My 2 cents:
Pop Culture’s 1 - 2 punch is: 1. choosing comfort for self means ignoring learning God’s sacrificial laws and plans to serve OTHERS, and 2. Sex primarily for pleasure via Birth Control instead of primarily for love, pleasure and procreation. Our society was once forced into INVOLUNTARY sacrificial living due to the struggle for survival coupled with parental discipline to learn God’s laws and no birth control. Today, we have enough wealth and VOLUNTARY free will to please primarily self, so many people are asking via free will, why follow God’s sacrificial laws if I don’t have to?
Maturity involves transitioning from childhood (where self is first and others are second) to Catholic adulthood (where we lay down our lives for our spouses, kids, work, i.e. OTHERS come first, and self comes second). Many parents think they’re helping their kids by giving them a soft, comfortable life with maximum entertainment and minimal pain. Naturally, no child wants to grow up and volunteer to be second after being first for so long. Society is no longer struggling for survival, as it was in the farm society we used to have pre-50 years ago, so there aren’t enough chores to force kids to work hard and sacrifice for others in a standard home situation. It’s our job to raise adults, not kids. Kids need to be given duties and responsibilities to train them to struggle, succeed, and sacrifice for others, as well as have fun with parents so they’ll be less likely to rebel. Other churches have borrowed a pop culture media seduction to get kids interested, where ours is more rooted in a tradition of deep solemnity of prayer, which is in stark contrast to all the flashing lights and the minimal attention span that media provides for them until their next expected immediate stimulation. We expect them to follow our deep tradition, but there’s not enough patience for them to get deep when pop culture media has conditioned them to adopt flashing lights and the immediate gratification of visual stimulation. Them asking the “why” questions poses a problem for older Catholics because we didn’t doubt our Catholicism and didn’t challenge it. I’ve found that the answers to all the “WHYS” can be found in Leo Trese’s “The Faith Explained.” It should be required reading for ALL Catholics, in my opinion. We will continue to lose more members and kids than necessary if we cannot answer the whys. We will continue to struggle to raise kids in our Faith, to be unselfish givers, as long as they are exposed to shallow pop culture media that promotes lust and self to be more important than true, romantic, deep, sacrificial love. We need to bring back the romance. If pop culture prevents us form this life, then we need to decrease our exposure to it.
Choice #1: If one chooses to give one’s life to the Church’s way of sacrificial, true love for spouse and kids, one can experience the True love that makes one’s heart sing and will rock you to the depths of your bones. Deep, romantic, sacrificial, True Love via God’s Covenant for man and woman is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. This life seems hard due to duty, responsibility, and fortitude, but appreciation, virtue and character formation are the rewards.
Choice #2: If one chooses a life of selfish indulgence of the basic instincts, one will walk around like a person with a teaspoon and a sugar bowl: dipping the teaspoon into the sugar bowl frequently, taking a sweet lick that doesn’t last, constantly searching for the next temporary high via sex, drugs, materialism, extreme vanity, gambling, food, pursuit of trying to invent something artificially different for the few seconds of shallow amusement it provides, to no long term satisfaction. The search continues indefinitely, always believing that peace and satisfaction will be coming soon. There IS NO LONG-TERM FUTURE SATISFACTION IN THE PURSUIT OF THIS TYPE OF LIFESTYLE. Placing oneself at the center of the universe in the constant pursuit of self-comfort and self-pleasure is not the answer. It becomes an egomaniacal mini god-complex where it becomes too easy to blame others when one won’t find peace, satisfaction, and romantic joy. This life seems hard, mostly out of boredom and unfulfilling shallowness.
Now, we need to educate more Men and Women in the Way and get them to see that everyone will need to eventually choose PRIMARILY #1 and secondarily #2, or PRIMARILY #2 and secondarily #1 above. The primary will guide their life’s direction. Then, more men and women will choose to commit to the deep beauty and romanticism of God’s Way.
Well, I hope this helps.
