Catholic Youth of Today!

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Youthful_chick

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hi all,

I’m new here and i just got some questions that i want to share. I live in Austraila and our Catholic youth numbers are droping. You will rarely see young people going to church yet alone practice their faith. You can only see the youth going to church because their parents force them. btw im 17 yo and i do go to church even without my parents. 😛

Questions:
  1. What do you think about the Catholic youth of today?
  2. Why are the numbers decreasing?
  3. Who is to blame?
thanks in advance. 😃
 
the average Catholic youth who is brought up in a Catholic home and educated in even the basics of the faith, even if that formal religious education is limited to sacramental preparation classes, is exposed to everything he needs to know to choose whether or not to follow Christ and remain loyal to His Church. If he has been attending Mass, even if “forced” by his parents (I doubt very much if his parents are taking him at gunpoint) he has had the opportunity to hear weekly what God want to say to him. The youth of 17 or 18 or older has the same choice as every other Catholic: obey or disobey, open one’s mind and heart to hear God, or close oneself to God’s speech, believe in the promise of God in eternity, or believe in the things of this world. If a youth turns away from God he has only himself to blame for the consequences.
 
I’m 23, so I’m not sure if I still fall into the demographic of “Catholic youth” or not (alas, what an awkward age!), but I consider my thoughts to be from the perspective of youth, even if hardly typical of people my age.

That said, I think youth seem unattracted to the Church because they are never presented with the great challenge and mystery she has to offer. The old adage runs that people are willing to give their lives for an exclamation point but not for a question mark, and I think that holds true. Afraid of turning people away with the counter-cultural or “hard to hear/accept” (think John 6) elements of Catholicism, those in charge of ministering to all ages tend to water down the Gospel and the requirements it places on us. I think many more people embrace the Church when she is allowed to speak with full force instead of constantly being forced to apologize for herself.
 
Youthful_chick said:
hi all,

I’m new here and i just got some questions that i want to share. I live in Austraila and our Catholic youth numbers are droping. You will rarely see young people going to church yet alone practice their faith. You can only see the youth going to church because their parents force them. btw im 17 yo and i do go to church even without my parents. 😛

Questions:
  1. What do you think about the Catholic youth of today?
  2. Why are the numbers decreasing?
  3. Who is to blame?
thanks in advance. 😃
Click to expand...
Hello from a fellow youth! 😉
  1. I think that there are many Catholic youth out there who really love God and are trying to do His will. However, I think a lot of them are suffering from a lack of education in the Catholic faith. Too many don’t know the answers to basic catechism questions.
  2. I don’t know if the numbers are decreasing in the U.S. The youth at my parish are pretty active. However, I think our numbers could be higher.
  3. I think that people who are encouraging the “modern” way of praise and worship are to blame. These kids are being encouraged to participate in the kind of worship that feels good to them. It makes them excited and makes them feel like God loves them. Emotions are rarely true and it would be much better to show the youth why the Church is the one true church through logic and reason. They can find the modern praise and worship style at any Protestant church. They can’t find the beauty of Tradition and the mystery of the Holy Eucharist there, though.
I also think that many adults have set a bad example. The people who took Vatican II went way too far and it’s taken years to pick up the pieces.

Hope this helps! 🙂
 
The general culture these days is a malaise of agnosticism. Kids fall into because they are so immersed in it through TV and school without a really firm grounding in the true faith.

Back in the day, when the culture was either literally Catholic or at least very close to Catholic, being immersed in it wouldn’t have such a bad effect.
 
Youthful,
Funny, I see the opposite where I am at. Which might be the answer entirely. I see my generation as the ones that left the faith and now are trickling back in. I was raised on the east coast of the US and sadly, mass was just something you had to do to keep parents at bay. Even my own mom stopped going to mass once my dad died. Yesterday I found out that my sister and her husband have stopped going since their kids were confirmed.

Yet, here in the midwest, I see exactly the opposite. I see kids that want to go to mass, want reconcilliation, want to participate. We have 18 yo EMHC’s and a rather large percentage of our teens are in choir and usher. Why the difference? I really think it is about leadership. We have an excellent bishop here that sets the kids on fire for Christ. We have a very small community and our priest and religious always make time for us. When I was back east, I couldn’t have said that at all. Perhaps it was just the town I was raised in, or the town I live in now… but I do see this all over our diocese.

Recently, I chaparoned a group of kids at the March for Life. Every event, every mass, the organizers made reconcilliation available. It was not required, but I watched as kid after kid went to reconcilliation. It really warmed my heart. My own kids (ages 20, 17, 15, 11) don’t give me a hard time about mass at all. Actually the opposite. If I am not going due to illness, they find a way to go without me. When they were younger they would get mad if we didn’t go. Yes, I see kids around here that don’t want to be at mass and sneak out just after communion… but not half as many as when I did that as a teen.

The one thing I will say though… Parents who think it is up to the child to choose when they are old enough are hurting their children. I hate that attitude! How will a child learn about their faith if you don’t teach them and set a good example? To me, it is a no brainer… I have a responsibility to raise the blessings God has given to me in the faith.
 
** You can’t serve two masters---- Jesus’ world and the devil’s world . You gotta make your choice.**
 
Youthful_chick said:
hi all,

I’m new here and i just got some questions that i want to share. I live in Austraila and our Catholic youth numbers are droping. You will rarely see young people going to church yet alone practice their faith. You can only see the youth going to church because their parents force them. btw im 17 yo and i do go to church even without my parents. 😛

Questions:
  1. What do you think about the Catholic youth of today?
  2. Why are the numbers decreasing?
  3. Who is to blame?
I am not interested in placing blame, but I do have some opinions about the loss of youth. Youth need an authentic expereince of the Holy, which they do not often find at the Mass. I see that most “Catholic” homes are not “domestic churches” as they are intended to be. Parents do not fulfill the vows made at baptism to bring up their child in the faith. Most parents to not understand and practice their faith, either. So, which came first? chicken or the egg? The problem needs to be addressed on many levels, but for the youth, I think a strong experiential catechism is needed. this does include the teachings of the faith, but it needs to have application of the faith. Young people need a place to gather where they can talk about and pray over issues of importance to them, and I think the Church sometimes falls short in that. I certainly have seen a lack of it in the high school confirmation classes here in my parish.

thanks in advance. 😃
Click to expand...
 
Our eyes are glued to the TV (and now, other media sources) and our hearts turn toward superficial, thoughtless, frivoulous ideas and entertainments.

No one talks serious issues anymore. Maybe people do in college, but that’s about it.

Religion deals with serious, heavy duty issues. Young people (1) aren’t used to talking intensively about philosophical questions, and (2) aren’t being encouraged by the media around them, or by the general business climate, which just wants people to train for a specific job.

At least, that’s how I view it.
 
After confirmation, which in my town happens your freshman year of highschool, there is little or no RE classes and activities for the older youth to do. I know that as a freshman in college it can be hard to get involved at school. My school is predominately Jewish, so the Catholic activities and Mass times tend to be harder to find. Yesterday only 20 people were at Mass, this may be due to the fact that Mass is held at 7:15 at night. The Newman club meets once or twice a month after Mass. So, if you can’t go to that Mass you miss the meeting. I know that every school is different that some schools may have a more or less active religious life. When people stop going to Mass and participating in their religion it becomes easier for them to fall away from the church. In college many for the first time have to actively seek out religion and that is too much for some.
 
Would you think that the young people are more individlistic and sceptical about the authority of the church?
 
Of course we are. Being the rebel is the cool thing to do, it always has been. If a youth makes the mistake of believing in a higher authority than himself, he suffers the anethema of being a conformist.
 
In my experience with fellow youth, they have some sort of belief. But they experience severe unbelief, because they don’t know why they believe; some question whether or not they even have faith, as they were raised in a Catholic environment. So seems like its just “natural” and that is the extent of their faith. Even those who have been active in our youth group are showing signs of a decline in interest of things Catholic, and love for Christ. I had to live outside the confines of the Church in order to grow to love Jesus. Even when I had found a certain faith in and love for God, I was still not in full communion with the Church, but it prepared me to embrace completely the mysteries of the Church in which I had my first spiritual formation.

Thankfully I’ve been graced to be one of our youth group’s spiritual leaders. We provide “explorations” of the faith for all ages, and the next time we meet we’ll be discussing the Holy Mass. If the DVD “The Catholic Mass Revealed” arrives on time, then we’ll also be showing that movie. Its a little nerve wracking at times because you don’t know if people will “get it”, but as Father John Corapi says: “Just show up for work.” The Spirit takes the rest home.

🙂
 
Speaking as a young man (24) who fell away from the church and returned to it, I wouldn’t give up hope yet. As a teenager, I began to question my faith, skip Mass, etc. I think it was part of the question everything phase teenagers go through, and secular culture didn’t help either.

As I grew a little older and started to settle down, I began to get really into the Catholic faith, to the point where I am now addicted to the CAF! The Newman center at the University of Illinois is PACKED for every Mass. I think as young people grow up and settle down and contemplate families, the pull of the Church becomes stronger. I know if I hadn’t questioned if the CC was for me, my faith wouldn’t be as strong as it is now.

My only concern is what I saw at my fiance’s former church; I went to a service once with her, which was all young people. It was more or less a rock concert. Their “communion table” (We would call it an alter) was pushed out of the way for the drum set. There was a half hour of music and a half hour of the pastor picking out bible verses about how to manage your money. It was packed with teens. These kind of churches know how to pull in the kids, and keep them. It’s good to teach kids about Christ, but I fear they don’t know what they’re missing out on.

My fiance enjoys our Mass, and when we began to discuss some of the beautiful things about the Church, she knew where we belonged.
Sorry for the long post…:rolleyes:
 
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