The Problem of a Youth Mass

Abstract

Recent statistics demonstrate an alarming trend among Catholic young people to forgo attendance at Sunday Mass, and even to identify themselves with another Christian community or to sacrifice the faith entirely. This article considers how the proliferation of "youth Masses" in parishes and schools contributes negatively to the perspective on faith and worship among Catholic young people once they reach adulthood. Furthermore, many of these adaptations, similar to the unauthorized experimental liturgies which preceded the Second Vatican Council, go far beyond the scope of foreseen by Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 38, and undermine the intentions of the reform by failing to recognize the "givenness" of the liturgy, by instead presenting liturgy as a thing to be produced and marketed for consumption.