As Growing Numbers Leave, the Archdiocese of Detroit Tries to Keep Young People in the Flock [CN-USA]

[MugenOne]

I’m on deployment in Iraq right now. I attend church service every week. Base has a lot of people here, but I always see the same usual suspects on every Saturday evening. There’s an Air Force 2nd LT who seems to be every religious. After returning from my R&R, he’s now a Bible carrying Protestant. I was shocked. How can people switch side so fast?

 

[Redbaron998]

I’m on deployment in Iraq right now. I attend church service every week. Base has a lot of people here, but I always see the same usual suspects on every Saturday evening. There’s an Air Force 2nd LT who seems to be every religious. After returning from my R&R, he’s now a Bible carrying Protestant. I was shocked. How can people switch side so fast?

He probably did not appreciate the sacrements to thier fullest. A Catholic who really understands and appreciates the scarements could possible become Eastern Orthodox, or maybe even Anglican or traditional Lutheren.

If he did apprecaite the Eucharist and understood what it really is no way he could leave the church for a non-Eucharistic community. Try to show him the real presence in the Eucharist using the bible and show him that it is definetly a Catholic book. Demonstrate to how everything we do comes from it.

 

[edwest2]

If you look back, both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press have changed ownership. In the past, both were reflective of and respectful toward Christianity. But they have turned toward secularist and Leftist ideology. The article about Catholics leaving the Church referred to “attendees” as if it was talking about a movie theater.

The Church will not force you to appear at Mass. But I do agree with others here that the Church should be more welcoming, and just like it does missionary work among the people overseas, it must again become visible among the lost in the city of Detroit and elsewhere in America.

Lay people in the Church were given the mission to help reach out, even on the internet.

God bless,
Ed

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

The article about Catholics leaving the Church referred to “attendees” as if it was talking about a movie theater.

Attendance at Mass is an important factor in determining how many Catholics there actually are. A person can say they’re Catholic but, with a limited number of obvious exceptions, they aren’t really Catholic unless they attend Mass and participate in the sacrements. Attending Mass when you’re physically able is not now nor has it ever been optional. Canon 1247 states, “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass; they are also to abstain from those labors and business concerns which impede the worship to be rendered to God, the joy which is proper to the Lord’s Day, or the proper relaxation of mind and body.” This is a serious problem in the United States as only 31.4% of self-identified Catholics actually attend mass on a weekly basis.

 

[OriginalJS]

He probably did not appreciate the sacrements to thier fullest. A Catholic who really understands and appreciates the scarements could possible become Eastern Orthodox, or maybe even Anglican or traditional Lutheren.

If he did apprecaite the Eucharist and understood what it really is no way he could leave the church for a non-Eucharistic community. Try to show him the real presence in the Eucharist using the bible and show him that it is definetly a Catholic book. Demonstrate to how everything we do comes from it.

Is it a problem that Catholic theology and teaching has become so complex as to be exceedingly difficult for anyone but a trained theologian to understand? Ask a normal, Mass attending Catholic to explain the doctrine of transubstantiation and see what you hear. You can use the Bible in attempts to explain doctrine, but you have to know how the Church interprets it, which most laymen do not. Finally, not everything Catholics do can be shown to come from the Bible. Much comes from Tradition which may claim to have a Biblical base but the connection is often hard for a lay person to understand without a lot of help.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

Is it a problem that Catholic theology and teaching has become so complex as to be exceedingly difficult for anyone but a trained theologian to understand? Ask a normal, Mass attending Catholic to explain the doctrine of transubstantiation and see what you hear. You can use the Bible in attempts to explain doctrine, but you have to know how the Church interprets it, which most laymen do not. Finally, not everything Catholics do can be shown to come from the Bible. Much comes from Tradition which may claim to have a Biblical base but the connection is often hard for a lay person to understand without a lot of help.

I agree and, in my opinion, the Bishops have encouraged intellectual sloth by eliminating the latin mass in many parishes and replacing the Douay-Rheims with the American Standard. Their efforts to make Catholic teaching and texts more easily understood are commendable but, IMO, they’ve gone about it the wrong way and many things have been lost in translation.

 

[Australis]

The article is gone but can I make a remark on the issue? I think the American culture of consumerism (aka materialism) post WWII really had a huge impact on people’s values. The more orthodox forms of Christianity are declining because orthodox Christianity doesn’t fit the consumerist mold of “big living”.

 

[lizaanne]

RealCatholicTV has a Vortex episode on this article: The Long Goodbye

Based in the AoD - RealCatholicTV knows first hand what’s really going on there.

~Liza

 

[Dale_M]

The article is gone

Oh, that is unfortunate.

Here is the Google cache of it:
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ahJBtat-r2IJ:www.cathnewsusa.com/article.aspx%3Faeid%3D22368+cathnewsusa+detroit&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The CathNewsUSA article is simply the first two paragraphs of a a much longer Detroit Free Press article. Here is a link to that article:
freep.com/article/20100711/NEWS05/7110421/As-growing-numbers-leave-the-Archdiocese-of-Detroit-tries-to-keep-young-people-in-the-flock

 

[Dale_M]

If they are leaving, then where are they leaving to? Protestant churches? other faith groups? staying at home?

A 2009 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has some interesting data on why US Catholics leave their religion.

Among those persons who do not have a replacement religion (approximately half of those who leave), the largest number leave the Catholic Church during their teen years. Only 21% of those who leave without joining another religion did so when they were older than 24 years.

71% of those who are unaffiliated say they just “drifted away.” In contrast, only 54% of those who joined a Protestant church said the same. The unaffiliated also have a higher objection to specific Catholic teachings than do those who joined other churches.

Those who leave the Catholic Church for a Protestant faith show an interesting division of attitudes between those who join an evangelical church and those who join a mainline church.

Among former Catholics who are now Protestant, 71% say they left Catholicism because their spiritual needs were not being met, making this the most commonly cited reason for leaving the Catholic Church among this group. A similar number (70%) say they left the Catholic Church because they found another religion they liked more. Having found a religion they liked more than Catholicism is cited by almost equal numbers of formerly Catholic evangelical and mainline Protestants (70% and 69%, respectively). By contrast, lack of spiritual fulfillment is a particularly common impetus for leaving Catholicism among those who are now members of evangelical Protestant churches (78%) but is cited less often by former Catholics who have become members of mainline Protestant churches (57%).

The survey finds other interesting differences between those who have left Catholicism for evangelical and mainline Protestant churches. Most converts to evangelicalism (55%), for instance, say that dissatisfaction with teachings about the Bible was a reason for leaving the Catholic Church, compared with only 16% among current mainline Protestants. The two groups also express concerns of a different nature about the Bible. Most evangelicals who left Catholicism over concerns about teachings on the Bible (46% of all formerly Catholic evangelicals) say the Catholic Church did not view the Bible literally enough. Mainline Protestants, however, are not only much less likely to say concerns about the Bible led them away from Catholicism, but those who were led away by such concerns are also much more evenly divided as to whether the church viewed the Bible too literally (6%) or not literally enough (8%).

Mainline Protestants are much more likely than their evangelical counterparts to say they left Catholicism because they married a non-Catholic (44% vs. 22%) or due to dissatisfaction with the priests at their parish (39% vs. 23%). In addition, nearly one-third of formerly Catholic mainline Protestants (31%) say unhappiness with the Catholic Church’s treatment of women led them away from Catholicism, compared with only 11% among evangelicals.

pewforum.org/Faith-in-Flux%283%29.aspx

 

[Tigg]

The article points out a couple reasons young people are leaving the Church: the coldness of fellow worshipers and boredom with the service.

The reason they are bored is because they do not understand what is happening during the Mass. And since when does authentic Catholic worship look to fellow worshippers to supply a warm and fuzzy feeling about the experience of Liturgy? If we could return to a “Sense of the Sacred” and discern the Holy Presence of Christ on our altars, perhaps we wouldn’t need externals to keep us from avoiding our commitments.

As the article mentioned, the numbers of Catholics in the US would be shrinking considerably if not for Hispanic immigration.

Regardless of polls and numbers, there is much more to this story. We, as catechists, have noticed something rather alarming. Our Hispanic numbers did rise temporarily, but they continually fluctuate. The reason was discovered in our parish by our DRE. They come to religious ed class to make their First Communion and Reconciliation - after that we no longer see them!