42: Trying to practice love every day

Episode 42: Jack shares how he was first 'grabbed by youth work' as a young adult. Rather than any liturgical-style-tribalism, he explains that it is our identity as children of God that inspires him and is something he brings to youth ministry today in the Diocese of Lancaster - via the Caribbean.

Find out more

Castlerigg Manor Lancaster Youth Service

A new episode, a different conversation, every Wednesday!
Email me: theresa@KindsofCatholic.co.uk
Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter Give me a follow @KindsofCatholic
Find the transcript: https://kindsofcatholic.buzzsprout.com

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

 You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis has used the image of a caravan. A diverse group of people travelling together, on a sometimes chaotic journey together. That's an image that has helped to shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations. 

So listeners today I'm joined by Jack. We're gonna have a great conversation which involves a little bit of chat around youth ministry but also about Jack's own faith journey. So let's see where the conversation goes. Welcome, Jack. 

Nice to be with you. Thank you. 

So let's start at the beginning then. Were you brought up in a Catholic family? Were you Catholic from the beginning? 

Yes and no. I was a cradle Catholic, but I kind of drifted away. So my parents basically gave me my faith. My parents are just wonderful people, wonderful Catholics. My mum was a cradle Catholic. My dad converted actually shortly after I was born. But as far as I was concerned, I always grew up with two Catholic parents. We were always practicing, and our faith was always really important in our home. I then kind of drifted away. I was practicing as a Catholic up until I went to university. My first year at university is the only year in my life when I've just completely not practiced at all. I then, through the Christian Union, effectively joined an evangelical church, and I became an Evangelical Christian for two years. When I left university, I then had to decide, did I want to stay evangelical or did I wanna become Catholic again? But I decided to go back to the Catholic church for any number of reasons. I mean that alone could probably fill a podcast, explaining that. But, yeah, I mean, technically, I'm what's called a revert, so I've kind of drifted away and come back. Yes. I'm also a cradle Catholic, really. 

I'm quite interested in this the work of the Christian Union because I've had a number of guests who at university have immediately met members of the Christian Union, and some have found it a bit off putting and others have embraced it. And so just tell us a bit more about what that was like. 

Christian Unions get a lot right, and they get a lot wrong. That's my view of things. They are very, very good at mission. They're very, very good at being active. They're very, very good at being welcoming. They have a strong sense that they're there to evangelise, you know, all the things that most Catholic parishes really aren’t good at. Where they fall down is that, theologically, they're very, very thin. They're very, very obsessed with the kind of message of, you need salvation. Basically, everything's about avoiding hell, and I found that very incomplete. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm doctrinally very orthodox in my faith. I believe in all that stuff, but I also believe - and the reason I drifted away from this group - is because it occurred to me that, actually, if this faith is really about getting closer to the God who made us, then it should be more fulfilling than that. It should feel like what we were made for. It shouldn't just be a kind of a rope ladder to escape something nasty. And that's eventually really what brought me back to the Catholic church because the Catholic church offered, even though we don't promote it very well, the Catholic church offered that more complete faith, that more fulfilling faith. 

I think there's something about being part of a Catholic community which is very rounded. Yeah. Very grounding for people. Sometimes I've met people in the evangelical world, and they do seem to have quite a narrowness about them. How did you find it then coming back to your faith, as it were? Were your family thrilled? Did they even know?

Oh, yeah. I think my parents were over the moon. I think, my mum in particular, I don't think, was really comfortable with me being part of this Christian Union group. And, you know I can understand why, really. If my kids went the same way, I'd probably be similarly uncomfortable. I really came back to the church because my dad suggested that I do a little bit of work experience at a youth centre. Actually, a youth centre in your own diocese, the Briars. Do you know the Briars? 

Indeed. Yes. 

And it was through that experience and through chatting to people who work in your diocese, like Father Greg Tobin, Derek Hay. It was that experience that made me realise that, actually, the Catholic faith was for me, and I really, you know, it was what I wanted.

Well done, those people in Nottingham diocese. 

Good diocese. 

Youth work then is something that you've made your own. Tell us a bit about your journey into working in youth ministry. 

Like a lot of people, either before uni or after university, I, did a gap year working in a Catholic mission team youth centre.  A lot of people who do that only do it for a year or two. Some people just decide to make it their whole career. I was just grabbed by it. I just really loved it. After my year at the Briars, I went off to work for the De La Salle Brothers down in Berkshire at their place in Kintbury. After that, I got an opportunity to go overseas and work in the Caribbean with the Dominicans. After that, I just thought, this is me. This is what I wanna do. When I came back from the Caribbean, I got my first professional job and I've been doing it ever since. At the end of last year, it was twenty five years. 

Wow. We'll talk about your current work, but I'm interested in the Caribbean and the Dominicans. Tell us a bit about that because that's something, most people won't have experienced. 

Yeah. That was it was a lovely experience actually. I mean, it wasn't easy. You know, the Caribbean is not what people think it is. It's not this holiday paradise. You know, me and the wife watch Death in Paradise. It's not like that at all.  You know, the Caribbean has its nice parts but it's also quite a rough place. Lots of deprivation, lots of petty crime, lots of social problems. So there was a lot to get stuck into out there. It came about almost by accident. I mean, it was the Holy Spirit, but in human terms it was by accident. While I was working at Kintbury, a De La Salle brother who was my boss there, a guy called Brother Benet Conroy, who's a huge, huge figure in my life and in my faith, wonderful, wonderful man, now sadly passed away. He took us to this Mass in Oxford. It was a mass for a Dominican priest called Father Ronald Holder who had studied in Oxford. Because the Dominicans, their main sort of centre of study is Black Friars in Oxford. He passed through there, and this Mass was for him. And basically he was from Barbados but he was currently working in Grenada down the south of the Caribbean. And I got talking to him after the Mass and he told us that he was in youth ministry. So he was in charge of the youth service for the country of Grenada which is basically three inhabited islands. And then Brother Benet said, Oh, well Jack's in youth ministry. And Father Ronald sort of said, Oh well if you wanna come over to the Caribbean and do youth ministry for me, you can do. I phoned him up a little while later, and I said, Were you serious? And he said, Yeah. Totally. I'd written his name and number on one of those paper buffet plates which I've actually still got in my garage. So I raised some money, thanks to a lot of really generous people, and I went over there. So I did about six months over there. Officially, my job was Assistant Diocesan Youth Coordinator. So I was working for the diocese, but he was a Dominican. So I was working with and also living with Dominicans. I was living in the Dominican Priory. Basically I was doing all sorts of stuff around the diocese, working on local training, working on big events, doing random little pieces, like working with people who just dropped into the office in the capital. It was a brilliant time. The church over there is very vibrant. The work over there was very different to what it is in the UK. I mean one thing that we had, for instance, over there was there were a lot of quite anti-Catholic churches who were specifically trying to kind of target and go after Catholics - not in a violent way you understand - just in terms of trying to convert them to what they saw as proper Christianity. So, actually, I had to learn a lot of practical apologetics. So when kids dropped into the office saying the kids in school are telling me that the Pope's the antichrist or the kids in school are telling me, I don't know, whatever other silly argument there was, you know. I had to have my arguments ready to kind of train them and help them with that. That was really interesting. It's also an area where there's a lot of social problems. Most kids in the Caribbean don't live in a home with both parents, and that was tricky for a number of reasons. There's obviously a real poverty over there. So it was tough, but it was absolutely wonderful. I mean, the people over there are brilliant. Masses over there in particular. Sunday Mass lasts two hours. Everyone's singing with their hands in the air. It was lovely. And, actually, living with all these priests, brothers, in the Dominican Priory as well. It was also a really nice experience for me. It set me on a journey which almost ended up with me joining the Dominicans but I veered away from that eventually. 

Well there there's so much in that experience, Jack. That is wonderful to hear about. Partly, I'm thinking to myself that the vibrancy of the church there and long Masses with people singing with their hands in the air perhaps connected a bit with the evangelical time that you'd had, but now grounded in the Catholic church, maybe that was a really nice connection. 

Absolutely. Yeah. And, I mean, I'm actually part of the Charismatic Renewal as well, which I think does the best of all worlds. The Charismatic Renewal, it's a funny thing. Some people hear the word charismatic, and they go, Oh, no. But for me in, you know, in that organisation, I've just found a really welcoming home with some really nice people, really on fire for their faith, really joyful worship. I do think there are definitely things we can learn from evangelical churches, and their kind of vibrancy in worship and the joy they have in worship, I think, is, definitely something we can take on. 

And I'm also - I always feel slightly alarmed when guests talk about having to defend the faith in direct conversations with people. But I do think it's the really good training to be able to just put some words around why we believe what we believe and what the foundation of that is. Well done. I bet that was something that's helpful then in the future too in youth ministry. 

It's helpful in all sorts of ways. It's this thing that we call apologetics, which is giving a loving and reasonable defence of the faith. It's something I've been interested in for years and we've run a few weekends on it here at Castlerigg where I currently work. I did a Master's degree at Maryvale about seven or eight years ago, and Maryvale is a wonderful place. For those that don't know, Maryvale is a distance learning college, very Catholic, run by the Archdiocese of Birmingham. It's an institute of pontifical rights, so it's fully supported by the Holy See. They offer a great Master's degree, and the Master's degree offers five different tracks. The one I chose because I thought it would be most useful for my work was Religious Education and Catechesis. Don't get me wrong. That was brilliant. I really enjoyed it, but there was also an Apologetics track which I always really regret that I didn't follow because it looked actually  - personally I think I'd have found that far more interesting. So in apologetics, we talk about three different types of apologetics. There's essential apologetics which is convincing people that there's a god. There's Christian apologetics which is convincing people that Jesus Christ is Lord, is the true revelation of God. And then there's Catholic apologetics which is convincing people that the Catholic church is the true church. All of those have to be done in a very loving, very kind way. It's not about a bludgeon. In the sort of Catholic side of that, I mean, there's a lot of really weak arguments that have been kind of trotted out over the years. There's also more acute barriers to debate as well, the debate around justification, the debate around authority. It's very interesting. But, I mean, one thing I think we've definitely seen in the last couple of generations is that there is more love and there is more cooperation between Christian churches. And, actually, what you have now, which you probably didn't have in the middle of the last century, is people saying, Well, you know, I don't agree with you on everything, but I recognise you as brother or a sister in Christ. And I think that's really positive. The amount of people who will look at a mainstream church and say, They're not proper Christians, is diminishing rapidly which is a really good thing.

I agree. I think that that chimes with my own experience too. Absolutely. So let's talk about your work at Castlerigg Manor then. Tell us about what that entails and for people who don't know, where you are. 

Yeah. So I live in the very Northwest of England. I always describe it as the top left corner under the Scottish border. I live in a town called Wigton which is famous for Jarrad Branthwaite, the footballer, and Melvyn Bragg. But I work in Keswick in the Lake District. I work for the Diocese of Lancaster. The Diocese of Lancaster covers everything from Preston up into Lancashire, left of the M6, so places like Lancaster, Morecambe, Preston, and so on, and then it covers the whole of Cumbria. And my job is I'm Director of Youth Services for the diocese. Almost every diocese has what we call a DYO, a diocesan youth officer. In some dioceses that person is just by themselves or in a fairly small team. But in other diocese, there's actually a bigger team or a retreat centre, and we're one of those. We have a retreat centre called Castlerigg Manor. About 3,000 young people a year pass through the retreat centre but we're also responsible for doing work around the diocese. As of this moment, we've got 45 kids from Our Lady's High School in Lancaster with us who are really, really nice. They're doing a retreat Monday to Friday, which is all on the theme of identity. We also go out around the diocese. We've got this thing called the Spark program where we try to plant youth groups in local areas and train up local teams. We're also working on an award scheme for our diocese, which is hopefully gonna launch later this year. In terms of the schools that come here, we don't just serve our own diocese. We've got about 50 schools coming in this year from as far north as Scotland. So, yeah, it's very, very busy work. I'm the Director here. We've got about fourteen, fifteen staff in the centre, of whom there's eight on the ministry side so the three paid leaders who help me in running things. And then we've got four young interns who are only here for a year and they're brilliant. They're really the heart of the place. They do the work but we also really want to invest in them. We really want to give them really solid training. We really want to help them develop their faith, and we also want them to have a really fun year where they bond together. I'm gonna do a little advert here. While I've got a wider audience, we actually have this thing called our youth ministry internship scheme, which people can find out about at castleriggmanor.com. It's a great scheme, gives really good training, a really good opportunity for young people just leaving sixth form or just leaving university. 

And I'll put a link to the website anyway in the episode notes so, easy for people to follow-up on that. So I'm thinking then working as you do in in youth ministry in a residential place, I guess that the practice of your faith naturally falls within your working day.

Yeah. I mean, I'm very, very lucky in that regard. I'm a Christian who gets to work in a Christian ministry environment and that is really, really nice. Yes. What I try to do with the team, what we try to do with the young people is essentially bring them in to what we have. We're trying to share with them what we have. The way I always describe this is I have two children so I've got a six year old boy and a three year old girl. When kids are little you always try and think of cute ways to describe things. So basically I tell my kids because, you know, they don't always understand why daddy can't stay around all day and play with them. And I tell them that my job is important because it's my job to work with older boys and girls to tell them how much Jesus loves them. Actually that sounds like a dumbed down way to describe it but, actually, you know, the heart of the job is to get young people in here and say to them through a number of different ways and kind of with a bit of a buildup, just say to them, you matter. You are special. You are loved by God. The retreat that we run for Year 10/11 is called Identity, And we put that together because really, if you're a 15 or 16 year old, you know, there's so much telling you that you're less. You're nothing. You know they just flip open Instagram. You know, you don't look like this person. You're not going to these kind of events. You're not wearing these kind of clothes. You don't have these kind of friends. They turn on the TV. You must have this product. Twitter or whatever. You know, you must hold this opinion. That can all make them feel like they're less. And Christian faith, sure, it has its challenges. We don't push a watered-down version here but the heart of faith is always there is a God. He sees you. He made you. He loves you. He has an amazing plan for your life. And actually, life with him is a life of real joy, real happiness. That's why you should dive into it. That's what we're trying to do here, just extend to other people what we're lucky enough to have ourselves. 

You put it across very, very well. Now you mentioned if we can just dig into your own faith a little bit, you mentioned that you find charismatic worship helpful. Yeah. But also that you're quite orthodox in your faith. So those are two things that some people might think don't go together and I think - I wonder whether it's been your experience - but I think some people think that the charismatic worship style might be a bit thin, like the evangelical situation we were mentioning. I think it's interesting that you've got these two statements. Let's see what your faith looks like then and, you know, what nourishes you.

The Charismatic Renewal, I think, is a group that you know, it's not for everybody. There are different groups in the church. Some people like traditional, everything in Latin. Some people just like a nice quiet Mass. Some people like waving their hands in the air. I think all of those have their worst excesses. All of those can really, really serve and really, really feed people. There is no one size fits all. Well I think we have to be attentive to that. I don't like it when groups say, you know, you're not a real Catholic unless you join us. Kinda does my head in a little bit. In terms of charismatic, I think the way I would describe it is I think that certainly your old-style charismatics back in the seventies, there was a perception. I certainly know people for whom it's not true, but there was a perception that people who liked guitar music were theologically a little bit liberal. I've found in my experience with modern charismatic, it's definitely not the case. They're actually very, very sound. It's worth saying a little bit about this whole conservative/liberal thing as well because I generally don't like it as an idea. Personally, I'm what people might call conservative orthodox. I'm the guy that basically says, you know, if it's in the catechism we go with it because I think it's been revealed to us. I think the church has space for what I'd call the sensible left and the sensible right, and I think they need each other. Somebody said to me once that if we were only the right, then we wouldn't go anywhere. If we were only the left then we'd move forward so fast we split apart. So I think the church, the sensible left and the sensible right, if they can stay in harness and if they can keep talking to each other, that's good. And I think also there needs to be love there. We always need to love people who take a different view to us. You know, even if it's a different view about something quite big, I think there always needs to be love and charity there. One of the biggest problems in the world at the minute is this sort of polarisation, tribalism. We see it in American politics at the minute on both sides. You're not like me. Therefore, you are the enemy to be hated. And I think there's a real danger that can creep into the church. I think human culture at its best has always had that dialogue. I always say to people, Yes, I'm very conservative in my faith. I'm very straight down the line. This is what the church teaches, but I'm always happy to talk to people and to love people who, you know, maybe take a different view on things. I mean, there are limits, obviously. You know, I've met people who say, I don't believe in God, but I'm still Catholic. That doesn't really work! I think there needs to be that reaching out across the spectrum both that theological spectrum and a spectrum in terms of different styles of worship in the church. 

Part of the way you're describing what you think is helpful reminds me of Pope Francis' image of being in a kind of caravan, a sort of chaotic journey together. And it is together. I think that's right. And I also liked where you said that the different kinds of worship serve people. It is about what serves us in our faith, what brings us closer to God and to each other in our faith.

 Absolutely.

I think you have some great soundness there in your thoughts, so thank you for sharing them. Is there a piece of scripture that comes to mind that particularly serves you? 

My favourite bit of scripture is 1 John 3:1. ‘Think of the love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called the children of God, for that is who we are.’ That whole book, the first letter of Saint John, is really remarkable because it also has quite solidly another thing which is really important to me, which is just the idea of love. You know, after my adventures with the Christian Union, the thing that really made it all click was just this idea of love. You know, we can do whatever. You know, we can even give our body over to be burned, it says, but if we do it without love, it's hollow. If we say that we know God, but we don't know love, then actually, we don't know God. And I think so many Christians try to do religion, practice form without love, but I think that love needs to come first. And that comes through prayer. That comes through actually trying to practice love every day, trying to practice forgiveness every day. If this makes me sound like I'm perfect or I'm doing that well every day, then that's a false impression. Believe me. 

And that brings me on a little bit. This episode will be going out in Lent. Is there anything that you always do in Lent, or do you do something different? Have you got any thoughts about what you're gonna do for Lent this year?

Yeah. I did a training session with my team on Lent this Monday, actually, and I started off by saying that I always get to Easter feeling that I didn't make the most of Lent. So I'm really gonna try and nail it this year. I'm gonna try and do some extra prayers. I haven't yet decided what I want to give up. It's kind of between video games and fizzy drinks. I think for me, I'm gonna really try and do the fasting well this year. I'm gonna really try to do the praying well. I'm gonna try to reflect on the scriptures that were given in Mass as well. 

Quite a high bar you've set yourself there. A number of strands in your efforts.

There's normally a very, very large gap between my intentions at the start of Lent and the actuality during Lent. 

Same for all of us. So you mentioned you've got two young children. How have you found being a parent in the church? 

I love it. It's got its difficulties. I cringe as much as every parent does when my kids really kick off during Mass. For me it's, as my work is here, it's about letting my children know that they're loved. That's what I try to do. So I sit both of my children on my knee every night, and I pray with them. I want them to feel God's love. I want them to know that God loves them so so much then I think the other things will take care of themselves. I mean, there's all sorts of questions for Christian parents around, you know, how do you help your kids enter into Mass? I mean, we've really tried a lot of different things to get our kids used to Mass. And with our six year old now, it's starting to land. It's about making prayer a real part of the home. It's about making sure that the values just go through the home. This is my lovely wife's idea. We've also recently just made a prayer space in our home with, you know, some nice coloured lights and some icons. And both the kids really enjoy using that. Even my three year old, she really enjoys using that. 

Oh, that's wonderful. I think that's what most Catholic parents are aiming for. I think we've packed a lot into that conversation. I think there's lots there that people will reflect on and I wonder whether some people might need to listen twice to pull out all the strands that we've woven together in that conversation. So that's fantastic, Jack. It's been really interesting to hear about your work and your life and thank you so much for sharing so fully everything that you do. I wish you well with your Lent efforts and with the work of the youth ministry in the Lancaster Diocese. 

Thank you. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, @kindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.