By Marie Mulvenna

"Doors of Jubilee" was the overall theme of the annual Religious Education forum held last weekend at St. Joseph's High School for religious education personnel and interested persons. Some 150 participants took part in the two-day program.

Sponsored by the Archdiocesan Office of Religious Education, the forum featured guest speakers Father Jacques Weber, SJ; Sister Jose Hobday, OSF; and John Roberts.

Father Weber, director of the Office of Continuing Adult Education for the Galveston-Houston (Texas) Diocese, gave the initial presentation Friday evening with his talk on "Message, Community and Service." He stressed the importance of integrity to one's self, relating that a person must centralize his efforts and must be genuine and true to himself before he can impart anything worthwhile to his students. Father Weber emphasized return to the center of one's being, which is Jesus Christ.

Sister Jose, a director of religious renewal and spiritual formation, presently works at the Fort Peck Indian Reservation at Brockton, Montana. Sister spoke Saturday morning and addressed the topic, "Hospitality: a Gospel Interpretation," stating that a person had to be alive, be prayerful and put the emphasis on the spirit rather than the worldly. She underlined the necessity of bringing the spirit to life, asking participants how they knew they were alive.

John Roberto, who is Director of Youth Services for the Diocese of Bridgeport (Conn.) and the author of Youthsources, spoke to the forum on the topic of youth ministry. He described youth ministry as being very fluid, varying a great deal from parish to parish. Roberto maintained that a successful youth ministry takes quite a period of time to initiate and further requires people who are interested in young people, plus a priest as leader who can sit down together and work out an expression of what youth needs and wants. The youth themselves, he said, must take part in the planning, answering questionnaires as to their needs and desires.

Roberto said it is often a slow process, taking as long as two years to "get it off the ground." Information must be collected and analyzed and the approach taken must be quite different from the old classroom technique. The newer format, he said, must be presented as message (God speaks), service (relating to a problem of a particular Church or community), and community itself.

The forum concluded Saturday with a concelebrated Mass with Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, Father Weber, and Father Robert Kinast as celebrants.