Please don’t misunderstand, I love the richness of our Catholic faith, I feel so blessed to be Catholic and have the faith we have and can testify to back to the first Chirstians. However, change is part of our faith.
The Jesuits were initially very successful as evengelizing foreign countries by living and worshiping accoridng to their cultural needs. Ultimately, they were forced by the Church to stop as it was not accepted at that time. Nevertheless, Vatican II opened the Church to the same style of evangelization that the Jesuits had begun so many years earlier.
That is to say that there is not a wrong answer in this (and no, I am not talking about relativism). There is, of course, one Absolute Truth, but so long as the Mass maintains the essential elements required for it to be constituted a Mass, I do not see the harm in upgrading the music or tayloring the homily to appear to teens.
Most Parishes I know of that have Life Teen, have at least 5-6 Masses during the weekend. If someone does not like LifeTeen, they have other options.
I recently read a book about Contextual Theology that discusses Seven different methods of Contextual Theology which is essentially the ways in which we relate our Catholic faith to others. Some are more liberal than others, even to liberal for me!! But I think that relating our faith to our children in such a way that they are uplifted, encouraged and on fire for God is a beautiful thing and I am proud of our Church for recognizing this need and attending to it.
(Sorry for such a long post…in the middle of writing a paper and still in the writting mode…)
Julia
