How Can LifeTeen Masses Be Considered A Good Thing?

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Shirtless said:
Without attempting to judge any particular program, my research indicates that LifeTeen was founded in 1985 at St. Timothy’s Parish, in Mesa, Arizona. The founder was then-priest Dale Fushek. Unfortunately, Fr. Fushek was caught up in the sex abuse scandal, and then started his own Protestant-oriented non-denominational worship center in the Phoenix area. He was excommunicated by the Bishop of Phoenix in 2008.

I sincerely hope LifeTeen is able to rise above all that.
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Well, judging by this thread, 5 years later, LifeTeen was clearly able to rise above all that. Praise be to God.
 
bben15 said:
I saw a LifeTeen Mass on Youtube, and I was very disappointed. You can see the desperate attempt of the creators of the LT Mass to get teens back to Mass. Personally, I would never attend an LT Mass, but that is just me. I’m more traditional. I like bells, incense, and Gregorian chant, not pop music, lights changing color, and the slight liturgical abuse to make the Mass more appealing.

Most teenagers don’t attend Mass. If teenagers really understood the importance of going to Mass, they would not need an LT Mass to be happy. I personally don’t like my local Mass, as it has no traditional customs in it (except for the Sanctus bells). But, I don’t complain.

If it gets to a point where a teenager would just skip Mass entirely because it isn’t LifeTeen, then that means their Faith isn’t strong, and they’re just going to Mass for fun, not because they are obligated to.
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I’m with you on this one. I understand that the LT Masses are completely valid, but its just not my thing. :cool:
 
I personally can’t stand LT Mass. The music isn’t liturgically approved (at my home parish, they play things you’d normally hear at Protestant megachurches), people hold hands across the altar area during the Our Father, and I’ve even seen bizarre “liturgical dancing” with scarves.

This might just be the parish in my hometown, though, and it has other issues. There’s a reason my family usually went to church 25 minutes away.
 
I’m surprised by some of the descriptions of the LifeTeen masses. I’ve only been to the ones at my parish if I wasn’t able to make it to church in the morning. Of the times I’ve been, the only difference compared to the other masses was that the choir consisted of teenagers. Sometimes the recessional songs are also more contemporary. Other than that, there was no difference in the mass.

Actually, I once went to both a normal and a LifeTeen mass in the same day. The priests and the others who took part were the only changes.
 
As far as I know we only have one parish in the area that offers a LifeTeen Mass. I haven’t been but I know it’s there in case we’d ever miss our regular Mass and I had to take the kids. Ours is advertised as being more teen-centric, but the primary focus is on the music. They have a live band playing contemporary songs most weeks (the one blurb mentioned Matt Maher and pointed out that he’d played at WYD), and recorded music the rest of the time. I haven’t gone out of my way to go to one since our girls do well at the regular Masses. If that changes as they get older, we’ll be more inclined to check it out.
 
Cartesian said:
Wow. Lucky You. Where I am living there are less than 10 masses a year. And you have mass for teens among other choices. I would never complain.
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I will be praying for you. In this area we are extremely blessed to have multiple Mass choices each Sunday and several priests assigned to our parish. I will offer my Masses this weekend (Saturday and Sunday) for your intentions.
 
I don’t think anything that is packing the pews is bad. I have never attended one of these masses but my first mass experience as an adult (the one I remember) was at a friends Parish they did a Saturday evening Mass that was a bit more geared to young adults, they play guitar and things, it was nice and engaged me. Eventually I found my Parish and especially loved the gospel mass. I come from a Protestant Family so knowing there was a Mass that played music I had heard of was awesome. No the music wasn’t the only reason I went but it got my butt in a seat and eventually helped me hear the call to come into Communion with the Church.
 
I completely agree, and I’m a young adult/late teen.

I can never understand why someone could call mass “lame” and/or “boring”. It honestly saddens me when someone says that. It’s heaven on earth. For me its pure bliss, I wish I could go everyday for the rest of my life. 🙂

Edit: Once I attended mass at the shrine of st. elizabeth ann seton, it had incense, and everything was very traditional. Majority of the lay people there were high schoolers. 😃
 
Well… I had to work Sundays for my previous job so I would go to the Life Teen Mass at my parish, because It was held in the early evening. It was not my first choice. But the kids at my Parish always sang everything with a lot of reverence. You could feel it and it was inspiring. I sometimes would judge whether a song was good or not by if it distracted me when I was trying to pray, or if it did not disturb my prayer. And a lot of the stuff they played and sang actually would not disturb my prayer.

On the other hand, I attended a Lift Teen Mass at a different Parish one time. I did not like it. It sounded more like the kids were trying to turn The Mass into a rock concert. Not for me. And the music was distracting me from my prayers, not helping them. So I guess sometimes it depends on the parish. Oh and for the record, I was 27-28 at the time I was going to the LTM. It could be good if it is done reverently, I would say.
 
Mrs_Sally said:
I will be praying for you. In this area we are extremely blessed to have multiple Mass choices each Sunday and several priests assigned to our parish. I will offer my Masses this weekend (Saturday and Sunday) for your intentions.
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Mrs. Sally. I have no words. I am very thankful for your prayers, I really need them. God bless You
 
Cartesian said:
Wow. I am fan of Gregorian chant and incense as well :thumbs:

Nevertheless, your advice also aplies to you. If it gets to the point when You would just skip the mass because there isn’t Gregorian chant or incense, and those are what takes you to mass, than that COULD mean your faith is not strong.
My father since child taught me well this (not picking masses for taste) and it is being very useful now that I don’t have the luxury to choose. My faith is stronger than ever with the only mass I can go per month, with no chant, etc.
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In light of your liturgical preference, you may wish to visit an Eastern Catholic church in communion with the Apostolic See at Rome. While we do not use Gregorian chant, we do use incense as part of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and the liturgy is very beautiful.
 
mommamaree said:
I don’t have teens yet, but my oldest daughter, who is almost 9yo, hates the Life Teen Mass. Mostly, the music is way too loud and self-indulgent. However, our pastor is usually the celebrant, which is a good thing because he injects a great deal of reverence into the Mass. He wears traditional robes, uses incense, and many more wonderful reverent things. And it is our smallest Mass of the weekend, so it has the benefit of actually being in the church. All other English Masses for Sunday are squeezed into the parish hall. Also, lately it seems that our pastor has been nixing the worst offending songs. So the Life Teen Mass at our parish, with the exception of the shrill and monotonous music, is overall quite nice. So I think a large part of the problem with those Masses can be attributed to the pastor not leading the parish in the way it should go for worship. Our pastor accepts the Life Teen Mass as having a proper place in our parish’s worship life, but he is guarding the celebration of that Mass and keeping it as reverent as he can.
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I’m sure you already know this, but I’ll remind others.

A child, especially a girl, undergoes huge changes from year to year as they are growing up, and the biggest changes occur as the girl begins menstruation and enters the teen years.

mommamaree, I guarantee that at age thirteen, your daughter will be completely different than she is at age nine. Hopefully those differences will all be positive.
 
Depends on the Mass. I’ve been to several LifeTeen Masses, and while I prefer something more traditional, the content of the hymns and homilies is staunchpy Catyolic at the ones I have been to. We each have our own attractions to different spiritualities. If they are led to the True Faith, who am I to judge?
 
My local life teen mass is pretty reverent other than the music (which is more or less just my preference. I don’t like a loud beating drum at mass, but its not like its a sin or anything. I think maybe when people complain about life teen masses, they need to look at the parish. I’m sure if the parish is somewhat orthodox and has a good priest, the life teen program will be similar. I know having good priests has helped at the parish i go to where life teen is at. It’s a little on the charismatic side for me but it’s produced very great kids. In fact it’s produced quite a few vocations. Don’t get me wrong it isn’t perfect, but I think at the same time we need to recognize good fruits, while also pruning what is bad. I think life teen is like this
 
Here is what I know. These are the facts compiled with my own experiences, because at the end of the day, my experiences are all I have.

First of all, there are many cafeteria Catholics out there who go to mass most, or maybe even every, Sunday. But they do not know why they are doing what they are doing. I was raised in that sort of household. We went to mass every Sunday throughout my childhood, but I never had an understanding of that faith. My father would begrudgingly go to mass, my mother would meet the minimum requirements, and I would do whatever I could to keep my mind busy throughout mass.

When I was becoming a teenager our parish adopted the LT mass and confirmation classes were held immediately after mass. Naturally, this is the mass that my parents would drop me off at with all of the other pre-con kids. I went to this mass and enjoyed it much more than the traditional mass. Did I ever receive the message that was being sent though? No, the music merely served as a way to “distract me from being distracted”. Knowing most of the kids who went to this mass, I was not the minority. There was very little reverence for the communion or prayer. The music and mass setting simply made mass tolerable for these teenagers.

What I’m seeing in many of the responses to this thread are people defending this mass because of a change in culture. Isn’t the church above the culture of our society? I see a lot of blame being placed on the mass for not being engaging enough. Shouldn’t that be something we deal with within ourselves? If you are not being engaged during mass then what are you doing there? I find it hard to believe that a truly reverent person would label a mass “boring” despite how traditional it is.

If a mass is filled with people who are not engaged in their faith outside of church, why does it matter if they are engaged in music inside a church?

It just seems like the LT mass treats a symptom instead of a problem. That is all I’m getting at here. And again, these are just my personal experiences. I am not aiming to insult anybody.

Joshua C.
 
Also, I should note:

I have only been to a LT mass at one parish, so I only have one parish’s LT mass to compare things to. I’m not a LT mass aficionado lol, far from it.
 
I totally agree. The Lifeteen program is excellent, the masses are lively and engaging, and I love the music, and I’m not a teen.
 
joshvanrad said:
Here is what I know. These are the facts compiled with my own experiences, because at the end of the day, my experiences are all I have.
…
First of all, there are many cafeteria Catholics out there who go to mass most, or maybe even every, Sunday. But they do not know why they are doing what they are doing

…

The music and mass setting simply made mass tolerable for these teenagers.

What I’m seeing in many of the responses to this thread are people defending this mass because of a change in culture. Isn’t the church above the culture of our society? I see a lot of blame being placed on the mass for not being engaging enough. Shouldn’t that be something we deal with within ourselves? If you are not being engaged during mass then what are you doing there? I find it hard to believe that a truly reverent person would label a mass “boring” despite how traditional it is.
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Do you really label people inside the Church, whether they are cafeteria Catholic or not? How can you tell they don’t know why or what they are doing? If this is only about your personal experience, how can you know what are the feelings about ‘those teenagers’ and the mass is but tolerable for them? What is a truly reverent person, can you tell just by looking? I am just honestly trying to understand how from personal experience you can get such advanced conclusions.
 
joshvanrad said:
Here is what I know. These are the facts compiled with my own experiences, because at the end of the day, my experiences are all I have.

First of all, there are many cafeteria Catholics out there who go to mass most, or maybe even every, Sunday. But they do not know why they are doing what they are doing. I was raised in that sort of household. We went to mass every Sunday throughout my childhood, but I never had an understanding of that faith. My father would begrudgingly go to mass, my mother would meet the minimum requirements, and I would do whatever I could to keep my mind busy throughout mass.

When I was becoming a teenager our parish adopted the LT mass and confirmation classes were held immediately after mass. Naturally, this is the mass that my parents would drop me off at with all of the other pre-con kids. I went to this mass and enjoyed it much more than the traditional mass. Did I ever receive the message that was being sent though? No, the music merely served as a way to “distract me from being distracted”. Knowing most of the kids who went to this mass, I was not the minority. There was very little reverence for the communion or prayer. The music and mass setting simply made mass tolerable for these teenagers.

What I’m seeing in many of the responses to this thread are people defending this mass because of a change in culture. Isn’t the church above the culture of our society? I see a lot of blame being placed on the mass for not being engaging enough. Shouldn’t that be something we deal with within ourselves? If you are not being engaged during mass then what are you doing there? I find it hard to believe that a truly reverent person would label a mass “boring” despite how traditional it is.

If a mass is filled with people who are not engaged in their faith outside of church, why does it matter if they are engaged in music inside a church?

It just seems like the LT mass treats a symptom instead of a problem. That is all I’m getting at here. And again, these are just my personal experiences. I am not aiming to insult anybody.

Joshua C.
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To be fair, you are right that people shouldn’t need to be entertained in order to want to come to Mass. They should want to come to Mass because they love God and want to worship Him. On that I completely agree with you.

HOWEVER…it is also true that we are human, and we are sinners. That’s why Jesus came to us in the first place. A person who is completely disinterested in the Mass may need a little “boost” to get them in the door, something that does catch their interest and makes them want to be involved. That is what LifeTeen Masses attempt to do. The people attending the Masses may not be there for the right reason initially, and they may or may not continue coming to Mass for the right reasons or at all, but it is a start. LifeTeen Masses at least make an attempt to draw people in and get them interested in the faith.

The title of your original post asks the question: “How can LifeTeen Masses be Considered A Good Thing?” ^^^ That’s how.
 
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