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

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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?
Never connected with God…yet in the Eucharist he would have encountered the “real presence”…body…blood…soul and divinity of Jesus Christ…how does a Catholic then turn away from receiving Jesus Christ and say they had never encountered God as a Catholic…why indeed
 
Its probably a problem in all private schools. Children of big donors or legacy families are less harshly disciplined, if at all.
 
He was never evangelized.

We Catholics need to wake up and smell the coffee.
 
I think it’s a problem for education of teens in general but I didn’t have that perspective at that age.
 
I personally never saw much of a bullying problem at my schools, it it is understandable how that is likely to happen in schools highly dependent on donations.
 
The education system overall in the West is a joke. We’re still using a core format that was designed for a civilization over 300 years ago.
 
The thing is, this is not a problem exclusive to Catholicism or even to Christianity. Every religion has the problem of children raised in a religion and then they fall away.

I fell away for a time, but I can’t blame anyone but me. If I’m honest with myself, it was my own sinfulness and willfulness. It was for no holy or justified reason that I didn’t practice my faith or go to Church.

I think everyone who has fallen away, if they are honest and look into their conscience will find that it wasn’t because of bad Catholics, bad evangelization etc.

We always can choose how we respond to evil or the lack of good. We must always take responsibility for our actions, not blame others or blame situations.
 
Not to mention, the current model for schooling is more a conformity factory than a place to get educated.
 
Augustinian said:
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.
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Very astute. I agree. I would add the nature of corporate jobs often requires one to be mobile. My own job required me and my family to uproot and move several states away from any extended family in either side.

The economy runs off of millions of these disconnects. Many people must move about to keep well paying positions. It means the ethnic and cultural neighborhoods they leave behind suffer from attrition.
 
redbetta said:
Not to mention, the current model for schooling is more a conformity factory than a place to get educated.
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I think there was more conformity when I was a kid, or my mum was a kid, than there is today.

People seemed to have more of an identity as being Catholic back in the day
 
Wow I know what you mean!!!

I said to my mother I can’t seem to find any good catholic kids to hang with!!
Thanks…
 
evangelical said:
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?
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Are they attending churches that aren’t Catholic? If so, perhaps these churches told them something they wanted to hear. Many Catholics who’ve fallen away have told me they didn’t learn about Jesus until they left the Catholic Church. So it could be the way these churches preach and teach Jesus. Churches that aren’t Catholic preach Him differently than we do.

Perhaps your friends left because they didn’t like the rules of the Church. The Catholic Church is against things like abortion, same-sex “marriage,” pre-marital sex, adultery, etc. If the BIble is against it, the Catholic Church is against it.

Perhaps your friends don’t believe they receive Jesus in the Eucharist and that the bread and wine are merely symbols of remembrance.

It could be that a priest or deacon said or did something your friends didn’t like.

There are so many reasons that one leaves the Catholic Church. My advice would be to simply ask your friends why they left. That’s the only way you’re going to know for sure.
 
You can’t force something on someone that they have no interest in. I stopped going to mass the very second my parents stopped forcing me. After almost 20 years I started going again. I don’t know that there’s anything that can fix this problem. I guess just pray for them to return is all you can really do.
 
I went to a Catholic junior high school (public high school) and out of the 24 in my 8th grade class, 18+ of them are divorced. I don’t think any practice expect me and maybe one other girl. It’s a serious problem.
 
I think you’re right. It’s like the parable of the sower and the soils. You can have good seed but bad soil. It isn’t ready to receive the seed and grow life and bear fruit.
 
There is an old “wives tale” saying: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder ".

There is much wisdom in that saying.
 
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OKComputer said:
I don’t think any practice expect me and maybe one other girl.
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How many years has it been since you’ve been in 8th Grade?

If its been a while, and it has as you report how many have got married and divorced since then, people move on , can you really be sure what they are doing?

A lot of them live a long distance from you now, no?
 
There was another thread (and probably a lot more) on this topic back in Dec. 17.
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Why the Lack of Support & Exodus from the Church Catholic Living
I believe that we see these people not practicing because of irreverence in the Liturgy.
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Although that one got sidetracked into a debate on abortion.

We don’t have to wonder why Catholics are leaving the Church. There is a very good poll taken by Pew Research on the subject in 2009, rev. in 2011 that lists the reasons: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/27/faith-in-flux/ You can download a PDF of the complete report–icon in upper right.

“Index of Leading Catholic Indicators,” by Kenneth Jones (book) gives a good statistical examination of the exodus of priests and nuns. Why? My own opinion is that before Vatican II people became priests or nuns primarily for religious reasons. Those reasons were challenged. They realized they could be good social workers, nurses, teachers, etc. without being in religious life. Secular reasons (even if good ones) took primacy over religious ones. Result? Huge numbers of priests, brothers, and nuns left their orders.

Take a look at the literature on the IHM nuns in California (extinct…) and Carl Rogers, or, more recently, Mary Johnson: http://maryjohnson.co For 20 years Mary trained nuns in Rome for Mother Teresa. Then she had a lesbian affair with another nun, another sexual affair with a priest, left the order, and became something of a New Age guru. All very bizarre, but it goes to show what happens when you’re 19, join a religious order without much education or thought, and then wake up one morning…
 
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Part 2:

My own personal opinion?
  1. Vatican II. Keep in mind Vatican II didn’t happen in a vacuum: it was the early 60s, and society was in turmoil during that whole decade (and beyond). The problem isn’t Vatican II itself, it’s the interpreters of Vatican II who took optional things and either promoted them (new music vs. Gregorian chant) or eliminated them (bells at the Sanctus). There is a long list. And it divided people–pro-bells vs. anti-bells, etc. Extremely divisive, and the effects are felt today.
  2. Religious “education” or lack thereof: As far as ordinary Catholics go, I suspect few have anything beyond a grade school or grade school catechism class knowledge of Catholicism. (Note that in the Pew poll, about 20% of those who are either no religion or who became Protestants went to Catholic high schools.) Those who went to Catholic high schools were taught WHAT to believe, but not WHY. Why do we believe Jesus is divine? Why do we believe in the Trinity? Why do we accept Biblical verses that most scholars think were added by copyists? All sorts of questions–and they were left unanswered. No wonder so many just walked away! (See quertygirl, above…and of course you can simply look at most of the threads here that ask basic questions–they are Catholics, but they have no clue what the Catholic Church actually teaches.)
  3. Religion = emotion: I observed an RCIA class for a few months. Many of the “presenters” were former Evangelicals. They burst into tears every few minutes. So did a lot of the attendees. But you see this tendency to embrace emotionalism throughout parish programs. Cardinal Newman would be appalled. So would Thomas Aquinas. So would I. Religion can be many things–St. Paul’s epistle on “many gifts.” But from what I’ve seen, any logical, rational approach to religion (my own approach) is ignored at best or ridiculed at worst. This is not Catholic. Catholic = universal. Many approaches are acceptable, even desirable. See Avery Dulles’s book “Models of the Church” that lists 6 approaches.
 
Augustinian said:
If its been a while, and it has as you report how many have got married and divorced since then, people move on , can you really be sure what they are doing?
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Mostly though FB, and what I’ve seen with women changing their names multiple times and men posting pictures of themselves with different women through the years. I also know for sure about 12 who did get divorced. It’s sad.
 
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