Father, why are my children leaving the Church now that they're grown?

[fisherman_carl]

We all have personal convictions. Consider why you are a Catholic and not something else. To be honest even though I was baptized a Catholic and went to Mass growing up I didn’t really know all the Catholic rules and teachings. Many of my Christian beliefs were from non Catholic Christians. I had a relationship with Jesus as a teenager that many Catholics sitting in pues didn’t seem to have. Priests would often preach sermons that didn’t seem to have any impact or seemed to miss the point. Why weren’t they talking about having a relationship with Jesus I thought. Why didn’t they read their bibles? Why weren’t they trying to get people saved? Instead they were just telling us to be good people.

I know people have gone over to other churches because they were fed spiritually over there and became part of missions and ministries. One I know believes that in the Catholic Church you have to be a consecrated priest or a nun before you can do anything. That there is nothing lay people can to do except sit in the pue. He wants to become a pastor. And these other churches seem more alive and on fire for the Lord. He says he has grown and matured more in these other churches. There seems to be more fruit over there for them.

But, getting back to convictions. I am a Catholic because of my convictions. But, in my past I have dabbled in other churches. When I was younger I even sent someone i led in a prayer to receive Jesus to one of these other churches because I thought they were better for them to be saved in. Interestingly enough though I still went to the Catholic Church because I felt like there was something about the Eucharist and that I was missing something spiritually if I never received it. Even though I didn’t fully understand it at the time.

I am a Catholic now because I came to a point in my life where I had to seek the truth. I had fallen away and did not have a close relationship with the Lord like I once had. However, the Lord revealed that he still loved me. I studied, I read the early Church Fathers. I became convinced of the early Christians belief in the real presence and in other Catholic beliefs.

So now when I hear about all these people going to other churches I say I have to be true to my own convictions, true to the truth that I know, and not be swayed. It is difficult sometimes, but I pray that they will eventually return to the Catholic Church and discover Jesus in the Eucharist. And often these people can go on to do great things for the Lord in the Catholic Church because they had that experience, like Jeff Cavins for instance.

It is difficult and sometimes I feel alone because its like I discovered this thing called the Catholic Church and no one around me seemed to know it either even though they are also Catholic. But, the Lord has been using me even though I am weak to teach others about it and bring others into a fuller knowledge of the faith. God bless you.

 

[EasterJoy]

We all have personal convictions. Consider why you are a Catholic and not something else. To be honest even though I was baptized a Catholic and went to Mass growing up I didn’t really know all the Catholic rules and teachings. Many of my Christian beliefs were from non Catholic Christians. I had a relationship with Jesus as a teenager that many Catholics sitting in pues didn’t seem to have. Priests would often preach sermons that didn’t seem to have any impact or seemed to miss the point. Why weren’t they talking about having a relationship with Jesus I thought. Why didn’t they read their bibles? Why weren’t they trying to get people saved? Instead they were just telling us to be good people.

I know people have gone over to other churches because they were fed spiritually over there and became part of missions and ministries. One I know believes that in the Catholic Church you have to be a consecrated priest or a nun before you can do anything. That there is nothing lay people can to do except sit in the pue. He wants to become a pastor. And these other churches seem more alive and on fire for the Lord. He says he has grown and matured more in these other churches. There seems to be more fruit over there for them.

But, getting back to convictions. I am a Catholic because of my convictions. But, in my past I have dabbled in other churches. When I was younger I even sent someone i led in a prayer to receive Jesus to one of these other churches because I thought they were better for them to be saved in. Interestingly enough though I still went to the Catholic Church because I felt like there was something about the Eucharist and that I was missing something spiritually if I never received it. Even though I didn’t fully understand it at the time.

I am a Catholic now because I came to a point in my life where I had to seek the truth. I had fallen away and did not have a close relationship with the Lord like I once had. However, the Lord revealed that he still loved me. I studied, I read the early Church Fathers. I became convinced of the early Christians belief in the real presence and in other Catholic beliefs.

So now when I hear about all these people going to other churches I say I have to be true to my own convictions, true to the truth that I know, and not be swayed. It is difficult sometimes, but I pray that they will eventually return to the Catholic Church and discover Jesus in the Eucharist. And often these people can go on to do great things for the Lord in the Catholic Church because they had that experience, like Jeff Cavins for instance.

It is difficult and sometimes I feel alone because its like I discovered this thing called the Catholic Church and no one around me seemed to know it either even though they are also Catholic. But, the Lord has been using me even though I am weak to teach others about it and bring others into a fuller knowledge of the faith. God bless you.

Yes, there are Catholics who do seem to run low on knowing and teaching the “facts of the faith” and on incorporating the faith into their lives on a minute-to-minute basis. I know a few parishes where essentially everyone is directly involved in the charitable work of the parish, for instance, but not very many, and those are small parishes.

I have a young relative who went to Catholic high school and was convinced he knew all about what happened at Mass. Well, he really didn’t. There aren’t many Catholics, for instance, who think of listening to the Scriptural readings as a communal act of worship. If you pray the Mass as a single act of worship from start to finish, a communal act of worship in which you are joined not just to the people around you but to the entire and eternal Church throughout all of space and time, it is not boring. It’s close to exhausting, actually. You certainly don’t walk out of Mass and think, “OK, that’s over, and it had nothing to do with me.” And how do you re-enter the Holy Sacrifice on Calvary, see yourself as part of that atoning sacrifice, see everyone around you as part of it, then receive Holy Communion at the end and say, “But gee, I wasn’t ‘fed.’” How do you even consider for a minute that your entire exposure to the Word of God for the entire week and your entire need for reflection into the core of your life could ever be satisfied in a 15 or 20 minute commentary on the Mass readings? Yet people do put that kind of unrealistic expectation on the weekly homily, or else they put no expectation on Mass to touch them at all, but are just satisfied that they met an obligation.

Do they even ask why there is an obligation to do something when it is being accomplished in such a inconsequential manner? Do they think it even make sense to require something without an expectation that it will make any demands on them? Is there any sense of “Ask not what Mass can do for you; rather, ask what of yourself bring to Mass”? Are they concerned about what they’re bringing as an offering?

Are they even awake for the preface dialogue?
P: The Lord be with you.
C: And with your spirit.
P: Lift up your hearts.
C: We lift them up to the Lord.
P: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
C: It is right and just.

It is really quite amazing, you are very right.

 

[RCinMT]

Well let me tell you that you can even get if from other, ostensibly, practicing Catholics. My own mother is in her mid-60s. When I became engaged the first question she asked was about wedding plans, to which I replied “somewhere in the mountains”, to which she replied “if you don’t get married in the Church, i won’t be there”. Okay, fine, my wife goes through RCIA, we get married in the Church and over the ensuing eight years we’ve grown a lot in the faith.

Two weeks ago my mom was with us for Christmas. We don’t watch my television so we were playing, as we often do, the Catholic Channel from Sirius in the background. After about an hour we ran errands and came home. The first comment from my mom was “can we not listen to Catholic sh…(caught herself)…htuff?”. Okay, fine. We say grace before every meal, she rolled her eyes (“wasn’t the way we did it when you were a kid- Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving–enough?”). I could go on.

Before she departed we ended up having an argument about her dog. In the ensuing disagreement she said something along the lines of “you’re so rude. You go to church and do all of your phony Catholic stuff.”. I managed to calm her down long enough to ask what her exact position was because, last I knew, she went to mass every week. Well she still does but seems to think that making your life about the faith is “bizarre”.

If you believe in Christ and the teachings of the Church and you take time to learn about the faith, how could you possibly not make your life about the faith? Lets be real clear here, too: we watch movies; we have drinks; we take our kids to museums; read Catholic books, yes, but also read the kids the more mainline contemporary secular books (as long as they aren’t OVERTLY offensive to the faith…). It’s not as if we throw holy water at people who walk in the door or randomly read the Bible. Sometimes, in fact, I think we aren’t immersed enough but I digress.

So there’s my own baby boomer mother who goes to mass pounding me for being “too Catholic”.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Well let me tell you that you can even get if from other, ostensibly, practicing Catholics. My own mother is in her mid-60s. When I became engaged the first question she asked was about wedding plans, to which I replied “somewhere in the mountains”, to which she replied “if you don’t get married in the Church, i won’t be there”. Okay, fine, my wife goes through RCIA, we get married in the Church and over the ensuing eight years we’ve grown a lot in the faith.

Two weeks ago my mom was with us for Christmas. We don’t watch my television so we were playing, as we often do, the Catholic Channel from Sirius in the background. After about an hour we ran errands and came home. The first comment from my mom was “can we not listen to Catholic sh…(caught herself)…htuff?”. Okay, fine. We say grace before every meal, she rolled her eyes (“wasn’t the way we did it when you were a kid- Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving–enough?”). I could go on.

Before she departed we ended up having an argument about her dog. In the ensuing disagreement she said something along the lines of “you’re so rude. You go to church and do all of your phony Catholic stuff.”. I managed to calm her down long enough to ask what her exact position was because, last I knew, she went to mass every week. Well she still does but seems to think that making your life about the faith is “bizarre”.

If you believe in Christ and the teachings of the Church and you take time to learn about the faith, how could you possibly not make your life about the faith? Lets be real clear here, too: we watch movies; we have drinks; we take our kids to museums; read Catholic books, yes, but also read the kids the more mainline contemporary secular books (as long as they aren’t OVERTLY offensive to the faith…). It’s not as if we throw holy water at people who walk in the door or randomly read the Bible. Sometimes, in fact, I think we aren’t immersed enough but I digress.

So there’s my own baby boomer mother who goes to mass pounding me for being “too Catholic”.

I am in my mid sixties,a cradle Catholic.I regret to say for the better part of my adult life,say twenties into early fifties ,I was a very lazy Catholic.Oh I had my three daughters baptized,confirmed ,religious ed but we weren’t living our faith.Eventually I devolved into a C& E Catholic,then didn’t even bother going on C& E after awhile. It was only after some time away from the Church,trying the Lutheran Churc( my husband faith before he converted)that I found myself missing my Catholic Faith.My husband converted,I was his RCIA sponsor.It was during this process that I really ,learned my faith and appreciated it for the gift it truly is. Now I do live it ,love it and am so grateful to be back home.
Ongoing faith education is key to growing in one’s faith.Kudos to you and you wife,who knows,eventually your Mom will come around through your example.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

Yes, there are Catholics who do seem to run low on knowing and teaching the “facts of the faith” and on incorporating the faith into their lives on a minute-to-minute basis. I know a few parishes where essentially everyone is directly involved in the charitable work of the parish, for instance, but not very many, and those are small parishes.

I have a young relative who went to Catholic high school and was convinced he knew all about what happened at Mass. Well, he really didn’t. There aren’t many Catholics, for instance, who think of listening to the Scriptural readings as a communal act of worship. If you pray the Mass as a single act of worship from start to finish, a communal act of worship in which you are joined not just to the people around you but to the entire and eternal Church throughout all of space and time, it is not boring. It’s close to exhausting, actually. You certainly don’t walk out of Mass and think, “OK, that’s over, and it had nothing to do with me.” And how do you re-enter the Holy Sacrifice on Calvary, see yourself as part of that atoning sacrifice, see everyone around you as part of it, then receive Holy Communion at the end and say, “But gee, I wasn’t ‘fed.’” How do you even consider for a minute that your entire exposure to the Word of God for the entire week and your entire need for reflection into the core of your life could ever be satisfied in a 15 or 20 minute commentary on the Mass readings? Yet people do put that kind of unrealistic expectation on the weekly homily, or else they put no expectation on Mass to touch them at all, but are just satisfied that they met an obligation.

Do they even ask why there is an obligation to do something when it is being accomplished in such a inconsequential manner? Do they think it even make sense to require something without an expectation that it will make any demands on them? Is there any sense of “Ask not what Mass can do for you; rather, ask what of yourself bring to Mass”? Are they concerned about what they’re bringing as an offering?

Are they even awake for the preface dialogue?
P: The Lord be with you.
C: And with your spirit.
P: Lift up your hearts.
C: We lift them up to the Lord.
P: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
C: It is right and just.

It is really quite amazing, you are very right.

None of this was emphasized to me in my Catholic education. I think as long as you are well behaved during mass and say the right responses people think that the person understands what’s going on.

 

[EasterJoy]

None of this was emphasized to me in my Catholic education. I think as long as you are well behaved during mass and say the right responses people think that the person understands what’s going on.

The whole point of translating the Mass into the vernacular was to help people to think about what they were saying and doing in real time. I don’t know that it helped nearly as much as was hoped.

I’m not arguing for putting the Mass back into Latin, but just that we need constant reminders about what it really is that we’re doing when we participate at Mass. The Mass is stupendous, but even for those who have been told “what it all means,” anything can become rote if humans don’t put their efforts into a focus on the deep meaning of what they’re doing.

This is particularly true in times like ours, which one ADHD author has started to call “crazy busy.” It takes an effort to focus on the deep meaning of prayer, of liturgy, and even of the relationships we have with the people we share a home with.

 

[mommy_k]

I think it’s a combination of things.

First society today does not make it easy for parents to bring children to mass and religious ed with scheduling. So thier foundation is weak and there’s other things more important. It is not odd anymore not to go to mass. Many people just do not practice and it spreads.

Even if your children attend Catholic school, there are families that are poor examples of the faith and the kids pick up on this, thinking it’s ok to do. Some families are there because they are elitists, or using the faith as some bizarre form of social status. Thankfully there are solid Catholics attending, but there are always a few like this.when tuition was non existant or minimal, the students that attended were all in the same boat, and everyone sent thier children to catholic school for the right reason. Again kids pick up on this.

Then there’s some pretty liberal college professors that go out of thier way to be extremely negative about any religion. Many more young people today are attending college and hearing these distorted messages.

Then there’s just plain laziness,the kids learn that it is alot easier to be a protestant then a catholic…

 

[EasterJoy]

…Then there’s just plain laziness,the kids learn that it is alot easier to be a protestant then a catholic…

If you count switching from one Protestant denomination to another the same as switching from Protestant to Catholic, the rate of people leaving the Protestant denomination they were raised in is about the same as the number of Catholics leaving the Catholic Church.

There have always been those who have fallen away:
Take care, brothers, that none of you may have an evil and unfaithful heart, so as to forsake the living God. Encourage yourselves daily while it is still “today,” so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin. We have become partners of Christ if only we hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end, for it is said: "Oh, that today you would hear his voice: 'Harden not your hearts as at the rebellion.’ Heb. 3:12-15

There have always been those who stay within the Church but are lukewarm and not bothered by it:
“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” Rev. 3:15-17

 

[ConfusedLucy]

Thinking about this thread I’m wondering what expectations those with young children have these days with regards to their children staying in the faith. My grandparents raised their children in the 60s with regular church, sacraments and even altar service and I very much doubt they expected their children to leave the faith because their family had been Catholic for hundreds of years. I don’t have kids but if I did while I would do my best I would still worry it won’t be enough. Are people more cynical about it now?

 

[k5thbeatle]

Proverbs reminds us that if you “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (22:6)

 

[PacificNorthwes]

I see the priest response as a “blame the parent” thing. Fact is, children will leave because they want to and sometimes will leave even if religion is practiced all the time in their home because they feel it was shoved down their throats. The practice of faith ultimately has to come from within them as their own decision.

 

[Phemie]

I see the priest response as a “blame the parent” thing. Fact is, children will leave because they want to and sometimes will leave even if religion is practiced all the time in their home because they feel it was shoved down their throats. The practice of faith ultimately has to come from within them as their own decision.

I can use my dad and his sister as examples.

Raised together in a very Catholic foster family. Dad became an altar boy at the age of 12 and served for 27 years before he got married. Both married in the Church and raised families next door to each other.

Each had a girl and 2 boys. All 6 cousins were raised in the Church, family rosary, Catholic school, all the sacraments of initiation. 3 of the 4 boys were altar servers. Only the youngest wasn’t. Five of us married in the Church. The youngest isn’t married.

Fast forward: I’m the only one who kept going to Church and was involved in my parish. I don’t know how my aunt felt about her kids abandoning the faith, or if it simply happened gradually so that she didn’t recognize it before she got dementia. All 3 of hers are in their 70s and none practice.

My father did notice, dementia didn’t spare him that pain. As he lay dying his biggest fear was what would happen to his sons because of their falling away from the Church.

It certainly wasn’t the lack of example that caused my brothers to drop away, just like it wasn’t the lack of example that cause my kids to walk away, marry outside the Church and claim to be agnostic. Though, to be honest, my mixed marriage may well have had something to do with it. Although always supportive of everything we did in the Church and present for most of it, hubby didn’t practice himself. Our home wasn’t Catholic in the same way mine had been growing up.

 

[k5thbeatle]

I see the priest response as a “blame the parent” thing. Fact is, children will leave because they want to and sometimes will leave even if religion is practiced all the time in their home because they feel it was shoved down their throats. The practice of faith ultimately has to come from within them as their own decision.

I see your point but respectfully disagree.

 

[JPUSC]

Pope Francis insults Catholic youth

Millennials are leaving religion in droves, recent surveys find. Churches are roiled, but it appears Pope Francis isn’t worried he may accelerate the exodus.

The “Who am I to judge?” pope recently told an interviewer that he has a hard time understanding why so many young Catholics worship in Latin on Sundays. “Why so much rigidity,” Francis asked. “This rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else.”

That represents an ugly departure from his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who allowed for wider use of the pre-Vatican II Mass in 2007. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too,” the pope emeritus wrote, “and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”

Then only a little over 200 Latin Masses were celebrated in the United States. That number has since more than doubled. The Massgoers aren’t a bunch of old anoraks, either. It’s millennials and hipsters who tend to prefer the smells and bells.

Yet this isn’t the first time Francis has wondered why a growing number of Catholic youth reject the hand-holding and modern music in favor of a more solemn and sacred form of worship. When the pope received bishops from the Czech Republic in 2014, he reportedly said attraction to the traditional liturgy “is rather a kind of fashion. And if it is a fashion, it is a matter that does not need that much attention.”

Now, perhaps in an attempt to further dilute the 2007 letter, Francis called the Latin Mass “an exception.”

That might alarm many young people who flock to Assumption Grotto on Detroit’s east side for its classic liturgies. Or Archbishop Allen Vigneron, who recently invited the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest to establish St. Joseph Oratory in the city’s Lafayette Park neighborhood because of the high demand for the Latin Mass.

But if Francis would ditch his habit of insulting faithful millennials, he might begin to see more of them in the pews.

detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/nicholas-g-hahn-iii/2016/12/04/pope-francis-insults-catholic-youth/94978052

Pope, in interview, laments ‘rigidity’ of youth who prefer Latin Mass

Asked about the liturgy, Pope Francis insisted the Mass reformed after the Second Vatican Council is here to stay and “to speak of a ‘reform of the reform’ is an error.”

In authorizing regular use of the older Mass, now referred to as the “extraordinary form,” now-retired Pope Benedict XVI was “magnanimous” toward those attached to the old liturgy, he said. “But it is an exception.”

Pope Francis told Father Spadaro he wonders why some young people, who were not raised with the old Latin Mass, nevertheless prefer it.

“And I ask myself: Why so much rigidity? Dig, dig, this rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid.”

catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=29904

 

[JPUSC]

Jubilee of Mercy, But With the Confessionals Empty

ROME, January 9, 2016 – One thing that made the news at the end of the year was the data furnished by the prefecture of the pontifical household on attendance in 2015 at the public audiences with Pope Francis, with numbers down almost by half compared to the previous year:

At the Wednesday general audiences there was a drop from 1,199,000 visitors in 2014 to 704,100 in 2015. While for the Sunday Angelus the fall was from 3,040,000 to 1,585,000…

In the most recent annual report made public, relative to 2014, the “percentage of persons over the age of 6 who go to a place of worship at least once a week” turned out to be 28.8 percent.

During the seven years of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, this same indicator was consistently above 30 percent in Italy, on average around 32-33 percent. Decisively higher than in 2014, the first full year of the pontificate of Francis and the one in which his popularity reached its peak.

The following letter takes these statistical indicators into account. But it evaluates the real “Francis effect” on religious life with the more up close and direct gaze of the pastor of souls, of the confessor. Who writes that during this pontificate he has experienced not only a further drop in the practice of sacramental confession, but also a deterioration in the “quality” of the confessions themselves. A deterioration that does not seem unrelated to the use of certain remarks of pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio that have had enormous success in the media.

The author of the letter is a churchman with a high level of scholarly specialization and with significant teaching appointments in Italy and abroad, but who also dedicates a great deal of time and energy to pastoral care…

 

[JPUSC]

(Cont’d)

Dear Magister,…

The facts are these. Since the opening of the Holy Year backed by Pope Francis and on the occasion of the Christmas festivities of 2015 – as also since Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been sitting on the throne of Peter – the number of faithful who approach the confessional has not increased, neither in ordinary time nor in festive. The trend of a progressive, rapid diminution of the frequency of sacramental reconciliation that has characterized recent decades has not stopped. On the contrary: the confessionals of my church have been largely deserted.

I have sought comfort for this bitter consideration by imagining that the basilicas connected to the Holy Year in Rome or in other cities, or the shrines and convents, have been able to attract a larger number of penitents. But a round of phone calls to some fellow priests who regularly hear confessions in these places (using the opportunity of the Christmas wishes that I extend every year) has confirmed my observation: lines of penitents that are anything but long, everywhere, even less than at the festivities of past years.

And there is also less and less news of memorable conversions of sheep lost for many years and returning to the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd through the “useless servants” of his mercy that we priests are. When this happens, very rarely, there is neither explicit nor implicit reference to the person or the word of the current pope more than there was in the past for his predecessors (how many young people came back from the World Youth Days and put into practice their resolution of frequent confession!).

Distrusting the value of the numbers, because even the salvation of one soul has an infinite value in the eyes of God, I reviewed the “quality” of the confessions I have heard and I asked – while respecting the secret of the confessional concerning the identity of the penitent – for news from a few fellow confessors of long experience. The picture that presents itself is certainly not a happy one, both concerning the awareness of sin and in reference to the awareness of the prerequisites for obtaining God’s forgiveness (in this case as well, I know that the term “forgiveness” is giving way to “mercy” and is in danger of being mothballed soon, but at what theological, spiritual, and pastoral cost?).

Two examples stand for all. One middle-aged gentleman whom I asked, with discretion and delicacy, if he had repented of a repeated series of grave sins against the seventh commandment “do not steal,” of which he had accused himself with a certain frivolity and almost joking about the circumstances, certainly not attenuating, that had accompanied them, responded to me with the words of Pope Francis: “Mercy knows no limits” and by showing surprise that I would remind him of the need for repentance and for the resolution to avoid falling back into the same sin in the future: “I did what I did. What I will do I will decide when I go from here. What I think about what I have done is a question between me and God. I am here only to have what everyone deserves at least at Christmas: to be able to receive communion at midnight!” And he concluded by paraphrasing the now archfamous expression of Pope Francis: “Who are you to judge me?”

One young lady, to whom I had proposed as an act of penance connected to the sacramental absolution of a grave sin against the fifth commandment “do not kill” that she kneel in prayer before the Most Holy Sacrament exposed on the altar of a church and perform an act of material charity toward a poor person to the extent of her means, responded to me with annoyance that “no one must ask for anything in exchange for God’s mercy, because it is free,” and that she had neither the time to stop at a church to pray (she had to “run around doing Christmas shopping downtown”), nor money to give to the poor (“who don’t even need it that much, because they have more than we do”).

It is evident that a certain message, at least as received from the pope and come down to the faithful, easily lends itself to being misunderstood, mistaken, and therefore of no help in the maturation of a sure and upright conscience in the faithful concerning their sins and the conditions of their remission in the sacrament of reconciliation. With all due respect to Msgr. Dario Viganò, prefect of the secretariat for communication of the Holy See, the “zigzag course” through concepts without ever pausing to clarify any of them – which he recognizes as a gem of the “communication style of Pope Francis,” capable of “making him so irresistible” to the modern listener – presents a few spiritual and pastoral inconveniences, far from trivial if they have to do with grace and the sacraments, the treasury of the Church.

chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351203.html?eng

 

[john1513]

I hear this all the time in my parish from older parishioners (which is most of the parish). They seem bewildered as to why their children left the faith: “We did everything right. We went to mass EVERY SUNDAY! We put them in CATHOLIC SCHOOL! We took them to SUNDAY SCHOOL! We took them YOUTH GROUP!!! Then when they moved out they just quit going to mass.”

My immediate question is: “Did you do anything for their faith outside of Sundays or outside of church?” and the response is often a confused: “No. Why?”

Usually these people did not get serious about their faith until their 60s and they are confused as to why their kids in their 20s are not. I can’t understand the confusion: it’s clear that absolutely no effort was made to bring the faith into the home and yet this sentiment is expressed in my parish over and over again and will likely continue as more children grow up without faith and leave the Church.

 

[john1513]

Raised together in a very Catholic foster family. Dad became an altar boy at the age of 12 and served for 27 years before he got married. Both married in the Church and raised families next door to each other.

Each had a girl and 2 boys. All 6 cousins were raised in the Church, family rosary, Catholic school, all the sacraments of initiation. 3 of the 4 boys were altar servers. Only the youngest wasn’t. Five of us married in the Church. The youngest isn’t married.

Fast forward: I’m the only one who kept going to Church and was involved in my parish. I don’t know how my aunt felt about her kids abandoning the faith, or if it simply happened gradually so that she didn’t recognize it before she got dementia. All 3 of hers are in their 70s and none practice.

My father did notice, dementia didn’t spare him that pain. As he lay dying his biggest fear was what would happen to his sons because of their falling away from the Church.

It certainly wasn’t the lack of example that caused my brothers to drop away, just like it wasn’t the lack of example that cause my kids to walk away, marry outside the Church and claim to be agnostic. Though, to be honest, my mixed marriage may well have had something to do with it. Although always supportive of everything we did in the Church and present for most of it, hubby didn’t practice himself. Our home wasn’t Catholic in the same way mine had been growing up.

Was there every any regular discussion of the faith, religion, scripture, or morality in everyday conversation in the family?

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I wonder if part of the problem is that life outside the church in a secular culture is inevitably less Catholic. My great grandparents managed to raise Catholic children just by taking them to church probably because they came of age alongside other Catholics and lived in Catholic neighborhoods. I don’t think we really know how best to rise to the challenge of raising Catholic children in a non-Catholic environment.

 

[Jeanne_S]

I hear this all the time in my parish from older parishioners (which is most of the parish). They seem bewildered as to why their children left the faith: “We did everything right. We went to mass EVERY SUNDAY! We put them in CATHOLIC SCHOOL! We took them to SUNDAY SCHOOL! We took them YOUTH GROUP!!! Then when they moved out they just quit going to mass.”

My immediate question is: “Did you do anything for their faith outside of Sundays or outside of church?” and the response is often a confused: “No. Why?”

Usually these people did not get serious about their faith until their 60s and they are confused as to why their kids in their 20s are not. I can’t understand the confusion: it’s clear that absolutely no effort was made to bring the faith into the home and yet this sentiment is expressed in my parish over and over again and will likely continue as more children grow up without faith and leave the Church.

Excellent points you make! Drawing from my own upbringing immersed in Catholic culture by way of schooling,regular Mass attendance.Yet,several years ago,I asked my Mom why we never said the rosary at home as a family?She said,your dad and I just figured the nuns would instruct you ,we left it up to them.