Are baby boomers to blame for society backsliding towards atheism?

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Our generation was/is one of the luckiest, it is often said. Financial security for most . No world wars. Got to question authority in the sixtees and seventies as we all let our hair down and asked “Maybe I don’t have to take all this Catholicism stuff so seriously. Maybe God doesn’t care if I don’t follow the Commandments so seriously” So we threw our catechisms away and embraced secularism. I got into gambling and drinking and God became a distant memory. But was that typical of baby boomers? Maybe some of you maintained a stricter observance of God’s Law?
 
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I believe it was the 60s that brought about sexual revolution, cultural Marxism, etc. so they probably bear some of the burden
 
Critical theory and the frankfurt school seem to be going strong. When I was in high school, I joined the debate class. Guess what we were taught? Critical theory. Communism seen as something good. It’s not just buzzwords.
 
I once had a “Question Authority” tee shirt. My spouse had the matching “Answer Authority” tee shirt.

Here’s another take. Previous generation had common sense. Baby boomers assumed common sense. Then it was replaced with laws. Today, it’s gone, and the laws that replaced it are ignored, broken, or discarded.
 
As a baby boomer of the time, I don’t believe the problem was really with us. In the UK our education system was very poor and many of us went to Catholic Schools that didn’t teach us the faith. The parents thought the schools taught us and the schools thought the parents taught us.

Upon reflection, neither of my parents (both attended Catholic schools in different countries) knew their faith and therefore, had few roots. Most of my aunts and uncles don’t know the faith and drifted away, apart from one uncle who was a priest and two aunts (one is a nun). Of my cousins (I have about 30) one is a Jehova’s witness and none of the others attend any type of Christian church except for funerals. One brother is anti Christian and the other is an Evangelical, which leaves me, the one Catholic (my niece’s husband is Catholic so I am no longer alone). My grandparents on both sides were very devout but somehow, what they passed on of their faith wasn’t enough and generation after generation has wandered off.

So who is to blame? Maybe the enemy has been targeting each generation and hit the jackpot in the last few generations. We still have elderly folks who think mass at Christmas and Easter is enough to enter into Heaven! That didn’t happen overnight.

We can’t change history, but I think we need to be God’s instruments to change the now and future. It is happening. Most of the children in my First Holy Communion Preparation class have a solid grounding of the faith thanks to their parents and school. They are quite awesome.
 
goodcatholic said:
Our generation was/is one of the luckiest, it is often said. Financial security for most . No world wars. Got to question authority in the sixtees and seventies as we all let our hair down and asked “Maybe I don’t have to take all this Catholicism stuff so seriously. Maybe God doesn’t care if I don’t follow the Commandments so seriously” So we threw our catechisms away and embraced secularism. I got into gambling and drinking and God became a distant memory. But was that typical of baby boomers? Maybe some of you maintained a stricter observance of God’s Law?
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Really it began much earlier. The sexual revolution was in the 1910s and 1920s with the focus on glamour and leisure and a popular and sexualized urban environment. The Anglican Lambeth Conference in 1930 approved the use of condoms, also the Federal Council of Churches (1931).

Strauss-Howe theory (year of birth):
  • Lost Generation 1883–1900 (17 years)
  • G.I. Generation 1901–1924 (23 years)
  • Silent Generation 1925–1942 (17 years)
  • Baby Boom 1943–1960 (17 years)
  • 13th Gen 1961–1981 (20 years)
  • Millennial 1982–2004 (22 years)
  • Homeland 2005–present
 
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I believe the baby boomers were not the cause, but rather the first full expression of the secularization (modernism) of which the Church has been warning since the Enlightenment. Subsequent generations have no doubt surpassed their hippy parents and grandparents in matters of godlessness.
 
No. Blame it on sin. Besides if you know your history this is a comparatively great time for the church.
 
I’ve always found in useful to be able to blame my parents.
 
I was a dreadful teenager. I remember saying to Mum “I didn’t ask to be born anyway.” On reflection I deserved a put down from my mother in return , but poor soul just took it.
 
Yes, the human teenager may be one of the fiercest and craftiest creatures ever to walk the earth.
 
Baloney. Or not to put too fine a point on it - baloney. Starting in 1959, we lived under the threat of ICBMs simultaneously deployed by the Russians and the United States. The Russians had detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949, and promptly joined North Korea as “advisors” in 1950 at the start of the not-so Korean War. The Russians also had a new jet fighter too, the MiG 15 which, not coincidentally, looked like the US F 86 Sabre. The Russians were advising the North Koreans about anti-aircraft defense and even flying MiGs into combat. Our pilots heard their radio chatter.

The date on the calendar has nothing to do with anything. After Vatican II ended in December 1965, various radical and dissident groups were formed inside and outside the Church and launched a coordinated attack against the Church. I was there when their civilian preachers came into our neighborhoods. They had a simple gospel: turn your back on the Church, cohabitation is good, have sex with anybody and mom and dad are just “squares,” so forget them too. And smoke dope on a regular basis, not to mention use other illegal drugs, which they were able to provide. Here’s a big stack of books about eastern mysticism. Practice Hippie yoga. The Hippies, Radicals and Dissidents began to publish “underground newspapers” encouraging us to do stupid stuff. I picked some up but never bought into their craziness.

Women Priests? New idea? No. The Catholic dissidents were doing their best to wreck things from the inside and cause deviations in Church teaching.

 
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Well, what the Anglicans did is one thing. Pope Paul VI knew what was going on and wanted to remind and encourage the Catholic laity and all men of good will about staying with constant Church teaching about artificial birth control. His advisors encouraged him to relax the Church’s stance on ABC. He decided to not follow their advice. In 1968, Humanae Vitae was published and within 24 hours, a group of Catholic theologians, going beyond their authority as theologians, published a full page ad in the New York Times in dissent. They said it was OK for married Catholics to use ABC.
 
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The 60s were a difficult time to grow up. So much was changing so fast, student riots, LSD and heroin, the string of assassinations–John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King–a whole lot was frightening to a child. I was very lucky to come from a family in which faith was carefully preserved and prevailed. I did not lose my faith but found that the difficult times quickly made it stronger.
 
edwest211 said:
Well, what the Anglicans did is one thing. Pope Paul VI knew what was going on and wanted to remind and encourage the Catholic laity and all men of good will about staying with constant Church teaching about artificial birth control. His advisors encouraged him to relax the Church’s stance on ABC. He decided to not follow their advice. In 1968, Humanae Vitae was published and within 24 hours, a group of Catholic theologians, going beyond their authority as theologians, published a full page ad in the New York Times in dissent. They said it was OK for married Catholics to use ABC.
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And besides that of Pope Paul VI, there is the encyclical of Pope Pius XI, Casti Canubii December 31, 1930, and the Allocution to midwives, October 29, 1951 or Pope Pius XII.
 
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