‘Scouting is back,’ going strong teaching life skills to youths in Archdiocese of Baltimore

Excerpt of Catholic Review article written by Kurt Jensen. Photo credit: Kevin J. Parks/CR Staff

An inspiration from prayer helped Lucy Loughlin come up with her Eagle Scout project – dog beds for animal shelters.

Lucy, 16, a parishioner of Holy Family in Davidsonville and a past chaplain of BSA Troop 396, which meets in Annapolis, relied on tires from a tire dump and donated fabric and pillow materials for what she dubbed her Sew Ministry, which earned her Eagle Scout badge.

Having prayed to see a need and finding one, like so many others, she credits Scouting with helping her learn basic skills in addition to the outdoor camping practices that were a foundation of Boy Scouts of America since the organization’s founding in 1910. That mission continued in 2019 when the organization began admitting girls and changed its name to Scouting BSA.
Lucy credits the education in her troop with having “helped me to get through turmoils and challenges I’ve encountered.”

BSA Scout troops, currently chartered by about 90 parishes in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, are far off the peak membership of the Baby-Boomer years. No one maintains a precise statewide census, but the current estimate of Catholic youths in Scouting programs in the archdiocese is about 2,000.
Even after the Boy Scouts’ 2020 Chapter 11 bankruptcy to cap payments for sex abuse lawsuits – the organization emerged from Chapter 11 in April 2023 after making a $2.64 billion settlement – Scouting programs have survived.

Archdiocesan Scouting officials hope to glimpse the future of the programs at an April 19-21 retreat at Walkersville Watershed in Frederick. It’s the first since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Father Jim Bors, appointed last year as chaplain of the Archdiocesan Catholic Committee on Scouting Leadership, hopes it will show “that Scouting is back.”

Click to read the remainder of this article at: https://catholicreview.org/scouting-is-back-going-strong-teaching-life-skills-to-youths-in-archdiocese-of-baltimore/