Page:Ministry to US Catholic LGBTQ Youth - A Call for More Openness and Affirmation.pdf/11

 Unfortunately, these persons or places—gangs, nightclubs, and the streets—may not necessarily share the values of the church." It is in the best interest of pastors, youth ministers, and parents to collaborate on the best practices for integrating LGBTQ youth awareness into the youth ministry.

Catholic youth ministry would be wise to focus its efforts on being more open and affirming of LGBTQ youth: (1) teaching adolescents the ways to cope as a teenage sexual minority in the family, school, and church; (2) helping young people find positive heterosexual and homosexual role models in the community; (3) providing LGBTQ youth with a safe place to meet and grow in their faith as part of the parish community and the sub-community of youth ministry; (4) catechizing juvenile sexual minorities about human sexuality and theology of the body without stigmatizing and shaming; (5) loving LGBTQ adolescents for who they are, and not for who they are not; and (6) developing ways to embrace an LGBTQ young person's sexuality and his or her Christian discipleship. Catholic catechesis plays an enormous role in helping for justification in schools and parishes to develop programs that help to bolster Catholic identity in LGBTQ youth.

Becoming more open and affirming with LGBTQ youth honestly addresses the fundamental human needs of sexual minority teenagers. All Christian youth ministry is a response to, and in light of, God's active presence for the life of the world—a presence that reflects and acts on behalf of all adolescents. LGBTQ youth, like heterosexual adolescents, deserve a lived theological emphasis on a lived experience of soteriology as the natural extension of God's passionate engagement with the world. In other words, those ministering to the young church may want to be more meta-reflective with the existential (human) and ontological (spiritual) needs of LGBTQ youth. Pastoral care in Catholic youth ministry is the hope of praxis—theology in action done well in the name of God—to, for, and with adolescents. Therefore, adolescent pastoral care aims at catering and ministering to the needs of LGBTQ youth, a population that is currently being underserved in mainstream Catholic youth ministry. To provide competent and proficient advocacy and pastoral care to LGBTQ adolescents, development of appropriate pastoral strategies is paramount for Catholic youth ministers. In the footnote below are some concrete pastoral practices that could easily be incorporated into any Catholic youth ministry as part of its comprehensive curriculum. A few pedagogical and pastoral strategies for implementation in a Catholic youth ministry to be more open and affirming with LGBTQ youth could be the following:
 * Strategy 1: LGBTQ Youth Speaker Series. Bring in LGBTQ speakers within the community to address and discuss their personal struggles, issues, and concerns about growing up in the church. This could be a powerful conscious-raising series for all teenagers involved in the youth ministry.
 * Strategy 2: LGBTQ Film Series. Develop a four-week film series on LGBTQ Issues and discuss the pertinent themes that a given movie addresses. Here are some movie options: My Own Private Idaho (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Boys Don't Cry (1999), Weekend (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Milk (2008), Circumstance (2011), Pariah (2011), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Normal Heart (2014), and First Girl I Ever Loved (2016).
 * Strategy 3: LGBTQ Youth Book Club. Read and discuss a different book each month with a group of interested teenagers. Here is list of potential books that will interest adolescents: Giovanni's Room (1956) by James Baldwin, Rose of No Man's Land (2005) by Michelle Tea, Hero (2007) by Perry Moore, The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker, Fun House: A Family Tragicomic (2006) by Alison Bechdel, Boy Meets Boy (2003) by David Levithan, and The Difference Between You and Me by Madeleine George (2012), but there are many more.
 * Strategy 4: LGBTQ Youth Retreat. Offer a weekend retreat that highlights certain LGBTQ youth themes. The theme could be the "Dispelling Myths" retreat or the "Acceptance" retreat. The retreat could offer a variety of presentations on various topics of interest to LGBTQ youth, such as "Knowing Yourself, Loving Yourself," "Understanding LGBTQ Spirituality," "Loving God and Loving Neighbor," and/or "Living LGBTQ Christian Discipleship." The list of topics and talks for the retreat is limitless.

There are several more implementation approaches, but too many to recommend here. For more information please feel free to contact the author of this article at acanales@marian.edu. NTR