Two of our contributors defended their dissertations this past year and earned their doctorates.  Congratulations to Carol Ann and Gary!  They have also both begun new positions this year.  After earning her Ph.D. at Princeton, Carol Ann is now residing in the lovely city of New Orleans and is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University New Orleans.  After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, Gary continues his work at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, but now as Director of Research (and senior research associate at USC).

At Vox Nova, Kelly Wilson  recalls Cardinal Bernardin’s Gannon Lecture at Fordham University entitled, “A Consistent Ethic of Life:  An American-Catholic Dialogue.”  He summarizes parts of Bernardin’s argument, thusly:

 

 
Continue reading →

The blog has been quiet in August, but we will be posting again soon.  Here is a request I received direct from a reader:

I read The Catholic Conversation blog frequently. I was hoping that you could point me in the direction of or help get the word out that we need some research about youth ministry, especially in Catholic parishes because I know that some of the statistics would differ among Catholic and non-Catholic church populations. I’m interested in things including, but not limited to, average attendance at youth groups, average age range (6-8th grade vs. high school), as well as correlation between a “youth Mass” or Sunday evening Mass and participation in youth group.

Anyone engaging in this type of research and/or interested in blogging on the topic, please e-mail me at bstarks@nd.edu

Apropos of Linda’s recent posts regarding women religious and vocations, the new Chair-elect of ASA’s Sociology of Religion section-  Patricia Wittberg- weighed in on this very topic in an article in America.

Reporting on data from the 2009 NRVC-CARA study on recent vocations to the religious life (which Linda mentioned and linked to previously), the article does a nice job of highlighting the contemporary challenge facing religious orders, in general, in attracting vocations.  It is probably worth noting that Patricia and her co-author, Mary Johnson, are both women religious and sociologists.  As such, they use their empirical data to debunk simplistic popular views, which fail to grasp the complex reality of attracting women’s vocations in our current era.    Some readers have criticized the piece itself as being misleading for stating too simply that almost equal numbers of women have been attracted to institutes in both conferences of women religious in the U.S. in recent years–without noting in the same paragraph that their are over four times as many LCWR orders as CMSWR orders in the study.  This is an important qualification, but since the authors pointed out this very distribution in the paragraph prior, I don’t think they were misleading anyone.  Perhaps a larger danger is that other commentators may fail to provide that same context. Continue reading →

For all of you readers who have twitter accounts and “tweet.”  At the suggestion of David Yamane (Wake Forest), I have pushed forward and created a twitter account for CSPRI:

https://twitter.com/theCSPRI

For now, I will be tweeting blog posts on this account, and if you use Twitter, you can follow us either through the link above or by clicking on the “follow me” bird now showing up on the side of our blog.

If readers have additional suggestions for CSPRI and/or the blog, please e-mail me.  Also, I am compiling an e-mail list for when CSPRI sends out research reports and summaries.  If you would like to be on this list, please e-mail your address to bstarks@nd.edu and simply ask to be added to our list.

Today, I was speaking with an FJV (Former Jesuit Volunteer) who volunteered with me in the Midwest province back in 2003-04.  He’s in town for ND Vision as a youth minister and is serving at a thriving parish in Ohio.  We talked about many things, but one item that came up was the issue of “burn out” in youth ministry.  In his eighth or ninth year of youth ministry now, he suggested that the average tenure of youth ministers is something closer to 2 years and that in order to keep going he had been forced to learn how to get past being “burned out.”  This made me wonder, is there any good research on burn out among youth ministers?  I know there’s research on clergy burn out, but have not heard of anything that examined youth ministers.

So, I am asking here on The Catholic Conversation–do you know of any good research on burn out in youth ministry (or ministry generally)?  Even beyond research, are there any good practical books about dealing with burn out in youth ministry?

 

This morning, I was at a talk given by Jen and Brian Suehs-Vassel entitled: “The Fruits of Eucharistic Celebration.”  The talk was part of the Center for Liturgy’s Summer Symposium, “The Eucharist:  Become What You Receive, Receive What You Are.”  Using the wonderful imagery of the disciples encountering Christ on the road to Emmaus and this leading them to return to Jerusalem out of love, they asked if we are Christbearers in our own lives.  Do we bear Christ to the world with love? Continue reading →

Julia Smucker, at Vox Nova, correctly points out that in critiquing bishops, we need to avoid stereotyping them.  Skipping to the end, her key point is that:

“there is an important distinction to be made between specific critiques and blanket stereotypes.  To suggest that the bishops may be mistaken or misguided on a particular point is sometimes justified, but to suggest that they are the enemy of social justice or of lay involvement or of women, or whatever other sweeping accusations are being thrown in their direction, is wildly inaccurate and divisive.

The bishops are not the enemy.  Partisan polarization is.”

BTW, Vox Nova is a new site I’ve begun reading, and I have put on the blogroll.  It’s worth checking out!

Fr. Greg Boyle, Homeboy Industries:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ17HXPg3jg

 

This video made me think of a just-graduated student whose research interests in ex-gang members first introduced me to Fr. Greg Boyle and his Homeboy Industries.  Yes, Adriana, that’s you!  I hope you enjoy the video and are doing well back home in LA!

–hat-tip Mark Gordon at Vox Nova

I thought I’d share some personal good news with readers, and also give a shout of congratulations to one of our contributors- Lucas Sharma.

First, I wanted to brag about my new niece– Corinne Christine Roche (pictured with her mom)- who was born last Monday.  She weighed in at 8 lbs. 1 oz, and both mom and baby are home now and doing well.  According to Andrew and Yoli (the new parents), she is sleeping very well (which has left Jen and I very jealous).

Second, I wanted to congratulate Lucas Sharma on being accepted by the Oregon Province Jesuits.  Lucas told me that he will begin the novitiate in LA in August.    They are blessed to have him.  In fact, in his e-mail, he indicated that he was currently down in LA for ordinations– maybe he will post some pictures for us on the CC.

Lucas, we will keep you in our prayers and  hope that you will do the same for us.  Anytime you want to check back in at the Catholic Conversation with a post, you are welcome to do so.  Keep us updated!  Thank you for answering God’s call to grow deeper in your own vocation.  We need priests and religious who can witness to the transforming power of Christ.