Audrey Schroeder receives national youth ministry award

Audrey Schroeder receives national youth ministry award

“I just did it because I loved doing it,” says Audrey Schroeder of her 42-year career in youth ministry, a twinkle in her eye. This past weekend she was recognized by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM) at their conference here in San Antonio for her significant contribution as an outstanding model of service and “keeper of the vision” for youth ministry, one of eight so honored nationally.

What turned into a lifetime dedicated to working with Catholic youth began shortly after the Schroeders moved to New Braunfels in 1971. Signing on to co-direct Sts. Peter and Paul Parish’s 6-months-old youth choir led by Mary Tamayo, Schroeder little dreamed the two would still be on the job some forty odd years later, with a parish room named after them — or what that originally “part-time” job would blossom into.

Born into a traveling Navy family that settled down in Marshall after her father’s retirement, Schroeder’s background proved the perfect foundation for her future ministry. She graduated from North Texas State University with a B.A. in speech, drama and English and received musical training as well. While still a student she traveled as part of a professional musical trio and later worked as the youngest female radio announcer in the United States. Eventually she became a high school teacher in both public and parochial schools.

“I had always been involved with working with young people in creative areas, in creative arts,” she says, “but then I decided in 1987 to quit teaching and go into fulltime youth ministry because that’s where my heart really was.”

Long before, under her leadership, the choir had become more than just leading young people in song at the 11:15 a.m. Mass. “When I quit teaching and went into youth ministry fulltime, we actually were the youth ministry program,” Schroeder says of the youth choir. “We did all the mission trips. We did all the fundraisers. We did all of the socials.” Besides teaching music, she also directed around 240 students in the annual Christmas pageant.

Youth ministry in 1971 was a far cry from the youth ministry of today, and through her leadership, Schroeder was able to lead not just Sts. Peter and Paul, but the parishes of her deanery from the old “club” model to the holistic model of Catholic youth ministry articulated in The Vision for Youth Ministry.

Taking certification courses led to her being asked by Pat Perillo to become resource coordinator for the Seguin/New Braunfels Deanery and, for a time, the Fredericksburg Deanery too, coordinating conferences that provided training and formation in basic Catholic youth ministry principles and skills. She additionally was coordinating deanery-wide events for adolescents. Though retiring from fulltime youth ministry work at Sts. Peter and Paul after 13 years in 1998, she continued in her role as conference coordinator for the Office of Youth Ministry until last June, when she told Joan Martinez, “I think it’s time to let somebody else younger take this over.”

“The most challenging thing probably was to build a youth ministry program,” she recalls, “and to sell the idea to the church, which had been in the mode of letting the priests do it all for so many centuries, that our young people were capable, that our young people could do anything that an adult could do and do it with exuberance and with youthfulness!”

Young people were introduced to areas of church life which had previously been the domain of adults only and given the opportunity to become eucharistic ministers, sit on the pastoral council and serve as readers and cantors. “They became a visible and viable force in the church,” she says, “where the church could actually say: ‘Hey, those kids can do that!’” They also presented religious dramas, the living Stations of the Cross and special Christmas Eve services.

The transition was not always easy, however. Sts. Peter and Paul was an old German traditional parish and Schroeder remembers the introduction of guitars and drums at Mass in the early ’70s came as a bit of shock to some, with Father Patrick Flanagan, the pastor, emphatically telling folks if they didn’t like the music, to attend a different Mass.

That generation of young people had a great hunger and thirst to learn about their faith, Schroeder noted, unlike their parents, “conditioned Catholics” who had received little in the way of instruction in their faith. The young people of the ’70s wanted more reason to do the things they were doing in the church besides “this is the way we’ve always done it,” she said. “I see what the youth ministers now are doing with faith formation for the young people and I’m going: “Hallelujah! That’s the salvation of the church!”

In accepting her NFCYM award, Schroeder reflected, she would be accepting it “on behalf of all those wonderful youth ministers who started out in the trenches, who had nothing to work with.” She herself worked for free her first year in youth ministry, her first office being in the parish garage where a green telephone was hooked up. There were no titles, technology, budget or staff, let alone curriculum or books for this ministry. All that would come later and, at times, was an uphill battle to implement.

Her youth ministry program at Sts. Peter and Paul was fortunate in being given a large old house on the perimeter of the church grounds though, which had been bequeathed to the parish — an excellent place for meetings, social gatherings and classes and perfect for overnight retreats. Father Eugene O’Callaghan’s only stipulation was that they clean it up and maintain it, which they did. Every Wednesday night, she and her volunteers cooked meals for the youth group there, and the house also became a source of revenue when rented for other group retreats.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes, a lot of transition,” says Schroeder. “A lot of wonderful things have happened in youth ministry.” Originally there were over a hundred young people, with no separation of classes into things like Life Teen and confirmation preparation. Close to 200 were confirmed last year, she estimates, and possibly 500 in programs overall. Now there is a junior high ministry as well.

Coordinating conferences in the old days involved a lot of hands-on work and traveling to meet with people, modern technology being lacking. “I liked the idea that I had to get up and go out on the road and meet the folks,” she says. She came up against “a lot of different attitudes,” she recalls, “but I also met some very wonderful priests who were pleased that young people were working more actively in the parishes.” Among them, she fondly remembers Father Carlos Velázquez and Father Dennis Darilek.

Memories of her days in youth ministry range from the excitement of Sts. Peter and Paul youth choir being one of the three chosen to sing at Pope John Paul II’s Papal Mass in San Antonio in 1987, to meeting in the middle of the night with a girl who’d been frightened by a friend’s witchcraft talk. And she was constantly on the go. “You had to be where the kids were,” she says. “You had to be at the ballgames or if they were going to be in a play or something. They expected to see you in the stands.”

Especially memorable, she says, was watching young people grow and develop in their faith life, “where they actually own it and getting the concept so clearly that it’s something that has to be shared — watching them mentor to each other.”

Also meaningful has been seeing her former students return. “We’ve had probably 300 members in our youth choir since 1971,” she says, “and they still come back.” In fact, one who played guitar in the group as a 14-year-old is now playing guitar at Mass as a retired colonel. Former choir members often write her they’ll be home for Christmas to help with Christmas Eve Mass. “You know you’ve done something right when they come back, she muses. Children of former choir students are now in the choir.

“It was fun to be in on the ground floor,” she says, reflecting on her days in pioneering youth ministry. “It’s been a good ride. I feel like, in a way, we helped pave the way to some degree. I think, at the end of the day, we can be grateful that maybe we did touch somebody’s life.”