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This is a blog for Blessed John XXIII Catholic Church in Fontana and Rialto, CA. It is our hope that through this blog we can all be more like Jesus in our everyday lives. Please do post comments, ideas, thoughts, concerns, etc. and let's get a real communication circle going here. Let us make this our own little online center. And if you're not a member of this ministry, that's OK. We like to hear from you as well. Jesus loves you. Everyday.
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I love to write in online forums and give my opinions. I do not see a reason why I should not post here as well.
ReplyDeleteSince I see that there is not much activity, I would like to say that at least I am interested in participating in an online community.
I'll be commenting more in the future.
I would like to take advantage of this comment box to share my personal perspective in what the youths in our community need.
ReplyDeleteI have been looking around Blessed John XXIII for a youth ministry that I would feel comfortable assisting in. After participating for an extended period of time in one of the youth ministries at this church, I noticed a special need among the youth and I moved on from the ministry to try to address this issue. I noticed that some of the youth were almost completely oblivious and apathetic to issues that are beyond the walls of the church. Issues that influence them indirectly are ignored; for example the high rate of teen prostitutes in San Bernardino County (60% of the women arrested for prostitution in 2008 in Ontario were minors [La Prensa Feb 6, 2009]), the drug wars in Mexico that are fueled undoubtedly by at least some people in the Inland Empire buying or selling drugs, and inhumane treatment of immigrants. I see that some of the youths that I met see these problems as so large and so distant that they believe it will not benefit them to even think about these things. In short, I see youth that are socially unaware of their place in society and do not see the extent of their actions in our community.
I also saw that there were some youths that did not think critically/analytically at all. I have seen how some of the events or services that they have planned have fallen apart, and instead of trying to understand what went wrong and try not to have it happen again, they just hoped that things will be better the next time around. Of course, the consequence of not being critical in the services that we offer will inevitably lead to services that are poor in quality.
The issue that I am especially interested in is that I also see some youth that are simply apathetic all around. When talking about a controversial issues (abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration reform, celibacy in the priesthood, etc.) the only thing worse than having an opinion that conflicts with what the Catholic Church teaches is not having an opinion at all. I see that some youths in our community do not have an opinion in such matters. This bothers me especially because these youths will become the next leaders of our beloved and holy Catholic Church. How will the Church be if the next leaders are not used to meditating upon social issues with neither the interest nor the imagination of trying to find out why the world is the way it is?
I have seen how the youth in our community have tried to find there place in the Church, I have seen how they offered services with passion and devotion, and I have also seen how they sometimes achieved complete peace within their soul and have become intimate with God. But I have also seen how some youths have come for a long time then have continued with a sinful life as if they were never involved in church, I have seen how some have left worse than how they came, I have seen how they have come into contact with and influenced other people and communities only for every trace of that influence to have disappeared in time, and I have seen how there have been other important ministries that have also needed help go unnoticed. Some say that I only look at the bad things, that I want to find something wrong in everything, or that nothing is ever good enough for me. This is not true; I recognize and appreciate the blessings that our youths have. But the bad things that sometimes occur are not going to disappear on their own; they will only disappear by a conscious effort to stop them and I choose to be aware of these problems so that it will be possible to address them.
I recently said to a friend, “We need for more of the active lay parishioners assisting in our young adult ministries to be college educated.” To which my friend responded, “But we need to accept that the volunteers that we have now are either undocumented or have come from an educationally humble background. So it would be unfair and unrealistic to ask them to be ‘more educated’.” I responded, “Why don’t we invite the college educated in our community to become actively involved in our young adult ministries?” To which my friend responded, “But there is almost no one with college experience in our community. So we just have to work with the people that we have.”
ReplyDeleteAfter meditating on this issue for a while I thought to myself, instead of being fixated on helping those youths outside of church who are “lost in drugs”, “drowning in sin”, or needing “spiritual motivation” (which is not bad, by the way), why do we not focus more on motivating our own lay parishioners to pursue higher education?
Why should we do this? Well, I see that our volunteers are great in caring for those lost youths that are outside of our church, but when it comes to answering the “so what” responses of those youths while preaching to them, they are terrible. Also, they are terrible in explaining why we should believe what the Catholic Church teaches; they basically say “because the Church says so”. If a young adult believes with a passion that it is sad and horrible to tell a homosexual couple that they cannot be married, he or she will definitely not believe the Church on the grounds of “because the Church says so”. The youths not normally involved in church have their own philosophical arguments which lead them to believe that their beliefs are correct even if they conflict with the Church’s teachings. In order for them to change their beliefs and adopt that of the Church’s, their arguments would need to be “proven” false; they will not change their beliefs if they believe the arguments that led them to have those beliefs are “valid”. Socrates taught that we should all examine our reasoning to check if they make sense; if we want those “lost” young adults to change their beliefs, we need to invite them into a philosophical debate where they can examine and critique their own arguments.
As we can see, being able to have this type of activity with our youths would probably require higher than high-school education. This will not only help those “lost” youths, but our own laymen and laywomen. I occasionally find church volunteers that absolutely do not understand why it is a sin to be in favor of gay-marriage or contraceptives and sometimes even abortion. It is surprising for me to see that sometimes these volunteers stay in church for a long time and still do not change their beliefs. This might be the consequence of having no philosophical conversations to examine our own beliefs.
Of course, we do not HAVE to promote education and I very well might be exaggerating all these claims. So what do you all think?
I have to admit, I am following the Iranian protests like a duck with a 100 dollar bill stuck on it. I find it amazing that the protesters are so young and they are resisting their government in hopes of being able to shape a better future for them and their children. It is also scary to me that there might be a civil war and that this revolution will turn deadly.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the events in Iran seem to not affect us in any way, we can still learn a lot, especially about religion. It can be argued that the problem in Iran results from the virtually unlimited power of the supreme cleric. He has supreme power because Iranians in the past wanted to create a Muslim state with a religious figure in charge. To us, it would be like the Pope being the king of the USA. And based on this system of government, any opposition could be easily labeled a sin. Before the elections, those against the government were scared to voice their opinions, but now, the possibly fraudulent elections have motivated them to become vocal. Since the leaders were accustomed to tricking protestors not to voice their opinions, they were extremely surprised to see how many people were against them when they finally came out.
This problem can be seen in every church from time to time. Sometimes, if a leader in a local church does something that the majority of the people agree with, the few people against him/her/them are seen as people that “just want to cause trouble” or that “need to have more faith” or, my favorite, that “are lost”. This is one reason why a church might have deep rivalries that cause divisions among the community.
I can personally testify to having been told this in our parish. But I will not talk about those experiences right now. I write this because I have seen how valuable it is to be focused on world news and to learn from the experiences of others so that we will not have to live the same horrible experiences that others have. We could learn from what is happening in Iran to avoid a similar situation from occurring in our parish.
Because I know how important it is to meditate on events like what is happening in Iran, I decided to ask around the church to see if others know about any of the world events that are happening. I did not keep track, but I must have asked around 20 active parishioners about the Iran revolution, Judge Sonia Soto-Mayor’s nomination, President Obama’s financial reform plan, the DREAM act, the Holocaust Memorial shooting, and a few more issues that are popular. None of them knew anything.
The youth of our parish (and sometimes adults) are mostly unaware of what is happening outside the walls of the church. Where will we be if the future leaders of our church are unaware of the world we live in? The consequence could very well be that our children will probably live the same difficult and unnecessary experiences that others have lived. It is unnecessary because there is no reason why we cannot learn from the mistakes of others. If we do not learn from the mistakes of others, we could possibly see more ministries with stunted progress or that collapse. Another consequence could also be that our youth will probably not grow up to run for any political office or work for social change and justice. That means that the political leaders and the social architects could possibly be people that are not religious.
It is easy for us to complain about our political leaders and the laws that exist, but we need to ask ourselves, how did I help in making my church fertile land for Catholic leaders to come out of? My personal opinion is that we are not well with educating or reinforcing the education of our youths. And I will say again, we should be focusing more on motivating our parishioners (especially the youth) to pursue higher education and reinforcing it in our parish.
I had a friend who just lived a religious retreat. She mentioned something that surprised her. Normally, the lectures that are given have themes like “The Love of God” or “Sin and its Consequences” or “Life in Christ”. However, my friend said one of the lectures that were given was titled “Education”. This surprised us both because we have not seen many Catholic Hispanic ministries that promote education.
ReplyDeleteIt was good to see this quality in a local ministry. I also kept this in mind when I had a meeting with one of the youth ministries in our parish. In this meeting, we happened to talk about what we could accomplish if we had just the right people to volunteer at church. This is something that I have thought about before. I started saying a lot of crazy ideas like having a drama ministry, or a cinema ministry, a clothing and apparel ministry, and even a restaurant. I also talked about how close we are to accomplishing this; I mention that I know a few people at UCR that are Catholic that have the skills to do things like this. Then the question was asked “what is stopping us from realizing these ideas?” I had to honestly say what I believed, and that is that we have difficulty realizing these ideas because Hispanic ministries normally do not promote education. If a ministry never promotes education, the members of that ministry have a low probability of pursuing education that can teach them a new talent that can be utilized.
Of course one of the people in this meeting said something similar to: “surely we can find a way to have these educated and talented people here, we can for example invite these young men and women to assist us.” I responded by saying that these people normally have other goals that they are focused on achieving, and that we CAN try but honestly they will more than likely reject our invitation. I know this because I have invited them before. I also said that our best option is to motivate our own parishioners to pursue higher education. Yes it will take years for them to learn a new talent, but this not only to help us in church but it is to help them in their lives.
I pray to see more ministries like the one that my friend encountered, ministries that put a bigger than normal emphasis on education.