Request for Research Sources-Liturgical Tastes of Young Adult Catholics
  • jskumro
    Posts: 2
    Greetings all,

    I’m a graduate student at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, MN, where I’m pursuing an M.A. in Liturgical Music. This semester, I’m taking a course entitled "Modern Liturgical Movements" with Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB. For our final paper, we’ve been asked to choose a topic to research on liturgy and the liturgical movement.

    My personal conversion back to my faith came about through the young adult Catholic movement, especially in its more traditional ecclesiological, liturgical, and musical expressions. I am gathering sources to make the liturgical tastes of young adult/millenial Catholics into my research topic. So far I've found blog posts on the topic, but I would like to find more articles and books to make my research more comprehensive.

    If anyone is aware of resources they would like to share, please do!

    I think this is a great topic for to explore. Because Saint John’s has been a significant player in the U.S. liturgical movement and progressive liturgy, I think it would be valuable to study newer liturgical movements among young adult Catholics, especially more traditional expressions, and the "reform of the reform," which are of great interest to me.

    Many thanks,

    Joel S. Kumro


  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,440
    Define young adult and millenial... Most of us who fit those definitions are not publishing books yet. But for something in-between good blogs and scholarly I would recommend Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis and The Reform of the Reform? by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski and Fr. Thomas Kocik, respectively. Dom Alcuin Reid and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang both have multiple books published. Even though some authors might be over 50 in my list, they were formed by the traditional praxis and rites when they were closer to my age (I am 20). So, anywhere from when they were my age to their mid-30s.

    Anecdotally, my priest friends of that age are the first to consistently prefer traditional things and to question the received narrative of the council and the reform. So youth has something to do with it...also, the Internet makes things of this sort more prominent now.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen
  • irishtenoririshtenor
    Posts: 1,342
    Could you be more specific about what you're looking for?

    I generally find that younger Catholics who actually live by the teaching of the Church prefer chant, polyphony, organ, and traditional architecture by a landslide. They are looking for something transcendent.

    Young Catholics who have given themselves over to the "spirit of the world" and consider themselves free to ignore the moral teachings and faith of the Church generally want the liturgy to be conformed to the world: rock bands, projection screens, and the like.

    There may be exceptions to these two rules, but that doesn't mean that they are not the rules.
    Thanked by 2canadash ryand
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,937
    You might give Colleen Carroll Campbell's The New Faithful A look.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,798
    I presume that you have heard of Juventutem... here is the fast expanding London groups blog, http://juventutemlondon.blogspot.co.uk

    Dr Shaw the Chairman of the LMS has been doing some research, and has found a number books on related topics.
    http://www.lmschairman.org/search/label/Young people
    and http://www.lmschairman.org/search/label/Masculinity
  • vogelkwvogelkw
    Posts: 55
    Joel,

    I am a priest ordained less than 5 years and my own discovery of the Church's sacred music tradition during college, seminary and as a priest has certainly deepened my relationship with our Lord. I wanted to mention a couple resources that might be helpful for your topic, though they apply first to teens and secondly as they become young adults.

    I joined our youth group at NCYC (National Catholic Youth Conference) in 2013. As part of it I attended two sessions for priests on preaching and liturgy for the youth. I was unsure what they would be like, due to the liturgies of the event itself. They ended up having some good insights.

    In the first talk on preaching, Dr. Bellinger brought up the important principle that not all teens/young people are the same, so we can't treat them that way. For example, some people are more emotive while others more cognitive. Much of the music many assume will interest the youth is highly emotive. It helped me understand in a deeper way why I prefer the sacred music tradition of the Church, because sacred music balances the emotive and cognative, pushing us not down into our emotions, but raising both the emotions and intellect through the sung Word into the Divine. I sent NCYC this feedback at the time:
    ... Her insights that not all teens (or adults) are the same (some more cognitive while others more emotive) would be helpful for those planning NCYC. I realized that the NCYC experience wore on me because it was mainly appealing to those who connect emotively and not as much to those who connect cognitively.

    (Sunday Preaching and Young People: How can we Connect?, Dr. Karla Bellinger, 11/22/13, NCYC 2013).

    The second talk on liturgy was presented by Fr. Godfrey Mullen, OSB who had been involved in the "One Bread, One Cup" liturgical leadership conferences at Saint Meinrad. One important insight he gave was not to isolate the youth in a separate liturgy, but to incorporate them into the life of the parish. I sent this feedback to NCYC:
    Fr. Mullen spoke on the upcoming NFCYM/FDLC document on youth and liturgy [For Ages Unending]. I was pleased to see the approach is not to have a separate youth liturgy, but to incorporate them into the life of the parish. We lose too many of the youth during the college years, so it is important to connect them to parish life before they leave so that it is more natural to connect again when they return. If they experience only a separate youth Mass before college, they will not be able to reconnect with that group after college because now they are adults, so it is harder to reconnect. Fr. Mullen was balanced in his approach to music, an openness to the new but also a call to introduce the youth to the sacred music tradition of the Church. I felt this was something lacking at NCYC. The music at the closing liturgy was self-expressive of the youth, but in stark contrast to the singing of the Mass that Archbishop Tobin modeled. As Fr. Mullen noted we cannot be afraid to teach the youth to chant, and his personal experience is that they love it. ...

    A difficulty that comes out of NCYC is the youth's experience of NCYC Mass versus their experience of Mass at the parish. If we really want them to be incorporated into the life of the parish, it would make more sense to present a liturgy that could be done in a parish setting. Certainly part of the disconnect with the youth at the parish is the fact that a majority of the music at Masses tend to be in a style from 1960s-1990s. One could argue if this is appropriate or not based on Church documents, but from the practical point of view those styles do not seem to assist the youth in connecting (they did not grow up in those decades). Is the solution simply to update the music as the NCYC Mass seems to indicate? But if we are really trying to incorporate the youth into the parish Mass, then that updating would isolate other groups of parishioners whose cultural experience was of those earlier styles of music. And since popular music styles change so quickly, how often would we have to totally rethink the music we use? Rather, we ought to see what the Church herself has been saying about sacred music if we want to find a lasting solution. Fr. Mullen and the document For Ages Unending seems to begin taking that step. Very important was the example of Archbishop Tobin who sung so many of his parts. This is essential as we look to "sing the Mass" not "sing at Mass."

    A final comment: the use of both English and Spanish is good to connect to those with both those backgrounds, but can be overdone. Fr. Mullen, following the Church's suggestion, mentions the use of Latin in multilingual contexts. Latin is our universal heritage in the Church and it can help the youth not only to experience the Church expanding across space (the Church throughout the world today) but also across time (2000 years of Catholic youth).

    (Having the Rite Stuff: Connecting Liturgy with Youth, Fr. Godfrey Mullen, OSB, 11/23/13, NCYC 2013.)

    It appears that these talks are no longer available for download from their website, but you might be able to contact them to obtain copies. I did purchase copies of the talks myself so might be able to share them solely for your academic research, but I can't make them publicly available. I have not read the document For Ages Unending mentioned above, so I can't speak to its potential usefulness.

    Sorry for the length of the post here, but I wanted to give you an idea of what these sources contain in case they might be helpful.

    God bless,
    Fr. Vogel
    Thanked by 3cmbearer eft94530 CharlesW
  • NihilNominisNihilNominis
    Posts: 1,032
    Perhaps a trite comment, but what young people like is no indicator of what they will like. To use an example from the Dark Side, the people who liked the St. Louis Jesuits started as the St. Louis Jesuits. Popularity came later. Nor could prevenient opinion polls have predicted their rise; taste is unscientific.
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