LENT Time to Review Your Life

LENT: Time to Review Your Life
http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/YU/ay0299.asp
Michael J. Daley, Youth Update: Time to Review Your Life, Cincinnati, OH, St. Anthony Messenger,1999.


This Lenten issue of Youth Update gets the reader to reflect back upon his/her life to see how God has been present. The article encourages and reassures the reader by asking many questions and giving 3 dialogued question and answers that are based on doubts that the young reader may have. Reflective topics like family life, the larger community, and life’s dangers are paralleled with Jesus’ life. The reading aspect is very “Jesus heavy” while the questions are all based very modernly, this almost insists the reader create a dialogue between the two.

Passing On the Faith: Transforming traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is a collection of essays from multiple faiths covering the modern task of passing on faith traditions. Throughout the book the reader is reminded of old and shown many new obstacles modern cultures and societies face when dealing with its youths and young adults. The sociological restrictions our cultures imbed into the young today will need to be mended if our faiths will survive.

The Youth Update article on Lent only offers one way to mend the restrictions out youth face. By asking lots of questions the article brings the reader into a discussion rather than a lecture. The conversation is still very one sided but a conversation none the less. Because it is a Catholic publication the article has a very apparent agenda. It may seem to want the reader to become more open to God while learning the prescribed faith, the article over simplifies and even in my opinion alter the Catholic faith in order to insist upon the reader rather than convince or share in the journey. Much of what is covered in Hefts book is over looked. Insisted reading and being forced to answering “loaded” questions is not new in any form of religious education. We must use more than just printed words to get through to the youth. We must use “both” the old ways “and” new ways to teach. Technologies offer many new ways that could be used to better this old outdated pamphlet style faith sharing tool.