Next year’s Religious Education Congress will be held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced this week.
“COVID-19 has changed many of the traditional ways of gathering,” said Sister Rosalia Meza, senior director of the archdiocese’s office of religious education in a June 29 letter. “After consultation, prayer, and discernment, we [the RE Congress team and Archbishop José H. Gomez] came to the decision that the Religious Education Congress 2021 will be a virtual event….”
In an interview with Angelus, Sister Meza said that safety concerns about planning such a potentially large gathering of people amid uncertainty about the pandemic’s future course factored heavily in the decision. But organizers also took into account the grim financial reality that many of Congress’s regular participants are already facing.
“Many of the people that attend Congress are ministers, people from parishes, and a lot of those are losing or have already lost their jobs,” Meza said. “We care about the people, and we have to be very mindful on different levels….
Planning for the event is still in the early stages, but Sr. Meza said that her office’s tech partners estimate a virtual Congress held via Zoom could host some 50,000 online participants.
While the change is an unwelcome one for all involved, Sr. Meza hopes it can help her team to think more seriously about how to attract younger generations of Catholics in the long run….
The above comes from a July 1 story in Angelus News.
They aren’t going to get anywhere near 50,000 people. They’ll be lucky to get 1,000. Nobody cares about watching videos of workshops or events. It won’t attract young people. They’re dreaming if they think this is going to succeed. Better to just take a year off or have a scaled-down series of 10-20 headliners record videos for people to watch for free. Maybe this is finally the beginning of the end of the LAREC.
Yes that’s about right, bringing more trash and misinformation to the web. Time to bury the REC for good.
I know from experience how expensive it was to send parish and school staff to the LAREC each year. It was always a burden on the financial resources of the parishes and schools, and a boondoggle for many staff members who felt more depleted after each year’s required attendance. By all means, put it online next year and save the parish resources. There are sure to be 100 gung-ho spiritual warriors who will tune in to watch the virtual interpretative dancing and empty prattle from some new age princes of the church.
From what I understand about the LAREC, the less Catholics that attend, the less who will be led astray,
If they really wanted to attract a younger audience, appeal to them with the beautiful and timeless traditions of the Church. The Latin Mass primarily. It’s beauty has brought countless souls to Christ over the centuries. The young have no problem sniffing out pandering and by trying to seem “cool”, the Church comes off as fake and impertinent. Sound teaching and adhering to what Christ commanded His Church is what is most needed. Every soul yearns for the Lord. The youth need to hear and believe in Him. For what the world offers is ultimately unsatisfactory.
After Vatican II the Latin Mass will always and only be a small minority preference.
Thankfully, younger priests do not have the hang ups about the Latin Mass that the Vatican II era priests have. Those parishes where the TLM is celebrated are younger and growing.
Every priest today is a Vatican II priest, except the schismatic SSPXers and such who reject Vatican II, because it’s after Vatican II. You exaggerate the popularity of the TLM. The TLM will never become the primary way Mass is celebrated in the Church ever again. That ship has sailed. It’s not coming back.
You presume to know the Mind of God. If He wills it to happen it will. No one seemed to take the Lord in mind when radically changing the Mass. We have seen the price for this.
Are you saying Vatican II, which changed the Mass, was not willed by God? That it’s an illegitimate council? The Vatican II Council Fathers all prayed during the council, so they most definitely had the Lord in mind when they changed the Mass.
Not having this Marxist Religious Education Congress for large numbers of social worker ministers will delay full implementation of the pantomime of Vatican Council II for one year. This a good thing. Every single year we can keep the Catholic Faith counts. We survived the French Revolution and will survive these revolutions.
I have participated in 30 years of LAREC, I will be attending the 2021 Virtual Congress. I was very impressed with the Archdiocese C3 and I attended all of my workshops there. For those of you who are dropping very negative comments, you can’t take anything away for the positive experience I have had. Your comments hurt me not. How dare you limit the power of of the Lord. Shame on you. LAREC I welcome you.