The OCA stuff is good and I will second the kudos on their material. Deacon Joe Kreta has some pretty good stuff with his youth ministry for the Ukrainian Orthodox as well. I have seen some pretty cool things at the local Antiochian parish with some of their material as well.

There are many good resources out there amongst the Orthodox. We shouldn't feel intimidated or scared of them. Especially not when compared to some of the more watered down modern Latin stuff around these days. The Orthodox material is much more germane to where we need to be catechetically and liturgically with the youth.

Now you all understand why it isn't surprising to know that because we in the Rutehenian Metropolia do not evangelize our "yoots" when they need it the most (during their High School years) that 90% of "our yoots" who do stay religious take the easy way out when the are on their own in college, and assimilate into the Latin Church! Until our newly-consecrated hierarchs take seriously the evangelization of our "yoots", this "mass exodus(pardon the pun)" to the Latin Church will never end. If we were doing our job of evanglizing our youth, WE WOULD HAVE SEEN MORE OF THEM AT OUR MT. MACRINA OTPUST THIS PAST LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!

Ung-Certez

...either that or they desire more tradition and go Orthodox. God Bless.

IC XC NIKA,
-Nik!
"That website guy!

[ 09-06-2002: Message edited by: Nik ]

Guys,

In all honestly, I think the MP (Metropolia of P'burgh)not only has serious problems in the areas of catechetics, catechist training, evangelization, and youth ministry, but also when it just comes to "retaining" our youth and young adults. From what I can tell, many of our Ruthenian parishes (especially back East) have what I call a "dumbell distribution": many small children, few young couples, but a large number of older couples or single adults.

In his talk on Eastern Catholic Evangelization, Shawn (Yuhannon) Dorisan noted that "denominational loyalty is not as strong now as it was in the past" (actually, I think that line goes back to Anthony Dragani's original draft). It's a given that we are going to lose some parishoners, but I think we many EC parishes are facing is steady hemorraghing, with little new blood.

Ultimately, I think, all the issues we're talking about (the Ruthenians trying to reinvent the wheel, lack of Eastern Catholic cooperation between the jurisdictions, etc...) comes down to even more basic problems of lack strong leadership and vision.

Where is the Ruthenian equivalent to the late Melkite Bishop Tawil's (eternal memory!) "Courage to be Ourselves"? Just where does a young Ruthenian go to for real direction and inspiration. Name one Ruthenian eparch, from now back 30 years speaks with the passion and concern that Pope John Paul II does (other than Met. Judson [memory eternal!].....[crickets chirp, air conditioning hums along]...or even drives home to our faithful even a 1/3 of what he says?....[more chirping and humming] See what I mean.

For example, little over a year ago, I gave a talk on the Vocation of Eastern Catholic Youth at the Van Nuys eparchial ByzanTEEN gathering in Phoenix (and Gilbert). Where sources did I turn to for substantive quotes and inspiration? Mostly speeches to young people from the Holy Father's trips to Damascus and Ukraine as well as the abovementioned "Courage to Be Ourselves".

Not only have the Ruthenian hierarchs historically have not only not lead the youth in pursuing higher challenges and ideals, but fails to even give ideals or challenges, or a real vision for the future for that matter.

Why hasn't the bulk of our Eparchial newsletters gone beyond cut-and-paste journalism? Where is the Ukrainian or Ruthenian counterpart to NAMY? Heck, why haven't the powers that be considered seriously one pan Byzantine BCYO? And, what exactly IS the Metropolitan Youth Commission doing?

S'nami Boh!

Darrenn

Darenn, right on the money.

The Orthodox have the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, which is a JOINT venture of all the jurisdictions in the SCOBA (how ironic, the Orthodox showing us how to work together between jurisdictions) on young adult/college ministry.

This approach works and we Eastern Catholics should learn a lesson from the unified approach to our young adults/college age men and women.

We need to take an approach similar to the ECDD that produced the Light for Life series and get all of the eparchies involved.