My friends were raised catholic educated in school catholic and 50% now non catholic. why are catholics . fallen away?

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My friend’s were raised catholic educated catholic went to a Catholic school and now over 50% are fallen away . ?
Why do you think that happened?
 
Happens a lot. When things are forced on kids without any real explanation it leads to them turning from it later on
 
Sin is a big reason, they fall away from the sacraments. They aren’t properly catechized in the first place. They just didn’t know the faith and what they are walking away from.
 
Unfortunately it’s hard to truly know, but in my experience the ones who fall away are the ones whose parents did not also stress the importance of religion alongside their school education.

In my own experience, I fell away for a while because school teaching was confusing, unclear, and oftentimes flat-out wrong — pair that with no true religious life at home outside of church on Sundays and bad influences from friends who lived out any bodily pleasure they could find, and It was a wonder I ever came back!

But I was blessed to find a strong Catholic example in my now husband & his mother, as well as had a fantastic Catholic theology teacher in college — that example and clarification brought me back into the fold. It’s why it is so important that we serve as a positive example for those around us that still struggle, so they may see God’s Love through our lives.
 
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I don’t know what we’re doing wrong (if anything), but seems to be a widespread problem. At my wife’s evangelical church, they just had baptisms. One was a young man who had been raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, received the sacraments…but never “connected” with God until he went to an Evangelical church. Why? What was lacking in his catechesis?
 
Most of the ex-catholics I know where poorly catechised and then fell into sin as teens, which, by nature, damages our relationship with God. Many of my friends are now Evangelicals. They found the Evangelical churches more welcoming. This is very sad to me, as a recent Catholic convert. I pray for them constantly.
 
A shiny new toy called the Internet came along. Brought all the most disparate and dark edges of society together, and gave them a voice, a platform, and legitimacy.

In a medium that weighs all “truths” and “facts” equally without regard to actual logic or historicity or evidence, it was inevitable that people would lose their bearings.

People now hear a story or a statement, and they do not consult their priest or rabbi, or head to a library or take a trip to a museum.

They log on and Google the answer. They ask reddit subforums and crowd source their morality from FaceBook and Twitter.

Faith communities in general were already losing many adherents to the demands of encroaching secular materialism. The internet dropped the bottom out, so-to-speak.
 
There are as many reasons as there are fallen away Catholics. A few big ones are:
  1. The quality of catechesis was pretty bad. It is a very common problem which is deserving of its own thread.
  2. Their families did not actually practice at home, so it wasn’t being reinforced.
 
Because they were never evangelized, no one modeled discipleship to them. Our schools and pews are filled with Sacramentalized pagans, we have pushed catechesis and not bothered to evangelize.

www.catholicherald.com

Evangelization before catechesis - Arlington Catholic Herald

Why do you suppose Blessed John Paul II talked about the "new evangelization" and not the "new catechesis"?
www.catholicherald.com www.catholicherald.com
 
From my own experience in my own family, there are many fallen away Catholics. The pattern I’ve seen is that the more mistakes and serious sins they have, the less they have a firm relationship with the rest of the family, the more likely they are to become evangelical or non-denominational etc.

Evangelical churches are also seem to be light on demanding teaching and heavy on feelings. The teachings are often made to fit the whims of the congregation, because after all many are independent churches striving to make money.
 
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I fall into this category. My family was very religious, and we all attended K-12 Catholic schools. I am well versed in Catholic teaching and understanding of the faith. I attribute my falling away to a few things:
  1. I never really believed. I guess I never really had faith.
  2. We had a lot of religion “crammed down our throat”, which was less than ideal.
  3. I didn’t find the religion to be relevant to me in my life
  4. I am, by nature, a free-thinker.
  5. Most of the religious people (priests and nuns) through our parish and the schools we attended were pretty bitter and nasty people. It was a terrible testimony for kids growing up and incredibly distasteful. The kind ones were few and far between, so they really made an impression.
  6. Ultimately, I decided I was a better person without the religion than with it. I didn’t like who I was when I was trying to tow the line in the Catholic faith. This is very subjective, and I believe what makes some people better can definitely make other worse (and the other way around, too.)
That is just my experience, though. I am sure others have their own reasons. Probably number 1 is the most important reason, though. You either have faith in something, or you don’t.
 
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QContinuum said:
A shiny new toy called the Internet came along. Brought all the most disparate and dark edges of society together, and gave them a voice, a platform, and legitimacy.
Click to expand...
Plenty of people fell away from the Catholic Church long before the mid 1990’s and the advent of the Internet. As far as blaming “evangelical churches”, I don’t think that argument really holds much water. Evangelical churches hit their peak in the 70’s and 80’s, when sermons on TV was what was on the tube. Cable TV expanded the number of channels available, without producing new content- men like Falwell and Swaggert had content to fill a lot of TV stations air time- they were already videotaping their sermons. It was a match made in heaven, or made in hell, depending on your view.
 
Augustinian said:
Plenty of people fell away from the Catholic Church long before the mid 1990’s and the advent of the Internet.
Click to expand...
And I did note that the flow outward had already started. The effect of the Internet was to basically bust open the dam.
As far as blaming “evangelical churches”, I don’t think that argument really holds much water. Evangelical churches hit their peak in the 70’s and 80’s, when sermons on TV was what was on the tube.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you were intending this as a general reply to others. In case not, I did not list Evangelicalism as one of the main reasons for the fallout in my post.
 
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redbetta16m
There are as many reasons as there are fallen away Catholics. A few big ones are:

The quality of catechesis was pretty bad. It is a very common problem which is deserving of its own thread.

Their families did not actually practice at home, so it wasn’t being reinforced

Yes…they would have to be the absolute two main reasons
 
For me Catholic school turned me off because of the bullying culture. At sixteen Catholicism was just “that religion that those awful people from schools families follow”.
 
I guess many Catholics grew up with a very dry and restrictive religion. If they feel the religion is very legalistic and they don’t feel God’s love, they’ll walk away. I almost did but surprisingly enough, a Muslim was the one that brought me back (she kept talking about Islam and I had to research about Christianity to argue with her, lol)
 
50 years or so ago,Catholics as a whole were a lot less affluent, a lot less mobile and more inclined to live in communities with other Catholics who arrived in America at the dawn of the 20th Century from Catholic lands.

I remember my grandparents who passed, they weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, and the people they spoke to were in the local church.

As Catholics became financially successful, there were fewer social reasons to stay as connected to the church. A lot of the activities- particularly those not directly connected with religion disappeared- things like Catholic baseball teams or bowling leagues.
 
I have also attended Catholic schools from preschool to 12th grade and what was missing was a catechesis that respected the students’ intelligence. I’m Catholic still because of what I’ve read on my own time, not because what I’ve been taught in school. Freshman year high school, our religion class consisted of watching family flicks and filling out worksheets on how they demonstrated love and being a good person and yadda yadda. Basically, movies like Dolphin Tale and Soul Surfer.

Father Barron describes this problem in this video:

 
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