Every Sunday, it seems, kids’ll sleep in and catch the last Mass of the morning offered or even the one scheduled for around dinner time.  The older adults will catch the earlier Masses. Not today.

Before the sun even rises, young Marchers for Life will be waking on gym floors this morning and from their encampment at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception where they will utilize every available inch of its extensive floor-space and pew space. They will arise and hit mass first, at the Shrine with Cardinal-designate Dolan from New York, at large rallies at the Verizon Center and the DC Armory,and in area catholic schools and colleges including Mount Saint Mary College and Georgetown Academy. 

Adult marchers will find their way to the streets of DC well after the sun rises. It’s an upside down church today.

Please pray for the Marchers for Life of all generations.  May the make their stand for life with conviction and may they awaken a culture by their witness. And then, may everyone sleep well and safely on their way home.

UPDATE:  I spoke on Relevant Radio this morning from across the street from the Rally for Life.

0123relevantmarch by CatholicYMblog

Gene and Brad are happy to help you and your kids prepare for the March for Life. Looking forward to seeing the guys in DC soon!

So, it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m watching Lady Gaga on the Dick Clark special. I’m not so old fogeyish to not be aware of who Lady Gaga is, but I found myself wondering still… Who the heck is Lady Gaga?

I always perceived her as working off the Madonna game plan.  Her music vibes seemed similar as did her sensibility to be attention grabbing. But there was something more going on there.

Ken Chitwood posts for the Houston Chronicle and suggests that Gaga “ministers to Millennials in the margin and pronounces the final ruling on judgmental thinking.” He suggests that the message of Born This Way is one where judgmental opinions are a thing of the past and instead inclusion and equality rule the world.

The challenge of Gaga is that she is willing to test judgment.  She pushes the edge of acceptable to confront you and see if you will judge. Chitwood suggest that “For Gaga and her followers sin can be in (just listen to her song “Judas”), as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, but judgment is out and inclusion is what it is all about.”

And, I’m likely being old fogeyish, to suggest that this is all just negative attention seeking acting out… No matter how “bad” I am, will you still love, accept, not judge, and include me? The Millennial generation is more embracing of diversity and less judgmental of unconventional lifestyles and because of this they love Lady Gaga’s lyrics of universal love and acceptance.  This is our message, how can we best communicate that our Church is not just a museum for saints but also a safe place of healing for sinners?

In ArchBalt, the Archdiocesan Youth Advisory Council took upon themselves the task of finding ways to support youth ministers.

So they wrote this….

Hope you feel the Christams-y love, youth ministers!

This morning, TIME Magazine announced their Person of the Year, The Protester.

(Can’t say that we didn’t suggest that this was something worth noting… ) In Time’s analysis, they suggested…

“It’s remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries’ political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. Two decades after the final failure and abandonment of communism, they believe they’re experiencing the failure of hell-bent megascaled crony hypercapitalism and pine for some third way, a new social contract.

During the bubble years, perhaps, there was enough money trickling down to keep them happyish, but now the unending financial crisis and economic stagnation make them feel like suckers. This year, instead of plugging in the headphones, entering an Internet-induced fugue state and quietly giving in to hopelessness, they used the Internet to find one another and take to the streets to insist on fairness and (in the Arab world) freedom. “

We’ve got to be asking…. What does this mean for youth and young adult ministry for Church??

Kara Powell of Fuller Theological Seminary recently suggested that “Maybe, just maybe, the need to integrate teenagers more fully is not just a church issue – it’s a culture issue.”

In a blog posting for the Harvard Business Review, Saul Kaplan wonders if the segregation experienced at the family holiday kids’ table is a dis-service to both adults as well as young people. He suggests that those with the biggest stake in the future—the kids—were not even hearing the conversations impacting the future conducted at the “adult table.”

Kaplan indicates “I’m certain we only scratched the surface of what young people can contribute to the education reform conversation that day. More broadly, think of all the areas where adults are monopolizing a conversation in which youth have the largest stake. We should recognize that young people seek purpose and want to impact their surroundings, including school but not limited to it.”  Powell wonders if we might be better about this as church – so do I. <image source>

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that while the U.S. labor market is in a malaise, but young adults are in crisis. Though workers of all ages face economic headwinds, teens and adults under the age of 24, especially those with little or no college education, are faring the worst, economists say. The 16.7% unemployment rate among Americans in that group is more than twice the rate for workers 25 and older.

The current slump has been longer and deeper: The unemployment rate has been above 16% for 32 months—and counting. For 29 of those months, the rate has been above 17%, reaching a record 19.5% in April of last year.

Paralyzed by a painful economy, some young adults have decided to forgo college degrees, graduate school or even the search for full-time work. Others are working temporary or odd jobs just to get by. Many have moved back in with their parents.

Unemployment is particularly acute for young men. In the 16 to 24 age group, 18% of males lacked jobs last month, compared with 15.3% of females. That is partly because the worst-hit sectors, such as construction, employ more men than women. Female-dominated sectors—health care and education, for example—have done better.  It’s worth reading the whole article… I wonder how we as Church can/ might/ should respond?

The Youth Cartel last week held their Extended Adolescent seminar in Atlanta.  I would have attended if not for an anticipated NCYC-related tiredness hangover.  I was a kickstarter backer of the event and look forward to seeing some of the materials.

Recently, Mark Oestreicher wrote about the issues of extended adolescence indicating that Adolescence is now, on average, an almost 20-year trek, lasting all the way through the 20s. Of course, there are 20somethings who are fully living as adults long before they reach the ‘used to be the marker of entering middle age’: 30. But then, there are plenty of young 30somethings still living in an extended adolescence.

There are hundreds of questions we could ask about this, and thousands we could ask about the implications. But I want to zero in on one:

What impact does extended adolescence have on the faith formation of teenagers? Ok, a second question: How should we respond? Read more in this Church Leaders.com posting

The NCYC animators totally rocked the house! We had four on stage throughout the weekend and we all could not have been any prouder or them. Matt Palmer had an early in the weekend and did an audio interview at the beginning and a wrap up video interview near the end.

One of our ArchBalt young people is entered in NCYC’s Top Talent contest.  We are both praying and cheering for her today. (and, I guess, the other contestants as well…)