‘You have a mission in the world that only you have.’ Ryan Mayer, speaker
By Valerie Schmalz
One of the challenges of being a young adult is the sense of being on the way, not yet there.
“We always want to be somewhere, but we can be fulfilled where we are right now,” said Mason Friedberg, founder of Bay Wide Young Adults, and a panelist at the first of seven monthly Catholic Social Teaching events organized by the new Bay Area young adults’ group, Catholic Leaders in Action. “St. Francis de Sales says bloom where you are planted.”
Photo of the group at St. Phillip Parish Hall.
About 50 young adults gathered June 2 in the parish hall of St. Phillip Church in Noe Valley for the inaugural event, a social hour and lecture with featured speaker Ryan Mayer, director of the archdiocesan Office of Catholic Identity Formation and Assessment.
Mayer then moderated a discussion and audience Q & A with panelists Friedberg and Amytza Maskati, a St. Raymond parishioner and founder of Sisterhood Surrender, a 100-member faith group. Father Tom Martin, CLA chaplain and pastor of the Noe Valley cluster, opened the event with a prayer.
“Never doubt what God can do with you,” Mayer said. “It is really about mission. It is about who we are, who God calls us to be, the mission that he gives us, clarifying that and then encouraging each other.”
Mason Friedberg, Amytza Maskati, and Ryan Mayer.
“Our goal is to bring young adults together to build leaders but also to build community,” said Saul Perez, one of four founding members of Catholic Leaders in Action and the archdiocesan coordinator of social action and digital media in the Office of Human Life & Dignity. “We want to bring people’s faith into action.” The other founders of CLA are archdiocesan Catholic young adults, Jessica Glennon, Daniel Ramirez and Jerry Sharp III.
Each lecture and social event is designed to be allied with a direct ministry action of some kind, Perez said, such as advocating with the California Catholic Conference for legislation, accompanying immigrants in the court system or helping out with the Missionaries of Charity and/or the St. Vincent de Paul homeless ministries.
Catholic Leaders in Action founders Daniel Ramirez, Saul Perez and Jessica Glennon speak to the group. (Jerry Sharp III not shown)
The first event June 2 centered around the theme “Call to Family, Community and Participation,” one of the seven themes articulated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Modern Catholic Social Teaching is understood to have begun with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum on standing for human dignity in the age of industrialization. Catholic Social Teaching has been defined throughout the 20th and into the 21st century by the encyclicals of the popes, Mayer told the assembled young adults.
Ryan Mayer, main speaker and director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Office of Catholic Identity Formation and Assessment.
“All of them start with the dignity of the human person. That is really the foundation of all of Catholic Social Teaching,” Mayer said. That is at the heart of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Mayer said.
The event was met with enthusiasm by those who came.
“I think there are so many things we could be doing and so many places we could be right now,” said Amytza Maskati, another of the three panelists and a member of St. Raymond Parish young adults who spoke at the Noe Valley event. “God is communion and therefore we do not go this alone—life is so much more meaningful together.”
The next Catholic Leaders in Action event is July 7 at St. James Parish Hall in San Francisco. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and event begins at 7:15 p.m. RSVP here: https://luma.com/5phxte1t. Featured speaker will be Molly Sheahan, associate director for healthy families at the California Catholic Conference.
Mason Friedberg, right, with young adults at St. Phillip.
