Founder of LifeTeen Excommunicated

[veritasluxmea]

 

 

 

​

[Papist]

"I go to Mass for my sacraments, and I go to Praise and Worship for my Christian fulfillment," Stan Nicpon said, adding that it has a "good community feeling."

That quote right there is evidence of the danger of what the Monsignor was doing.  The Bishop nailed it when he says, "the ultimate form of praise and worship is and always will be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."

[Ash Wednesday]

Lady Gaga's a pretty big deal and things are heating up between the Penguins and the Red Wings. 

 

 

 

/I'm sorry, I was having a 2008 moment.

 

 

[LittleWaySoul]

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/lifeteen_founder_msgr._dale_fushek_excommunicated/

Phoenix, Ariz., Dec 16, 2008 / 07:23 pm (CNA).- Bishop of Phoenix Thomas J. Olmsted has issued a decree of excommunication to Monsignor Dale Fushek, founder of LifeTeen, and Father Mark Dippre for their establishment of and leadership in an "opposing ecclesial community."

Very unfortunate, but knowing what I do about LifeTeen, I'm not exactly surprised.

I'm interested to hear what you know about lifeteen. Not to start a debate buy just legitimately curious.

 

EDIT: DANGIT this mobile site doesn't let me scroll over to edit that typo! :( 

Edited June 14, 2015 by LittleWaySoul

[veritasluxmea]

I second LWS's question, my friend's a lifeteen missionary and last year I volunteered as a peer leader at one parish. All the experiences I've had with it in the past few years have been positive. Out of the about 20 seminarians in our last diocese, eight of them came from the parish with a really faithful and active LifeTeen program- and they were participants in it. I'm curious too. 

Edited June 14, 2015 by veritasluxmea

[LittleWaySoul]

I'm curious for the opposite reason, actually. My experience with it has been less than positive, but I've not heard anything bad about lifeteen in general and I'm curious if I'm not alone in feeling this way. Or I'm curious if it's not just an isolated problem in my parish. Either way, I'm interested to hear what Miles has to say.

[PhuturePriest]

I'm interested to hear what you know about lifeteen. Not to start a debate buy just legitimately curious.

 

EDIT: DANGIT this mobile site doesn't let me scroll over to edit that typo!  

​Their liturgies are less than stellar, for one, and given what we now know about the architect behind them, I don't see how that can be seen as debatable.

Edited June 14, 2015 by PhuturePriest

[LittleWaySoul]

​Their liturgies are less than stellar, for one, and given what we now know about the architect behind them, I don't see how that can be seen as debatable.

That's all you had? 

[PhuturePriest]

That's all you had? 

​I've admittedly had no first-hand experience of LifeTeen, because my diocese doesn't have it. However, given that my diocese is very orthodox and has programs galore for the youth, LifeTeen's complete absence certainly tells me what my bishop and previous bishops think of it. However, I have heard that their liturgies are focused on feel-goodism and "spiritual highs", with worship music and much hand-waving back and forth amongst its participants, which is wholly inappropriate given what the Liturgy is: the Sacrifice of the Lamb.

Edited June 14, 2015 by PhuturePriest

[PhuturePriest]

That's all you had? 

​I am very interested in what your experiences were, however. I am quite interested in what you have to say about it.

[Ash Wednesday]

When they first introduced LifeTeen there were a lot of problems with liturgical abuses. Even at my home parish where the priests were generally faithful priests, they would muddy the waters with some "feelgood" innovations like letting children surround the altar leading up to the consecration -- stuff like that. They cracked down and did away with that in my diocese, though, to the point where the only major difference between LifeTeen and the other masses was the "praise and worship" style of music. That, and the people clapping. It REALLY isn't my cup of tea at all, but that's a personal preference I'm not going to debate with someone.

I think, much like the way the mass is implemented and said today, the level of abuses will vary from parish to parish.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2015 by Ash Wednesday

[Nihil Obstat]

I knew many people my age through high school who went to Lifeteen Masses regularly. Not a single one of them is a practicing Catholic anymore. From what I can tell on Facebook every one of them has apostatized and most are openly anti-Catholic.

[LittleWaySoul]

Yeah, no liturgical abuses in my experience. I didn't prefer the mass style but again, that was a preference. There was never even clapping except for sometimes in the closing song.

The problem I had with lifeteen, as I said, may have been more of a problem with its implementation than a problem with the program itself. We never discussed anything of much substance, or at least it didn't seem that way to me. No controversial issues or anything, just fluffy stuff that, while good in itself, wasn't appropriate or appealing to high schoolers in today's secular culture. Often I knew more than the core members only through a few Google searches and common sense (I went to a public high school, so I had no formal theological training). They had us do silly games as ice breakers that had minimal relevance to what we were supposed to learn.

 

Overall I kind of just felt babied and treated like a child who couldn't really handle the depths of the faith. There would often be a presentation and then we would get into small groups to discuss. The core member for our group would nervously ask pre-made questions from a sheet of paper, and I would often be the only one willing to answer after awkward silence. And my answers seemed to be beyond what the core member expected of a high school kids, so they'd either say something like, "Wow I never thought of that " or use me to essentially teach the other teens in the group through my answers.

 

I felt alienated and set apart, and while the other teens often seemed to fit in better, their lack of participation in serious discussions and lack of interest in such conversations outside of this context lead me to believe that the reason they enjoyed it was the social aspect. I also saw a lot of hypocrisy in the teens because of how enthusiastic they'd supposedly be at lifeteen, but not during discussions of the faith or in secular or school contexts. It seemed like they used what superficial faith they had to get to go to lifeteen to hang out with their friends, but didn't own it in contexts outside of those. I don't believe this was actually the case for several, because they've continued to be active in lifeteen after high school as core members, but this is just what my observations were as a high school participant were. 

 

Having a younger brother still in high school, I see that the program hasn't changed much except that there's less kids going. My brother hated going as much as I did, when my parents still made him go.

 

Again, though, I have no real way of knowing whether that's all the fault of lifeteen, the implementation of it in my parish, or a little bit of both. But anyway, that's my experience.

[Maggyie]

Well my parish growing up used Life Teen exclusively (I did not participate because I wasnt a practicing Catholic until college). They have had 5 priests ordained from the parish in the last 10 years and send young men to the seminary almost every year. A whole bunch of my classmates are newbie priests now. We all went to the public high school by the way. Not a homeschooler in the bunch.

So the main factor is the quality of the people running the program and also whether the parish makes it a priority to support the whole concept of youth ministry. 

[truthfinder]

I knew many people my age through high school who went to Lifeteen Masses regularly. Not a single one of them is a practicing Catholic anymore. From what I can tell on Facebook every one of them has apostatized and most are openly anti-Catholic.

​From what I remember of my parish at the time, it turned out to be half and half.  Some people have definitely matured in their faith, others have most certainly turned away.  The people running it at the time were solid, particularly the priests.  I never stuck around for the meetings themselves (mostly because they were rather late for my family), and we rarely went to the Lifeteen Masses (I hated some of the liturgical changes they made for the altar servers - it might have been localized to that parish, but this altar girl wasn't impressed).  Most people who went to Lifeteen were also enrolled in the Catholic schools (which imo are much better than in your diocese).  But in the end I think it really boiled down to home spiritual life and sometimes individual devotion/interest. If parents were just dropping their kids off to entertain them, or hope the church would do all the catechising, it didn't work out too well.