Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Evangelizing Ourselves and Our Children VII

Ministering to Our College Students and Young Adults

If an important psychological goal of adolescence is the development of a strong sense of identity – where I am from, who I am, where I am going – a strong sense of religious identity is at the core of that identity. It is no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church as well as many protestant denominations and the leaders of other faiths establish ministries on college and university campuses. As young people move through adolescence and into adulthood during their college years they continue to develop their identities. A Roman Catholic nun I know once commented that bishops staff their university/college campus ministries/parishes with some of their most dynamic preachers precisely because this is the first time many young Catholics will be attending church by choice, and college students have many questions in their search for identity. It is not by accident that many Roman Catholic bishops take campus ministry so seriously.

For most Byzantine Catholic college students who live away from home and cannot attend their home parishes, their only real or apparent option is to attend the Roman Catholic parish or campus ministry center, often referred to as the campus Newman center. No doubt some young Byzantine Catholics are lost to the Roman Catholic Church and even to some protestant denominations in this process. At the same time it would be naïve to think that the Byzantine Catholic Church can set up campus ministries at many universities and colleges across this nation. But that is not to say that the Byzantine Catholic Church can do nothing.

Indeed the Byzantine Catholic Church is not doing nothing. Very recently the Archeparchy of Pittsburgh announced the establishment of a mission parish in State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University’s main campus. The mission is being established alongside the Byzantine Catholic Campus Ministry at Penn State which has seen an ebb and flow of interest among students in its twenty some year history. Its present pastor Father Robert Oravetz has been assigned the task of helping to establish a permanent Byzantine Catholic presence in Happy Valley. Since Father Oravetz’s arrival last year, students can now check off their Byzantine Catholic affiliation on the university campus ministry’s survey/ registration form. Many students did not even see this option last year with only four checking off that they were Byzantine Catholic. This year forty students identified themselves as Byzantine Catholic. In reality more students and townspeople attend Sunday Divine Liturgy than that with an average of seventy people attending in any given week during the academic year and more than one hundred people attending at least twice monthly. In the last year Father Oravetz has presided at three weddings and has received nine individuals into the Byzantine Catholic Church. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated in Penn State’s newly opened Spirituality Center, the nation’s largest center dedicated to campus ministries of all faiths at a public university.

Penn State has a critical mass of Byzantine Catholics. What about other schools with large resident populations? There are certainly bound to be some Byzantine Catholic students. Do other universities have the same critical mass? If parishes would provide an annual list of students living away at college to the bishops, the bishops could then get a sense as to who goes where and what schools might be able to have a campus ministry for Byzantine Catholics. Even when a university has but one or two resident Byzantine Catholic students in a given year, it should become a practice for the most nearby parish to reach out to these students – even providing a ride for those who do not have transportation.

Father Russell Duker in Pittsburgh has been celebrating the Divine Liturgy for Byzantine Catholic students at the united Catholic Campus Ministries of several Pittsburgh area universities and colleges. He celebrates them twice monthly.

The Byzantine Catholic Church of America should seriously examine these and other ways in which to keep our college students engaged in our church during their college years. One by-product in our presence on college campuses is the real possibility of evangelizing those who themselves are unchurched and searching for God.