Dead Theologians Society brings new life to youth ministry

A youth ministry founded by a former rock drummer is sounding the call to grow closer to Christ by imitating the lives of the saints, and by praying for the souls in purgatory.

“We’re the Church Militant, learning about the Church Triumphant, and we pray for the Church Suffering,” Eddie Cotter, founder and director of the Dead Theologians Society, told OSV News, citing the traditional names of the three states of the church (believers on earth, the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory).

Established in 1997 as a private association of the faithful, the Dead Theologians Society (the name of which is a spin on the 1989 film “Dead Poets Society,” in which a teacher galvanizes his students through poetry) is open to teens in grades 9-12, as well as young adults age 18-24, with the two age groups meeting separately under adult leadership. Chapters for students in grade 8 can occasionally be formed with permission from the society’s national office, which is based in Wisconsin.

During their meetings, which are held at parishes and schools, society members study the saints, drawing inspiration from their examples of virtue and seeking their intercession. Eucharistic adoration, the rosary and the brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel are integral to the society’s activities, as is praying for the souls in purgatory.

The group’s motto, “mortuum mundo, vivum in Christo” (“dead to the world, alive in Christ,”) echoes St. Paul’s call in Romans 6:11 to be completely transformed in accord with Christ’s death and resurrection.

The society is endorsed by several U.S. bishops, with its episcopal advisory council led by Cardinal Raymond L. Burke and counting among its members Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee and Bishop Robert J. Baker of Birmingham, Ala. DTS also belongs to the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry.

Cotter told OSV News that the society has seen roughly “over 21,000 young people” become involved since its inception — and a number have gone on to pursue religious vocations, as he has often later discovered, sometimes humorously.

“A few years back, there was a Catholic conference in Columbus, Ohio, and I was crossing the street. A van full of nuns was at the light, and they honked their horn and started yelling, ‘Eddie Cotter!'” he recalled. “I’m thinking, ‘How would a van full of nuns know me?’ Well, it turned out that one of those nuns was one of the very first teenagers in DTS.”

In other cases, Cotter is approached by priests seeking to start a DTS chapter in their parishes, only to learn that they too were alumni of the society.

At the same time, Cotter stressed that DTS does not retain contact information for members, especially minors, to ensure their privacy — and because as a former juvenile court director, “keeping kids safe has been my life’s work,” he said.

In fact, after a career as a drummer for the 1980s rock band The Bellows — “our video aired on MTV once at like 3:30 in the morning, and of the 5,000 YouTube views, me and the lead singer count for about 4,800” — Cotter became a social worker, serving inner-city youth for Catholic Social Services of Columbus, Ohio, before being appointed director of the Hardin County, Ohio, juvenile court.

Those experiences instilled in him a deep concern for the wounds and the well-being of youth — both in this life, and in the life to come, he said.

“When I was working for the juvenile court system, I frequently would have to take a young person in my caged car (a car with a security grille) to a lockup facility,” Cotter recalled. “Frequently, I would stop by the (Basilica and National) Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio, and would stop there. We would go into the church, and I would try to talk with the teen and say, ‘You know, I may never see you again after this, but I do want you to get to heaven. And if somehow you don’t get your life oriented towards trying to get to heaven — to get to know God and love God — to be honest with you, all of our court systems, even the best of them, won’t make a darn bit of difference.'”

Cotter said that he himself would travel to the shrine “sometimes at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. … asking Our Lady, ‘Put me where you want me, because I’d like to advocate for the rest of my life for what I know people need the most, especially young people. … I’ll go anywhere you want me to go.'”

Those prayers were swiftly answered, he said, as an opportunity to become a youth minister at a Catholic parish in Florida opened up days later. He and his wife packed up and moved, and “that started my youth ministry career,” said Cotter.

There, while working with “probably close to 200 teenagers from six different subcultures,” Cotter hit on the idea for the Dead Theologians Society amid a youth group event.

“We watched ‘Dead Poets Society,’ and when we finished watching it, an enthusiastic conversation came from that, where the teens and I said, ‘Hey, instead of learning about poets and writers, let’s learn about the lives of the saints.'”

But before the group could actually be formed, Cotter received a call for another youth ministry position in his native central Ohio.

“The priest said, ‘Eddie, we have over 120 years of tradition here in this town, six Masses on the weekend, and we’ve had a Catholic school, but we’ve lost the college crowd totally. We’ve got a handful of teenagers that come to all the Masses combined. Do you have any ideas?'” said Cotter. “And I said, ‘I do.’ And the Dead Theologians Society was put into practice.'”

The first gathering for the society took place in 1997 at St. Francis de Sales Church in Newark, Ohio, with the group meeting in what Cotter called an “undercroft chapel” — a former storage and maintenance space he and his team turned into a place of prayer and worship, filled with candles and icons.

“When they walked into the space, they were like, ‘Wow,’ because their feeling was this is going to be a very geeky, horrific youth group church experience, where we’re going to do 5-year-old stuff for high schoolers,” said Cotter, adding that the meeting included a reading of “The Didache” (also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”), an anonymous patristic text from the second century that covers Christian morals, ethics and hope in Christ’s Second Coming.

Word about the society soon spread, and dozens started attending the society’s weekly gatherings, including “16 Protestant kids who became Catholic within two years,” said Cotter.

The society’s mission and message are both timely and timeless, he added.

“We catechize, evangelize and pray for souls,” he told OSV News. “That’s what we do, and it’s never stopped.”

For more information on the Dead Theologians Society, deadtheologianssociety.com.

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