Ninety participants attended the 1985 East Asian Pastoral Institute Summer Course on Youth Ministry in Manila, May 13-June 14, 1985. Of these, 39 were male Asians, 11 male non-Asians; 32 female Asians and 8 female non-Asians; comprising 31 Priest, 6 Brothers, 27 Sisters and 26 Lay Persons. According to nationalities, 50 came from the Philippines, 15 from the Fiji Islands, 9 from Malaysia, 2 from Indonesia, 2 each from Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand and one each from Hongkong, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Saipan, and Zambia.
The course started with general orientation during which delegates introduced themselves, and group needs and resources surfaced. After the participants had expressed their own perception of their own perception of their country’s youth  a profile of Asian  youth was given and later illustrated by a sample research on Filipino youth. Lecture on the Ministry in the Church closed the first week.
The second week opened with talks on Adolescent Psychology and its attendant relevance to guidance and counseling. In line  with their psychological  growth, the youth experience moral and faith development which ultimately shapes their religious identity. This psycho-religious development pattern requires a program of religious education suited to it.
Such a type of religious education was explained in the third week, in conjunction with value education. Growth is a difficult process for the young especially in these times when they have to confront as many divergent forces-drugs, sexual exploitation, the influence of mass media, economic and social insecurity. Besides, youth have a culture all their own. Adults should understand this sub-culture if they ever hope to reach the young.
The fourth week was devoted to a Youth Camp and to liturgical celebrations for youth. A group of forty boys and girls from different parishes of Manila were invited. How do young people interact in a religious atmosphere? For three days the delegates had the opportunity to watch and participate in the event.
Campus Ministry, an apostolate relatively new in the Philippines, was the subject of discussion in the fifth and final week. It was followed by ministry to out-of-school youth. The rest of the week took up pastoral initiatives in the forms of organizations and services like the Tahanan Outreach Projects Seminars (TOPS), Charismatic Renewal, Foculare, Balik-Sinag, Antioch Communities, Dulaang Sibol, Bigkis and Ministry to Girls in Trouble.
The following is a summary of the main talks:
Dr. Mina Ramirez offered a framework for understanding the youth of Asia from the perspective of their social creativity and the central role they play in development efforts. She observed that, despite geographical, historical, and socially-rooted differences, there seems to be a homogenization of culture among Asian youth. This phenomenon she accounted for on the level of global realities in the economic, political, and cultural dimensions. An international economic order, based  merely on profit, reinforces inequities between the  developed and the developing countries and between the rich and poor in each country. To enable business firms oriented to the world market to operate without interference from labor movements, a national security ideology makes sure that political stability becomes the primary consideration in the Third Word. The most subtle form of domination is in the realm of international information and communication order. The transnational corporations and their political partners maintain control of all forms of media. This promotes attitudes of materialism and consumerism, especially among the youth.
Dr. Jose M. de Mesa contented that the understanding of ministry in the  Church today is only possible when we take into account both the Judeo Christian tradition and the contemporary experience of people. Just as the early Church was sensitive to the society of its time and responded to it, so must ours be today. To be a real sign of salvation, it is necessary for the Church to be in culturated and contextualized – she must be a part of the world within which she is a sign.
We find in the New Testament three characteristics that distinguished the ministries in the early Church: (1) Christian ministry is not a sacral office. (2) Christian ministry is an action. (3) Christian ministry is universal and diverse.
In the early days of the Church the relationship of Ministry and Community was very strong. The ministry leadership was a call of the community. Ministry developed around community. For certain historical reasons, however, this ceased to be. These reasons were: (1) the division of the Church community into the clergy and laity, (2) the episcopalization of the ministry, and (3) the sacerdotalization of the ministry of the leadership. Ministry is service so that the Kingdom of God comes by way of doing the will of God, responding to the needs of the people so that the experience of God’s graciousness and goodness may become the heritage of all.
A developmental view of adolescence was presented by Dr. Naomi R. Ruiz. Since adolescence happens to the family and not only to an individual child, it is important to see this period from two developmental frameworks – Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory and the Stages of Family Life Cycle.
Erikson describes life as consisting of eight stages from to death. At each stage of development a crisis emerges which may either be positively or negatively resolved. A positive resolution leads to strengthening of the ego and therefore to greater adaptation. A negative resolution weakens the ego and inhibits adaptation. How a person resolves a crisis will have a lasting effect on one’s view of self and society.
Only the first five involve adolescents: basic trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, and identity vs. identity diffusion.
The family with children of adolescent age is the particular stage of the family life cycle when both parents and children undergo major interlocking transition in their  development. The adolescent’s shift of loyalty to the peer group coincides  with their parents’ midlife crisis. The teenagers’ own ambivalence towards independence makes it all the more confusion for parents. Parents are bothered and bewildered by age-appropriate behaviors of adolescents. These are their need for privacy, their need to rebel, their need to be away from family, their mood variations, and peer group pressures.
Quite often, appropriate support is not given to teenagers because of inability to recognize adolescent depression when it occurs. The norms used are usually those for adults. However, adolescent depression is basically different from that of adults. Teenagers express depression in different ways. Their depression elicits different responses in those around them and is minimized by adults. It is intense and has a lifelong impact.
Parents should try enhance communication with adolescents by empathizing with them, creating a non-threatening atmosphere, by using active listening and the I-message (a direct and honest way of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings without putting down the other) and by the no-less method of resolving conflicts.
According to Rev. Paul Byrne, SSC, the identify of a young person could be examined from three different angles: from the phase of his past, present, and future; from the community to which he belongs; and from his own sense of uniqueness. The way youth go (emotionally), so grows their faith. The process of identifying formation is successful if the resulting identity is clear: ” I know where I stand vis-a-vis my past, present and future. I can find my place in the community and I realize my uniqueness.”
Fr. Byrne took the definition of faith according to James W. Fowler as (1) “SRADDHA,” a search or a setting of one’s heart upon; (2) “BELIEBEN,” a cherishing dear; and (3)”CREDO,” an entrusting or a committing. It is something personal and deep within each person. It takes place in a kind of “relationship.” At the beginning, a person joins with his parents, his family , his peers, priests, ministers, all the people who have helped him come to appoint of shared center of value and power. This center operates like a symbol to bring together the meanings and purposes of a person’s life. Fowler’s  faith stages start with infancy and end with adults of 35 years and more who they try to integrate everything that has been good in their and get in contact with their deeper selves.

Bro. Miguel rapatan, FSC, talked on Religious Education. The student, he noted, has three basic needs that every religious education program should try to meet: effective, assertive, and creative. The young need to perceive their religion teacher as an affirming presence. They want a spiritual guide, one who will walk with them as Christ did with the teo disciples at Emmaus. Principal among teenagers’ assertive needs is their need to maintain a “sense of the holy” in a rapidly-changing world. The creative needs of young people surface in their desire to express their spirituality in unique and varied forms. The Religion Program of St. Joseph’s High School, a Free Scool, a Free School of the La Salle Brothers in Bacolod City, takes into consideration these needs.
Since values are important in any kind of religious education, Mr. Ernest tan followed up with a talk on “Values Education.” The process of valuing begins with choices. Our choices depend on our cognitive structure, some of us having more elements in our cognitive structure than others. When we help the young go into this exploration process, the first thing we do is to help them to get in touch with their cognitive structure. Furthermore, decisions cannot be objective because part of us is the effective element, so we cannot help but consider decisions also with regards to feelings and emotions. Lastly, many times our behavior pattern jives or does not jive with what we are doing.
Values, according to Louis C. Raths, involve Choosing, Prizing and Acting. A value is something that is freely chosen from alternatives and is acted upon, that which the individual celebrates as being part of  his creative integration in his development as a person. The seven steps of choosing freely are: choosing from alternatives, considering the possible consequences, cherishing, affirming publicly, doing, and doing it repeatedly and consistently.
There are three kinds of values: (1) Act Values – these are values that are part of us, having already been integrated into our system: like security and a sense of self-worth. (2) Choice Values – these are values not yet integrated, on which we are trying to work, especially in pressure situation. (3) Vision Values – there are values we could ideally like to develop, but which we could only attain by working on the constraints.
Mr. tan next explained the Phase of Consciousness. The Phase of Consciousness is our perception of the world and our role in it. Phase I is similar to the stage of an infant who sees the world as a mystery. Phase II comes when the individual realizes that part of his survival in this world belongs to a world of do’s and don’t s. Phase III looks upon the world as a project. The self is seen as independent. The focus is Me. What can I do? In Phase IV, the world is seen as a mystery I care for, because of the potential it carries. The focus now is on the We as Life-Givers. many people find the process a liberating experience. It forces them to take charge of their life and to take self-direction.
Dr. Telly Somera gave a summary of Kohlberg’s moral values theories. Moral development has a cognitive base, but to achieve higher status of moral thinking, one has to go beyond the first three of Kohlberg’s stages (punishment-obedience, pleasure-pain, social approval). The cognitive stage does not assure the development of higher moral stages. Stages are sequential and invariant. Earlier stages do not disappear. Individual variation enriching stages of moral development is enormous, dependent on the age structures of a person, his biological condition and environment. Reciprocity – clear recognition of social sanctions – involves interaction of equals: What I will do is dependent on what he does to me. Schools/families tend to perpetuate the lower levels of morality. Principled morality requires the ability to think abstractly and independently. Developmental views concentrate on the reasons for behavior and not on specific content. Value relativism is strongly denied by all developmental theories.
The three goals of value education are re-orientation re-direction and transformation. values contribute actively towards the integral development of a person. The four basic dimensions in his ofle are physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. If he is moving towards their  integration, he is valuing; if not, he is dis-valuing.
Rev. Gerald Arbuckle, S.M gave a general overview of Culture and Youth. We must realize, he said, the power of culture. Culture teaches us to hear things, to smell things, and to see things that other cultures do not see. Culture directs emotion along certain directions.
There are two broad types of culture – the Folk and the Associational. In Folk Culture what happened in the past will determine what happens in the present and in the future. In Associational Culture there is constant change. Language in Folk Culture is repetitive and concrete; in Associational. absolutely short. In Folk Culture time is of the essence, everything is  clearly and definitely timed. In Folk Culture the older you get, the more wisdom you are supposed to have, the greater prestige you have. In Associational Culture, to be young is to have power. While in Folk Culture the emphasis is on the group in the Associational it is on the individual, as shown in the land tenure. Folk Culture stresses group loyalty. Among the methods used to control the group are the fear of gossip, the fear of the supernatural, and the fear of ostracism.
Culture is a network of symbols. Rarely do we appreciate the power of symbols. Symbols relate to the heart; they bring feelings out. Evangelization can touch people only if we move to their  symbols. We should ask ourselves whether the symbols the adult culture is placing on youth are causing them grave and even unnecessary tension.
Ethnocentricity is thinking we are bigger that we actually are. It comes out of an excessive love of our own culture and is an obstacle to understanding another culture. Our own culture, our age bracket, give us colored glasses through which to see the other culture.
Youth culture is a process in contemporary and traditional cultures. Family system in associational culture, for example, is carried into politics – on the one hand the youth are learning the necessity for justice and respect for the individual, yet they are finding that the family system of pressure and intrigues and injustices is being carried on.
All cultures need ritual. Young people need space to work through their confusion, to touch the rules of life. Ideally, the process is geared to internalize values of creativity and certainty, to give a sense of roots, to develop questioning. The tragedy of our times is that the initiation of our youth is provided by schools; though human formation is rarely provided because the adults themselves are confused.
Youth culture is a mini-politics of rebellion against obscure social forces. It creates a collective symbolic identity and explores the excitement and vitality of being young. Youth culture is reacting to adult control culture. The signs of rebellion are: (1) alienation through contact/conflict, (2) culture of poverty or anomie, (3) alienation within the family, (4) quest for community, (5) alienated elite, and (6) youth themselves.
The last speaker was Mr. Augustine Loorthusamy who talked on Media and Youth. All of us who are interested in values, attitudes and knowledge in terms of behavior, hoping to become change agents or models to the youth, should try to understand the forces of social change, asserted Dr. Loorthusamy.
What are the determinants of social change? War/revolution, ideology, religion, colonization and, most important of all, theological revolution – the wheel, writing, the printing press, stream, electricity. Electricity caused the emergence of sensorial, electronic communication. In working with youth, we adults should always be aware that we belong to a different culture from theirs. Ours is the Book Culture – call it track I. We are very cognitive, logical, linear, legalistic, stiff, and formal. Young people, on the other hand, Track II, are audio-visual; they are effective,  sensorial, mosaic, imaginative and non-formal. To reach them, we must start with the affective. We have to update ourselves. We have to go deeper into youth to find out their audio-visual culture and, knowing it, try to enter through their door.