Parish Dos and Don'ts from Millennials

[Pattylt]

Yes, that’s a big difference. We don’t have confession and worship times are pretty much set in stone and always have been so the points about mass and confession changes are very valid. I was responding more to the complaint of seniors running all the groups.

And Theology on Tap with beer sounds great! I’d go to that.

 

[awesomecatholic]

Totally agree on the Confession thing and the one about daily Mass. The parish I will be confirmed at has it on Wednesday nights. I have to disagree on the music thing though. Older people like those songs because they remember them well from their younger days. I personally love songs like"Here I am Lord" and I am the Bread of Life".

 

[RCIAGraduate]

Oop, sorry about that, I didn’t read the article at all (responding to your comment in isolation) and was being trying to be tongue in cheek. I do ask for your forgiveness and with this moment come away with a better understanding of communication through the web. Sorry if I don’t sound serious.

Thank you to the poster who tried to speak for me, I didn’t read the article so I overlooked the part about mass.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

I think organizations focus on millennials because there is a big opportunity for growth there, and they are the generation having kids at this point.
Something else that I think would be helpful: nearby parishes working together to stagger their Mass / Confession times. Sometimes I am looking for a Mass for a Holy Day, and all the nearby parishes have Mass at the same (inconvenient) time. Who not coordinate, so there can be coverage for various times?

 

[RCIAGraduate]

I would note that in addition to this Newman Center, there is a diocesan youth Adoration for people in late teens and 20s that happens up the street at the “traditional music” church , where I usually go to weekly Adoration whether it’s youth Adoration night or just regular, and the twentysomethings tend to have a mixture of choral (chant, polyphony etc) and contemporary music there at the Youth adoration night. It seems like there is a big mixture of tastes and it’s not like 100 percent of the young people or even 50 percent of them want to always hear old organ hymns and Gregorian chant. I would presume the ones who love the chant are at the TLM parish.

I think you would have to take a poll of every person under 30 to get a true read on this…and I am pretty sure just from what I’ve seen, heard and experienced that you would get a range of answers. Some of them would probably like a little of everything - like I do.

Do you think this is an indication that the Church will be taking a traditional twist/turn in the coming years? Nationally (for the US Church,), maybe even globally?

 

[Peeps]

My daughters are millennials. One is Catholic, the other is non-churched (along with her husband).

I know what both of them would say. They would say what the Gospel was a few weeks ago (or was it last week?)–“They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Millennials are lonely. They study and earn degrees, then work harder than their parents worked, often taking on multiple jobs to pay off student loans and then go home to a lonely apartment or a restaurant and eat a lonely dinner. They have a hard time meeting people who are truly “deep souls” and who want to be more than just party buddies.

My daughter has stopped going to Mass. In the two years that she was attending, no one reached out to her in spite of her many many heroic efforts to get involved, make friends, join groups, volunteer to help, etc. No one even called her when she invited them to attend a play that she was working on and thought Catholics would be interested in.

So she gave up. I can’t say I blame her, but it breaks my heart that no one was interested in this lovely young woman sitting all by herself week after week. Actually, it makes me angry.

My other daughter and her husband don’t attend church. When she was home a few weeks ago and sang at one of the Protestant churches where I regularly play piano/organ, she received such a loving welcome and people prayed right during the service for each other–she told me afterwards that if she could find a church like that, where people actually care for each other, that she and her husband would start going to church again.

If only we Christians could learn how to demonstrate love to just ordinary folks, not necessarily poor, sick in prison, grieving, etc.

My husband had major surgery a few weeks ago and has been home convalescing. Not one person from our parish where we have been members for 15 years has called, sent a card, stopped by, etc. That’s really sad. No wonder millennials don’t come to church. No wonder people in general, of all ages, don’t come to church.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Im sorry to hear about your husband. I hope he feels better soon. I will say a prayer for him.

Do your fellow parishioners know your husband is sick? When someone from daily Mass or my prayer groups is hospitalized, many people ask after them, send cards or visit. Usually someone needs to broadcast the news though. Catholics aren’t as uncaring as the picture you’re painting, and millennials are no more lonely than the last 3 generations of young people before them.

In my experience, every generation of young people think their loneliness and trepidation and struggles are unique. They will realize when they get to be about 40 that they weren’t that unique.

 

[Peeps]

In my experience, every generation of young people think their loneliness and trepidation and struggles are unique. They will realize when they get to be about 40 that they weren’t that unique.

I think what makes this generation very different is the pervasiveness of the online world. So many simple things that used to put us in real-life contact with fellow human beings are now done online.

I also think that, as I said in the other post, that this generation is working harder with less social contacts than previous generations–many millennials despair of ever paying off their student loans. They don’t feel right about getting married and/or having children as long as they have that debt.

I work in a hospital, and about half of my fellow employees are millennials (the other half are boomers like me). Our lunch breaks used to be a time of chatting and real conversation. Now lunch hour is absolutely silent while everyone fingers their I-phone. People don’t even turn on the TV anymore–well, I do, because I don’t have cable at home and love watching HGTV! But I often get the feeling that I am disturbing everyone else’s phone life.

What has helped my daughter a little is my advice to her to seek out a LOCAL diner-type restaurant or pizza place and a local friendly (not sleazy!) bar, and go there regularly, at least a few times a week. Also, do as much business as possible in her own neighborhood and get to know the employees in those businesses.

She has followed my advice and has a couple of friendly places where she hangs out and everybody knows her name and she knows everybody’s name, too!

As for church, I told her to go to Mass and not worry about making any friends or socializing. Just go to satisfy the Church obligation and to receive Jesus.

She’s following that advice, too, but don’t be surprised if someday, you read about a young woman who stood up during a Mass and called out, HYPOCRITES! She is the type to do this, and she has nothing to lose and much to gain if it wakes up the Catholic Churches in the U.S. and lets them know that their people are lonely.

 

[Shasta-Rose]

So she gave up. I can’t say I blame her, but it breaks my heart that no one was interested in this lovely young woman sitting all by herself week after week. Actually, it makes me angry.

Mass probably isn’t the best time and place to make contacts. I’m an older woman who sits by herself week after week, and I’m good with that. I’m there to worship and for the Eucharist. And I’m used to doing stuff by myself.

Then I joined the church’s women’s group and got involved in volunteering. One of the volunteer opportunities for working people might be the decorating of the church for seasonal decor. That’s all done during the evenings, as far as I can tell, and they always need people to schlepp items out of the storage and into the church, and then all of the arranging.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

I’m wondering how parishioners can reach out? When they can’t use the space, don’t have access to the bulletin, etc.

 

[GospelOfMatthew]

I think fostering a community vibe is so important. Our faith is very much a communal one

 

[Gorgias]

My pet peeve, however, is when you have 5 parishes all within about 5 miles of each other and all of them are having the Masses in the morning at 8 ,9 etc.

Parishes act individually, not collaboratively. You’d have to make the appeal up the chain of command, then, to get some sort of regional-level scheduling effort to happen.

drive about 15 miles to a noon Mass (available at only 2 places)

How many people go to those noon Masses? The answer to your question might be “the local pastor sees that he only gets 10 people for a noon Mass, so he decides not to schedule it.”

I simply don’t understand why at least one church in this very Catholic area here with way more priests than average can’t offer a 5 or 6 pm Mass on weekdays.

I can’t speak to the dynamic where you are, but for me (here in the Rust Belt) the answer is “we already have fewer priests than ever before, and are expecting even that number to be cut in half over the next 5-6 years.” And yet, the people I talk with are constantly saying, “we need more Masses!”

We are getting a new pastor here soon and I’m wondering whether to mention this to him when he shows up.

Not a bad idea.

I often can’t get to confession because I work weekends.

Check the bulletins. Do they say “Saturday at 4pm and by appointment”? You could always call and set up a time that’s doable for you…

We Gen Xers often feel like our Generation is ignored or forgotten about. It always seems like the Baby Boomers are passing the ball to the Millenials and skipping our generation.

I think it’s more like “they dropped it, we ignored it, and the Millenials are kicking it around now.”

That is the reason there are still deaneries and pastors assigned as deans, to corrdinate things such as mass times and confession times. But, as a general rule, they do not do that.

Are you sure that’s what deaneries are for? Over my way, back when we had deaneries, that absolutely was not part of their mission!

 

[Gorgias]

Yeah, our Cathedral has a 12:05 mass daily mass

the Capuchins have 5 daily masses each day… upper church… lower church…

Our Cathedral also has confession 7 days a week

To be fair, you seem to be talking about parishes that are not only really large but also staffed with many priests. That’s simply not characteristic of most parishes, wouldn’t you say?

It was stuff like this that makes me think the approach was arrogant and disrespectful

Nah. They’re just taking what they learned in a consumer culture and bringing those presumptions and techniques into the church. Not ‘arrogant’, just ‘normal’. We reap what we sow.

For example: when I joined by parish (which is in the suburbs), the best adult faith formation program the Parish was running took place as a lunch & learn on Thursdays. So the only people who could attend were retirees, ppl who worked nights, and ppl who worked very close to the parish.

Ask the folks who set up the program. I’m gonna bet that they’ll tell you that they tried it in the evening and got marginal response, but when they scheduled it during the day, they got a great response.

they often only run the programs when it is convenient for the volunteers or staff. Not necessarily when it would be best for the parish.

So… how do you think you would be able to staff a program with volunteers, at times that aren’t convenient for them?

I would absolutely understand if only I and 2 or so others were interested in attending a 7 am daily mass and 40 wanted it at 8. I would never expect a schedule change for that. But maybe there’s others who would go at 7.

So, the ‘trick’, then, is to get together a bunch of like-minded people and show the pastor that all 25 of you want a 7am Mass. That would be more effective than just “gee, Father, would you be willing to schedule a 7am Mass? Maybe there are others who want it, too”… right?

I always wonder what the Catholic Church is going to do in 15-20 years when a good number of the older generation have either passed on or are no longer physically able to volunteer.

We’ll downsize.

Do your fellow parishioners know your husband is sick?

This!
I volunteered to do communion calls at a local hospital for a few years, a while back. My parish’s secretary would tell me that folks would get really mad at them, because even the pastor wouldn’t reach out to them, either during their hospital stay or while recovering at home. I let her know that we were trained that, due to HIPAA restrictions, I was absolutely prohibited from talking about who was at the hospital. (So, I started requesting that folks call the parish, to inform them of their own (and their loved ones’) hospital stays.)

It’s not always “no one cares”. Sometimes, it’s “we make assumptions about who knows.”

 

[redbetta]

I don’t want to do appointment confessions because I want to remain anonymous.

 

[GospelOfMatthew]

My college during the year offers mass at 11am, 7pm, 9pm, and 10pm. Pretty convenient

 

[tafan2]

Are you sure that’s what deaneries are for? Over my way, back when we had deaneries, that absolutely was not part of their mission!

A good friend of mine who was a local pastor was the dean of our area for a while. This was one of the explicit functions which he described. Not to dictate parishes mass times, confession times, etc: but to help the various pastors work together to accomplish these goals.

Can. 555 §1. In addition to the faculties legitimately given to him by particular law, the vicar forane has the duty and right:

1/ of promoting and coordinating common pastoral activity in the vicariate;

His parish at one point had a 6:30 am and 8:00 am dialing mass, he wanted to drop the 6:30am mass and move it to the 7:00pm and make it a Spanish mass. Before he did so, he waited for the meeting of the deanery and discussed it with them. Tere was already one 6:30am mass in the deanery and no Spanish daily masses, so everyone went along with it, but I remember explicitly he would not make the change until the pastors in the deanery had met.

 

[Gorgias]

I don’t want to do appointment confessions because I want to remain anonymous.

So, get yourself into the confessional before the priest arrives! I mean, you could make that particular request known at the time of the phone call in which you request the confession appointment, right?

 

[redbetta]

I did that once at my college Newman’s center. I just hate inconveniencing priests who always have something going on. That is, if I can even get a hold of one in the first place.

 

[Gorgias]

A good friend of mine who was a local pastor was the dean of our area for a while. This was one of the explicit functions which he described. Not to dictate parishes mass times, confession times, etc: but to help the various pastors work together to accomplish these goals.

Interesting! (That never happened around here, when we had deans and deaneries…)

 

[blackforest]

How many people go to those noon Masses? The answer to your question might be “the local pastor sees that he only gets 10 people for a noon Mass, so he decides not to schedule it.”

I suspect that quite a few attend if the parish is in an area with a lot of day-job workers. I attended a noon-time daily Mass at the cathedral in downtown Spokane, and it was well-attended by both the elderly and younger adults on lunch break.