By Abby Uche

You may have noticed mid-November that a handful of your classmates were missing from class. Some of them were sick, others were in Minneapolis, Minn. attending a national student journalism conference, others had left for Indiana to attend a mysterious event called “NCYC.”

For those of you that don’t know, every two years the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry or the NFCYM sponsors the National Catholic Youth Conference or NCYC. The NFCYM describes NCYC as “an exciting, biennial three-day experience of prayer, community, and empowerment for Catholic teenagers and their adult chaperones.” The conference consists of a mass, three general sessions, a variety of workshops, musical performances, comedy acts, as well as a dance for the participants. This year’s NCYC was held in Indianapolis, Ind. Nov. 17 to Nov. 19. All the workshops were held in the Indianapolis Convention Center, and the general sessions, which had an audience of over 20,000 people, were held in Lucas Oil Stadium.

This year I was among the small number of STA students who participated in NCYC. This was my second NCYC (my first was two years ago in Kansas City), and with one previous conference experience under my belt I felt qualified to give this one a review.

The General Sessions:

The NFCYM live streamed recordings of each general session as they were occurring, reaching around 20,000 viewers from several different countries. Each session as well as the closing liturgy can still be viewed online.

These sessions were odd to say the least. They were not odd in a negative way, but odd in the sense that each session contained an overwhelming number of people dressed in neon t-shirts, various light-up accessories, extremely unusual animal-themed head wear, and armed with vuvuzelas (the obnoxious horns made famous by the World Cup in South Africa). The energy in Lucas Oil Stadium was insane on the first day, but as the audience and the people on stage grew more tired, the sessions calmed down a bit. This brings up my only notable criticism of these large gatherings, many people (myself included) found it more difficult to stay focused on the session as the energy slowly trickled out.

The Workshops:

I attended two workshops while in Indianapolis. The first was entitled “All the Single Ladies” hosted by Ms. Beth Joubert, a youth minister from New Orleans, Louis. Honestly, I picked this session almost solely because of the title in hopes that Beyonce would somehow be involved. It turns out I was right, and all the single ladies (no males were granted admittance into this session) in the room spent the first 15 minutes grooving, or more accurately flailing, to Beyonce’s “Move Your Body.” In the program book each participant was given the session was accompanied by this description:

“Come dance, sing, have fun, and hear what this passionate single lady has to say about loving life and living it to the fullest. In this motivational session, Beth will help empower you to believe in the young woman that God made you to be and how to live that out in the world today.”

Though the description made a valiant attempt to describe this session, I’m still not exactly sure what it was about. The session was fun given the aforementioned dancing and the giant drawing the participants in this session created of “Our Dream Husband,” but I don’t know that I really took too much away from this session.

The second workshop I attended was called “My Catholic Life” and was hosted by Catholic comedian Judy McDonald. As weird as the phrase “Catholic comedian” might sound, I was pleasantly surprised by McDonald. Although she did divulge into some more serious Catholic-ey topics toward the end of her routine, McDonald was fairly hilarious.

The Music:

During NCYC, different bands were performing almost constantly. I saw a handful of these performances, and there was definitely a mixture of types of talent (and quite frankly, amount of talent). The most memorable performance I saw, however, was without a doubt the Catholic rap group Righteous B. This high energy group managed to work the words “Lord” and “crunk” into the same sentence and yet somehow also managed to make the seeming contradiction of rap music and Catholicism work. I met the members of this group in person after one of their performances and was equally impressed with Righteous B’s charity work and t-shirts urging the wearer to “Hug a Thug Today” as I was with their music. (And yes, I did get autographs.)

Overall:

NCYC is a very weird, very cool event. Even though it may seem intimidating or perhaps even boring to spend three days with 20,000 crazed Catholics, once you get over the initial weirdness and the sheer number of people, NCYC can be a really valuable experience. I admit, sometimes the messages at the sessions or workshops got a bit preachy, but I think that is only to be expected of a religious conference. Overall, NCYC is something I would recommend to any Catholic or anyone curious about Catholicism. Even if you are not über religious, where else are you going to meet self proclaimed “thugs” rapping for Jesus?