simply a practical limitation of space & time. Is the pope not allowed to say mass in his private chapel because I don’t have a ticket?

The Papal Masses in the private chaple are ticketed only due to lack of space, do you really think the OP is saying that the 35 couples in attendance are filling the Church to capacity, and that no others will fit?

If the retreat group drove to a retreat house that was a couple of hours away, adding expense to the event, would it be ok to have mass and confessions because the non-participating parishoners are excluded by the distance rather than the lack of an invitation?

And what of nearby Catholics who hear of the Mass, are they excluded. Or if a parishinor did, in fact, chose to make the drive to hear Mass? I’ve been on weekend style retreats ( Marriage Encounter etc…) We’ve had them in hotels and the members of the hotel staff attended the Mass to. We slid over an made room.

That’s what Christians are supposed to do.

Is the pastor going to eliminate the First Confession service because only the kids making their First Confessions and their families come to it? What about Confession during youth retreats? Pre-Confirmation retreats?

Let me get this straight, a Catholic who desires to Confess their sins to a priest, during a time that he is hearing Confessions, would be barred from doing so because they were not family, or not part of the retreat???

VOT describes these events as successful special outreach that frequently gets people to return to the reception of the Sacrament of Confession after some period that they had not gone – do you really think that reconciling non-observant Catholics to the Church is some sort of “abuse” that should be “stamped out”?!?

Ah yes, we will invite people back to the Sacraments by excluding others from recieving the Sacraments at the same time…that makes perfect sense…NOT!