Church must adapt to digital world to reach youth, says Pauline Sister

San Francisco (Catholic San Francisco) - Parents and youth ministers must adapt to and embrace new technologies to be relevant to young people, said Pauline Sister Rose Pacatte, director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Los Angeles.

"Faith formation has to take place in a digital culture," said Sister Rose, who led a workshop on media and ministry April 20 at the San Francisco Archdiocesan Pastoral Center. She writes a regular entertainment column for St. Anthony Messenger magazine and co-authored the book "Media Mindfulness: Educating Teens about Faith and Media" in 2007. "There is no way to navigate this media culture without spending time with our kids engaged in the media."

Adults often lag behind young people in technological expertise and this puts the Church at a disadvantage in its quest to remain relevant to youth, Sister Rose said. She said those parishes and schools that do not incorporate technology into their ministry will see dwindling numbers of youth, who will tune out Church messages in favor of more readily available and entertaining content from other sources. Parishes that do not adequately use media will stunt the moral growth of the few youth who remain because they are not being spiritually fed in a way that resonates with youth culture, she said.

"If we form children and young people to live outside their times, then when they are immersed full-time in the culture, they will struggle to survive psychologically and spiritually," she said.

In "Media Mindfulness," Sister Rose and coauthor Sacred Heart Sister Gretchen Hailer, suggest several ways parishes and Catholic schools can engage young people using technology, many of which require little additional investment.

Educators and parish youth ministers can create a movie critics club, selecting age-appropriate films in theaters or on DVD that youth then review. Students would independently select their criteria for judging the film and share their reviews with teachers and fellow critics.

Young people can host a mixed-generation dance with older parish members, selecting danceable tunes from each decade since the 1930s. These dances can provide mentoring opportunities for older parishioners and family members, who can share their musical memories with youth. Teens in turn can share their taste in music with older parishioners.

Students can storyboard a biblical video game after reading a Bible story or watching a Bible-based film. Individually or collaboratively, students can outline the game's story scene-by-scene, write dialogue and sketch the scenes.

The key to helping young people navigate the media is through conversation, not control, Sister Rose said. She said parents should teach children values at an early age and encourage them to seek out those values in the media.

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She said though parents and educators may find comfort in placing filters on the Internet and television, these controls often cause more problems than they solve. Many children whose access to the media is artificially curtailed will find the unfettered access they get outside their homes and schools an irresistible temptation. Explaining to children why certain types of media are inappropriate based on values can be a more effective answer to negative media influences, she said.

"Control is for a moment," she said. "Conversation is for a lifetime."

Sister Rose also said while parents should rightfully be concerned with violence and obscenity in the media, context is often more important than content.

"In this country we forget context, and we get focused on content - how many bad words, how many scenes of violence, how much sex," she said. "We fail to look at the way the story is resolved. "Dead Man Walking" was an R-rated movie, but was probably one of the best Catholic movies ever made."

Some parishes are further along than others in incorporating technology in ministry. Deacon Bill Drobick, director of religious education at Holy Spirit Parish in Fremont and an attendee of the April 20 forum, spearheaded the creation of a state-of-the-art religious education center, which opened its doors Feb. 8.

The facility includes a 135-seat movie theater, the first of its kind in a California parish. Four fixed seating classrooms, each equipped with plasma screen televisions, occupy the back of the building. A multipurpose room equipped with roundtables in the front of the building can be further divided into four modular rooms, each with its own plasma screen, for meetings, classroom use or dining.

Drobick said the center, eight years in the making, will serve as a hub for adult and youth faith formation for the parish and its elementary school. He has already shown audiences films ranging from documentaries on the lives of Jesus, Mary and Peter, to Jon Voight's turn as Pope John Paul II in the 2005 TV biopic. Drobick has also scheduled showings of mainstream films like "A Beautiful Mind" and "Deep Impact," which will be studied from a Catholic perspective along with the book "Lights Camera ... Faith!" coauthored by Sister Rose.

"We're trying to get people to think about scripture who might not pursue it in an academic setting," Drobick said. "People will be spiritually fed here in ways they otherwise wouldn't have been."

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Drobick also incorporated technology in his ministry on a more basic level, sending out e-mail blasts to his adult and youth faith formation classes. Problems with this method of communication led him to consider a more appropriate technology.

"When I finally sit down to write them, I often go into depth," he said. "My son asked, 'Do you ever notice that people don't get past the first paragraph?'"

Drobick acknowledged he would often have to remind people about information in his e-mails, indicating they likely had not read that portion. His son suggested Twitter, a free service that enables users to send and read other users' updates, called "tweets." Tweets must be no longer than 140 characters, and can be sent and received via Twitter's website, downloadable applications or cell phone text messages.

Barbara Regan, head of adult faith formation at St. Bartholomew Parish in San Mateo and an attendee of the technology forum, said the workshop was an encouraging sign that the Archdiocese of San Francisco is looking to the future, and hoped it would be only the first of many such opportunities.

"We need to be up with the times, not lagging behind in everything we do," Regan said.

Regan said her parish has already embraced digital media. The parish hosts a movie night every month, with spiritually-themed recent and classic films. Confirmation candidates view and discuss films as part of their catechesis, with past films including "The Nativity Story" and "Bella." The parish's library of books and DVD titles is searchable on its website and parishioners can request a hold on titles from home.

Vivian Clausing, associate director for youth ministry and catechesis for the Archdiocese of San Francisco's Office of Religious Education and Youth Ministry, said the April 20 workshop is the opening salvo in a series of initiatives aimed at integrating technology in ministry.

"This is a digital age, and we're working in ministry in it," Clausing said. "Our strategy is to be mindful of our use of media and to talk to kids about our values in that context."

Sister Rose said the way the Church responds to the digital world will have a profound effect on how it is perceived by young people and the world at large. Hanging in the balance, she said, is nothing less than the souls of children the world over.

"The media makers of tomorrow are in our pews, our classrooms and our living rooms today," she said. "Within ten years or so, 30 percent of the workforce will be in the creative industries. They will be telling stories. Who owns the greatest story ever told? What are we doing with it?"

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This story was made available to Catholic Online by permission of Catholic San Francisco (www.catholic-sf.org),official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Calif.