Today's minister: the key to ministering to youths: role models and lots of guidance and support from parents

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 21, 1994 by William Bole

BOSTON - Greg Dobie Moser recalled working as a youth minister in "a rich parish" where a parent once tried to motivate a youngster to complete preparation for confirmation with the promise of a new car.

His tale was one of the real-life stories that repeatedly intruded on the third annual National Ministries Conference that bore the heady theme: "Today's Minister: Prophet in the Church."

Moser, now a youth minister in the Columbus, Ohio, diocese, told the story during a workshop on confirmation and youth ministry at the Jan. 6-8 gathering, which drew 500 pastoral ministers from around the country despite snowstorms that belted the Boston area.

Those in attendance also heard Fr. Richard McBrien use the late politician Tip O'Neill as an example of service and ministry.

According to Moser, the parents of the reluctant confirmation candidate had told him, "If you go through with this program and get confirmed, you get a new car."

Moser said he sat down with the teenager and asked what he really wanted. The young man wanted out. Why? "He said, |When I come in here (to confirmation class), I feel that this is something very important, too important to do for a car,' "Moser related.

The young man bowed out, but his parents bought him the car anyway. Moser laughed it off, adding facetiously, "I just love those happy endings."

The conference highlighted practical matter of ministry, such as how you explain the meaning of confirmation to kids when their parents are jangling car keys in front of them.

Participants were mostly laymen and women who work in parishes as pastoral associates or in specialized ministries such as religious education, said Joseph Moore of New England Consultants in Ministry. The nonprofit group, based in North Branford, Conn., organized the gathering.

In a discussion after his keynote address, McBrien, well-known professor of theology at Notre Dame, was asked about role models for Catholic ministry today. McBrien took an example not from religion but from politics.

"We're talking about people like Tip O'Neill," McBrien said a day after O'Neill, legendary lunch-bucket liberal and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, died of a heart attack in Boston.

"Tip O'Neill has a lot to teach us in the legacy of his life as a servant. He was credible because he responded to people in need, especially those given the short end of the stick. He has a lot to teach us about the kind of pastoral ministry we ought to embody and exercise in the church," McBrien said.

He had less flattering things to say about some leaders m the church, including the archbishop of Hufford, Conn., who happens to be McBrien's bishop. McBrien did not mention Archbishop Daniel A. Cronin by name, but he ridiculed a recent decision by the archbishop to block a soup kitchen from relocating to a downtown parish. Cronin said a soup kitchen in the heart of Hartford would hinder the city's revitalization efforts.

The archbishop's decision, coming as it did at Christmastime, triggered embarrassing headlines in newspapers across the country.

McBrien, who was ordained in the Hartford archdiocese, mocked the reasoning of well-off Catholics who have rushed to Cronin's defense.

"The church is just a house of worship. We can't be distracted with all these |poor people around," he said sarcastically. "You have to understand, it's more or less what Jesus would have said. He would have been much more concerned with the numbers coming to the liturgy and that it be done decorously and in good order and that we somehow remove these unsightly, unwashed and unfed (poor people) to places where business interests win not be compromised."

Ministry with the marginalized was examined by other speakers at the gathering. "It is the oppressed who will teach us what it means to be prophets in the church," said Edwina Gately, founder of Genesis House in Chicago, which offers hospitality to women seeking to recover from prostitution.

Workshops dealt with everyday ministry matters and some offbeat subjects as well. Joseph Martos, a religious studies professor at Spalding University in Louisville, Ky., led a session on "The Dynamics of Male Spirituality."

"To those around him, Jesus displays a set of manly virtues. ... He is self-possessed. He demonstrates initiative and takes responsibility. He speaks with authority and assumes leadership. He is courageous and risk-taking. He acts and lets the chips fall where they may," Martos said.

A big challenge for ministers is to help parents minister to their own children, said Francoise D'Arcy Berube, an internationally known catechist who lives in Canada. This is hard, she said, at a the when too many families are faltering.

Quoting U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Berube said at a workshop: "We have neglected our children. In all classes of society, we have no time for them."

She said parents need help in helping their children to interpret life's ups and downs in the light of faith and to feel the love of Christ "in a world where Christian love is not always fashionable."