CYO Youth/Young Adult office addresses race

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

“We’re not here to be quiet,” Deacon Lawrence Houston, associate director for School Faith Formation in the archdiocesan Department of Catholic Education and Faith Formation (DCEFF), told attendees Aug. 19 at the 2023 kickoff event of the CYO Youth and Young Adult Office. “We’re here for discussion … a time for sharing. We’re here because God called us to be here to do something.” 

The 60 or so youth and young adult leaders and high school campus ministers learned of upcoming youth activities and were empowered to be vessels through which youth today better listen to others who aren’t like them because we are all “children of God.” 

“I want to get some ideas to see what others are doing and to get more involved in youth events,” Our Lady Star of the Sea youth minister Sukari Theard said about attending. “We are small, and I’m hoping to grow since new families have moved into our parish.”
Message of charity

CYO/Youth and Young Adult Ministry Office director Adrian Jackson summoned Deacons Houston and Jesse Watley to break open the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) 2018 pastoral letter on racism, “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love – A Pastoral Letter Against Racism,” developed by its Committee on Cultural Diversity. Deacon Watley was a contributor to the committee that formed the document, which recognizes how racism still exists, “corrupts the soul” and, as missionary disciples, impels Catholics to do more than pray about it.

“Love compels each of us to resist racism courageously,” the USCCB document said. “Despite many promising strides made in our country, racism still infects our nation. … Racist acts are sinful because they violate justice. They reveal a failure to acknowledge the human dignity of the persons offended, to recognize them as the neighbors Christ calls us to love” (Mt 22:39).

A Catholic educator for 33 years and a parishioner at St. Peter Claver, Deacon Houston asked those attending to offer examples of racism they had experienced. He recalled walking home from school as a youth hearing a White child call him the “N” word. Jackson’s recent incident was at a barber shop in Metairie after a stylist said he didn’t know how to cut “that type” of hair.

Another Black youth minister attended a mostly White church and was told to wait to receive Communion until every white person had received. His grandmother told him that in response, he could be either “bitter or better.”

A Black person was automatically sent to remedial classes in college with the two other black persons by a teacher who assumed they needed it. Deacon Watley said people on a northeast college campus for which he had earned an academic scholarship would ask him what sport he played because he was Black. A white woman said her grandmother taught her racial injustice by mentioning being chastised after giving her bus seat to a Black person.

“Nobody should be discriminated against because of the color of their skin,” a youth leader said. “Everyone should be treated equally.”

“There is a reality in our world, and we have to speak to it,” Deacon Houston said, even though, sometimes, we want to ignore it. “People of color walk in a reality that White people don’t walk in. It’s an everyday reality. We cannot be afraid to talk about it and have to be willing to make a change.”

Deacon Houston said the Catholic Church has been slow to address racism. “Open Wide Our Hearts,” affirmed by 434 U.S. bishops, was not the first Catholic document written on the subject. Retired Archbishop Alfred Hughes wrote a pastoral letter in 2006, “Made in the Image and Likeness of God – Racial Harmony,” and he encouraged everyone to read it. Other documents have included “Brothers and Sisters to Us” in 1979 and “The Church and Racism” in 1988.

To emphasize the point of the talk, Deacon Watley repeated words from the Penitential Act recited at Mass: “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”

“Open Wide Our Hearts” moves us to “change our hearts,” Deacon Watley said. “All of us have a part in this.”

He said most hearts are not racist. Racism is learned behavior. The youth of the next generation are the ones who will be the “change makers,” he said.


“Where else do we start to break the cycle if not with our children?” Deacon Watley asked. The pastoral letter and its accompanying exercises for all ages will help youth ministers work with their youth groups on this topic.

“We are all in this together,” Deacon Watley said. “It’s up to all of us to work to make it better.”

“We have to be the face of Christ,” Deacon Houston added, if we claim to be Christian and are living as Christ did every day. “What was Christ doing when he was walking the roads – righting some type of wrong, bringing healing to someone. What are we going to do? Let things happen or step out to bring about change. Our young people today are going to be a part of the change. … We need you to cause some ‘good trouble.’”


Resources abound
Michael Marchand, founder of Project YM from Chattanooga, Tennessee, conducted a fun ice-breaker game in which participants met many others while using their brains to count and multiply. The game resulted in a youth minister from Slidell being named the “smartest person in the room.”

Marchand’s Project YM offers an online community of youth leaders and video training for volunteers at www.thrive.rs. He also invited everyone to Chattanooga for an annual gathering of youth ministers held each September.

Janeen Rodrigue, youth minister at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Destrehan for 38 years and an active member of the parish’s ACTS retreat ministry, said she loves the fellowship opportunities these meetings offer.

“We are able to pray together with people who are here for the same reason,” Rodrigue said.

Jackson stressed how the CYO/Young Adult Ministry office was available as a resource for all youth leaders. Its facilities off Elysian Fields Avenue are available for retreats and days of reflection, as is Camp Abbey. The CYO office will host a service-learning immersion next summer for high school students to “put their faith in action.”
Also addressing the group was Brigette Burke, project manager for the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM). She mentioned a grant-funded Accompaniment Project whereby parishes can apply for programs to reimagine how to accompany young people in encountering Christ and grow in discipleship.

To learn more about “Open Wide Our Hearts,” the USCCB has created a plethora of resources for parish and youth leaders. Access them at bit.ly/45ErZKS.

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