The reason so much of our youth reject Church teaching

[Cojuanco]

In a culture where Kim Kardashian and the x-factor are the most important things, and when the education systems have been dumbed down, don’t be surprised at seeing so-called catholic adults being so ignorant about Holy Mother Church. Also I would wager in my experiences with lapsed catholics that it ultimately boils down to Catholic teachings on the 6th and 9th commandments not suiting what they want to do.

Couple that with hordes of bishops and priests who have worked to absolutely gut the true Catholic and Apostolic faith and solid catechesis from their parishes since Vatican II, and you’ve got a recipe for 0% of young people between the ages of 18-23 that you could classify as “devout” (i.e. faithful to the magisterium, think that faith is important in their lives and can express reasonably well why this is so and what the faith is). The faith is going to die out in the west among this generation and the following unless something drastic happens soon, starting with the bishops and priests returning to solid catechesis, some bold preaching from the pulpit, and fidelity to the magisterium.

If only it were about just sexual immorality. Like I said in the OP, these kids kinda-sorta know what the Church teaches, on, say, abortion, or SS’M’. The problem is that that seems to be all they know. And without context, they seem pretty weak against what the World has out there.

If that was all, I’d be slightly less concerned - it would be bad, but not horrifying. What is horrifying is that they don’t know basic Christian doctrine - like I said, my early education wasn’t that good, but at least I had a basic idea, of say, the Holy Trinity, or what the role of the seven sacraments are. These kids, it seems, despite attending Catholic school, wouldn’t know what a sacrament if it was physically shaking them. Some were even ignorant that the Church teaches that Jesus Christ is God as well as man. And THAT horrifies me all the more.

My point is that these kids know in a way what the Church teaches on the so-called hot-button issues. But they reject it, because it subjectively does not make sense. And why does it not make sense? Apparently, because they’re ignorant even about basic teachings of Christianity, like the Trinity, or the Real Presence (though the latter seems to be somewhat remedied, but even then it’s through pop-culture osmosis). Which in large part provides the context in which the hot-button teachings make actual sense.

It’s the equivalent of expecting people to know how to solve college-level quadratic equations, when they don’t even know how to add and subtract.

I think what we need to do is to take a page out of RCIA. Start with the basics, like explaining the Nicene Creed, and the life of Jesus and the Apostles. From what the article was saying the problem is that children’s religious education has been dumbed down at the most basic points - and they expect kids to then accept more complex stuff after the basics have not been taught?

 

[Estevao]

^^^

It doesn’t make sense to them because they’ve grown up in a culture that calls good evil and evil good. I really think you’re giving them too much of the benefit of the doubt here. If they were really interested in the reasons why the Church teaches what it does instead of emotionally rejecting it because they just already know that it’s wrong and will get in the way of them having lots of sex, they would read up on it. It’s what I did when I was 18. I had so far just emotionally rejected everything the church taught about sex, because I didn’t give them a chance. But when I did, I picked up a copy of “Love and Responsibility” by Pope St. John Paul the Great, and it changed my life and pushed me toward the church.

However I would agree that you need to start teaching your children in apologetics as soon as they’re out there in the public or catholic school system. They need to be able to know the reasons for what they believe and defend it, and this shouldn’t be dumbed down, because children are smarter than we think.

Lastly though I must say I am an adult convert and I know nothing of how children’s catechesis is done, so I think I’ll have to bow out of this thread.

 

[mommy_k]

In reply to the op: I have sat through some classes in college, and what was being said about religion, especially Catholic religion is too disturbing to type here. This was in an abnormal psych class and the professor was an athiest. So be aware of what is being taught at college level. This is very dangerous at this age to hear.

I knew this college professor was a bit crazy, but not all kids will and this is what they are teaching. That’s why it’s important to be extra vigilant with teaching the faith at home, and living the fatih as an example to children. I was blessed to go to catholic school through high school, and this class still had me thinking…so I try to arm my children with a defense against classes and teachers like this, especially at a time when it’s natural for a young person to find their own identity. The identity search is a good thing, but faith should not be part of the equation

 

[mommy_k]

So what was all of your guys’ attitudes towards the faith when you were young? Just curious.

As a young child, my fondest memories were saying the rosary and spending time in church with my grandmother. I was happy and at peace.

Then as a teen, faith took a backseat. I went to mass etc. but it was all surface. I was as many are- a teen who thought they knew everything. As I grew - knew that the peace was missing, and I started to renew and deepen my faith as a young adult.

I also realized when I matured a bit that if you follow the teachings of the Catholic faith, then and only then, will you have a structured map of how to live the best life God wants for you. Many highly intelligent men and women have become saints. Not every answer can be researched and God planned it that way.

 

[LongingSoul]

So what was all of your guys’ attitudes towards the faith when you were young? Just curious.

I’m one of the ‘oldies’ I suppose, having been born in 1962 Australian culture. My family is very Catholic… an uncle and great uncle, priests… a cousin a priest and vice rector of a seminary. A 2nd cousin a Bishop (RIP)… a number of 2nd cousin nuns.

I never doubted God. I applied to the Sisters of St Joseph in 1980 and went for an interview where I was advised to live some life first. I chose to marry.

Mainly through the faith of my mother I have never doubted. I had a 6 month ‘stand off’ with God in 1989 when my first child was stillborn, but other than that, I have always been faithful to the practice.

St John Paul was elected Pope when I was 16 and because of him and my faith in his faith, I have never and will never doubt.

I pray daily for the young, that they are given good role models of faith to trust in and that they see the shallowness of the self oriented life.

 

[HouseArrest]

I agree it that the faith and knowledge of some teenagers makes the future look dismal, but there is hope.

Like another poster noted, a lot of the parents just don’t know how to go about teaching the faith because they may not know it themselves. They may not know how to approach their children.

There are so many resources to help parents now. If you want to encourage students and parents, suggest some of them. For example, Ascension Press produces wonderful Bible study CDs, DVDs, and books. Ignatius Press does as well.

There are so many camps now for kids to go to during the summer. Try Christendom College Summer Experience, Wyoming Catholic College Summer Program, and Catholic Apologetics Camp. There are also camps run by Franciscan University with locations all over the US!

Look them up, find one that speaks to you, and donate to it for scholarships for families who want to send their kids but are short on funds.

Instead of wringing our hands, let’s do something to help.

 

[The_Bucket]

There is only so much teachers and pastors can do, that is absolutely true. I’m the confirmation director at my parish and I have to admit I am very disappointed by this year’s class. Not because the kids were hesitant or shy to talk about their faith. These are 15-year-olds! Of course they are going to be worried about getting something wrong, being judged, etc. That’s part and parcel of being a teenager.

What disappointed me was the lack of commitment by the parents and lack of education coming into my class. Okay, so you don’t know all the fruits of the Holy Spirit. That’s fine! But you can’t tell me more than one symbol for the Spirit? Dove is all you got? Not even the tongues of fire from, you know, Pentecost?! Come on guys!

I can’t blame these young people. It’s not like they aren’t smart kids. They are. They listen to their teachers in class and were more than respectful to me. But they were malnourished by their parents. And that is indeed the biggest problem. One that I hope my generation, the much-maligned millennials, turns around.

I think the fact that being a good Catholic means being countercultural will inspire my generation the way it did so many previous generations where members of the Church were persecuted, discriminated against or generally shunned.

Finally, I think one of the biggest problems is that previous generations here in America cared so much about being popular or liked. Or at least not hated. We’re all about going along and getting along here in the States. But that’s nonsense. We should love everyone, but remember the words Paul wrote to Timothy:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline!”

 

[Phemie]

The only really strong force for the faith is among the youth themselves. When World Youth Day began, I noticed that groups of young people became more focused and fired up to be counter cultural. Hopefully World Youth Day will continue to thrive and be the strong conduit for the Holy Spirit that St JP envisaged.

Our pastor recently said that he had not realized how lacking in catechesis the youth were until he accompanied them to Germany for WYD and realized that they didn’t even know how to recite the rosary. I don’t know about anyone else but we learned the rosary at home, not at school.

In our province we lost our Catholic school system in 1998. Since then the youth in our parish have not had anything other than 6 weeks of sacramental preparation for First Communion. For the first 9 of those years those 6 weeks also prepared them for Confirmation since the two sacraments were celebrated together.

Next month will be the first time in about 6 years that we’ve had a Confirmation and our pastor has been preparing the kids for the last 8 months. He started out with over 20 kids in the preparation sessions but many didn’t like his ways and quit (or their parents pulled them out because they were upset that the little darlings were being challenged by this mean old man) so at this point only 9 are requesting Confirmation.

He was amazed at what they did not know. Having taught one year of the First Communion preparation I doubt that any of them could have stated that they were receiving the Body & Blood of Christ in Communion, because it certainly wasn’t explicitly taught in the preparation. It’s difficult to believe something you’ve never heard articulated.

 

[Phemie]

The reason why kids reject the faith is because their parents have.
Their parents have abdicated their teaching responsibility to the television, Youtube, popular media, teen peers, and a few teachers. They are not modeling faith to their children. They claim they have no time, or know nothing about the faith.
Faith begins at home. Catechists can turn a kid on to their faith…but it’s very hard when there is no support from home.

In many cases parents are just as poorly catechized as their kids. They can’t transmit what they don’t have. The great grandparents were probably the last to have been properly catechized but then they depended on the Catholic schools to do all the instructing because the teachers were supposed to be the experts.

Truth is that many taught religious ed because it was part of their job, not because they believed much of what was being taught. Witness that out of dozens and dozens of supposedly Catholic teachers who were in our local schools, few went to Mass regularly and when the schools closed only 1 volunteered to teach religious ed at the parish level – and she’d already been doing that for years for the kids who didn’t attend the Catholic schools (the French Immersion stream was only taught in the Protestant system – we had no ‘public’ system).

 

[Phemie]

(snip)… at school, we just have people preaching Jesus loves you without actually telling us any reasons to believe in God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and all of the basic dogmas that any Christian would be lost without knowing. I would suggest a bottom up approach instead of a top down one.

Witness how many Catholics don’t know the difference between the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception.

 

[PaulinVA]

My point is that these kids know in a way what the Church teaches on the so-called hot-button issues. But they reject it, because it subjectively does not make sense. And why does it not make sense? Apparently, because they’re ignorant even about basic teachings of Christianity, like the Trinity, or the Real Presence (though the latter seems to be somewhat remedied, but even then it’s through pop-culture osmosis). Which in large part provides the context in which the hot-button teachings make actual sense.

I think that the Church has lost it’s moral compass, through the sexual abuse scandals and the various orphanage scandals and other lapses in behavior. When you combine that with the Church’s position on many hot button issues seems to the young to be intolerant and bigoted, you’ve lost a generation.

The young (and many of the rest) have rejected the Church teachings based on the behavior of the past, so, without a foundation of chatechesis, there is not a lot there. The other problem is that many of the liberal positions on hot button issues can be spun to make prefect sense.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

NOT at my church.
We teach according to the Magisterium at LifeTeen. Teens must turn in their phones, no texting allowed. We seldom have snacks. Only for special occasions and they are always very appreciated.
We open with a game, but after that? All Catholic teaching. Every time.
Sorry you have such a bad opinion about youth groups, but there are MANY good programs out there.
I left teaching in a Catholic school because the principal thought I was “too Catholic” and parents might be upset by the Catholic teaching. AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL.
So, I moved across the street tot he parish.
Where I can be as Catholic as I want. And the kids love it.

The reason why kids reject the faith is because their parents have.
Their parents have abdicated their teaching responsibility to the television, Youtube, popular media, teen peers, and a few teachers. They are not modeling faith to their children. They claim they have no time, or know nothing about the faith.
Faith begins at home. Catechists can turn a kid on to their faith…but it’s very hard when there is no support from home.

There are many good youth programs. My current parish’s youth program is 100 percent run by Father. Sucks for me, because I like youth ministry but it is awesome for the teens. It creates knowledgeable Catholics and vocations.

I am glad your parish is run well. Though I doubt they run life teen. What you describe would be hard to mold into the lifeteen format.

 

[LongingSoul]

Our pastor recently said that he had not realized how lacking in catechesis the youth were until he accompanied them to Germany for WYD and realized that they didn’t even know how to recite the rosary. I don’t know about anyone else but we learned the rosary at home, not at school.

In our province we lost our Catholic school system in 1998. Since then the youth in our parish have not had anything other than 6 weeks of sacramental preparation for First Communion. For the first 9 of those years those 6 weeks also prepared them for Confirmation since the two sacraments were celebrated together.

Next month will be the first time in about 6 years that we’ve had a Confirmation and our pastor has been preparing the kids for the last 8 months. He started out with over 20 kids in the preparation sessions but many didn’t like his ways and quit (or their parents pulled them out because they were upset that the little darlings were being challenged by this mean old man) so at this point only 9 are requesting Confirmation.

He was amazed at what they did not know. Having taught one year of the First Communion preparation I doubt that any of them could have stated that they were receiving the Body & Blood of Christ in Communion, because it certainly wasn’t explicitly taught in the preparation. It’s difficult to believe something you’ve never heard articulated.

The experience that Australia had was a surge in priestly vocations that can be attributed in some measure to World Youth Day. The comment of one Seminary vocations director was…

“(In the lead up to World Youth Day in Sydney I asked the seminarians at Corpus Christi College in Melbourne how many of them would attribute to WYD at least a part in their vocation. Over a third indicated that WYD either initiated the thought of or contributed to their decision to enquire into the priesthood.)”

I think it is a really wonderful initiative to fan the flames in the young.

 

[katy]

I am one of the parents that didn’t a very good job of teaching my kids the faith because I wasn’t taught it either. I truly wanted to, but this was before the internet, EWTN, Catholic radio. I am a convert, and my class taught me nothing. So, I depended on the parish to teach my kids. I’m sure you know how that turned out. It is quite sad and frustrating for me as most of my kids have left the church and one has decided to be an atheist. I want to say, “Wait, I understand now and can explain it!” But that ship has sailed.

 

[JimG]

I am a little surprised to hear that the quality of catechetical education is still so bad. I know it was terrible for awhile—several decades. Both in Catholic schools and in external religion classes, it seemed as if a sudden turnaround occurred. We went from teaching solid doctrine and the truths of the faith, scripture and church history, to making banners, drawings, singing songs and feeling good about Jesus and ourselves.

I even heard a bishop once recount growing up in this era of soft catechesis. He said he never learned about the Real Presence until he was in seminary, but he learned a lot about making drawings and banners and singing!

It is as though a chemistry teacher had suddenly decided to toss out the old hard nosed curriculum and just teach the kids to feel happy about all the elements and sing nice songs about them.

I think I knew more about Catholic doctrine in fourth grade—before this transition occurred—than many college students do now.

The whole thing was a terrible disservice to children. As a CCD teacher at one time, I even fought unsuccessfully against adopting textbooks which were filled with ambiguous happy talk rather than Catholic truth. Some parents wondered why their older children turned out to be orthodox Catholics and the ones a few years younger, attending the same Catholic schools, ended up being clueless about their religion. It was the change in curriculum and teaching methods.

Things have turned around in my own diocese. Religion is no longer a ‘soft’ curriculum. I hope that it turns around everywhere.

 

[Estevao]

I’ve read most of the answers here…and so far very few are the answers that the youths in question seem to give, at least to me.
I’ve discussed this topic with many youths who were thoroughly taught the Catholic faith “properly” by their parents and church…and when asked why they do not consider themselves Catholic or go to church anymore (I assume that is what you mean when you say “reject”?), they have all said the same reasons to me:
That they thought through the Church teachings and some of the major ones did not make sense to them. That they studied the evolution of the religion, the teachings and the Christian canon those first several centuries and found them to be structured within and for the context of that era 2000 years ago, and deeply flawed and out of date for a world that has moved onward/forward since then with new thoughts and ideas and understanding about people and the world around us.

.

I’ve gotten something like this a few times before too. However, I get the feeling you didn’t actually get this kind of intricate explanation, but instead would have heard something about the bible being written by “bronze age middle eastern goat herders” and therefore wrong.

Of course in any case such an explanation would be fallacious, as if something were old it were then automatically wrong. or even that truth could somehow change over time. But then again as I mentioned the reasons I’ve heard were just covers for a rejection of the 6th and 9th commandments. However since just coming out and saying this isn’t intellectually respectable, they have to make up some veneer reason to mask the real reason.

 

[JimG]

Witness how many Catholics don’t know the difference between the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception.

I remember working once with a coworker who was Catholic. We were talking about the Feast of the Immaculate Conception coming up on Dec. 8th. She said she was puzzled at the timing. “I would have thought that it would be nine months before Christmas!” she said. I had a good laugh at that.

 

[CruceSignati]

OP, I feel your pain.

I asked a friend of mine who attends a Catholic high school what her Religious Ed classes were like (I’m homeschooled, so I wouldn’t know ). She told me that this year, they were learning all about Jesus’ parables and miracles, and then they had to pick their two favorite parables and write an essay on it. I was sitting and listening to this while thinking, “Yeah, this is old hat fifth grade stuff. Why in heaven’s name are they having to waste their time on this in high school?!?!” She went on to tell me that her Religion teacher thought excommunication was banishment from one’s country. Oy vey!!! My mom, who admits to being somewhat lukewarm, knows what excommunication is!!!

I asked her if they learn about the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Rosary, Sacred Scripture, big and little ‘t’ traditions, the papacy, transubstatiation, the Mass…nope, none of that.
Then I asked what topics are coming up this fall. The answer: world religions. Sure…you’re going to have lots of devout, holy students who know the Faith coming out of that school.

 

[Cojuanco]

I am a little surprised to hear that the quality of catechetical education is still so bad. I know it was terrible for awhile—several decades. Both in Catholic schools and in external religion classes, it seemed as if a sudden turnaround occurred. We went from teaching solid doctrine and the truths of the faith, scripture and church history, to making banners, drawings, singing songs and feeling good about Jesus and ourselves.

I even heard a bishop once recount growing up in this era of soft catechesis. He said he never learned about the Real Presence until he was in seminary, but he learned a lot about making drawings and banners and singing!

It is as though a chemistry teacher had suddenly decided to toss out the old hard nosed curriculum and just teach the kids to feel happy about all the elements and sing nice songs about them.

I think I knew more about Catholic doctrine in fourth grade—before this transition occurred—than many college students do now.

The whole thing was a terrible disservice to children. As a CCD teacher at one time, I even fought unsuccessfully against adopting textbooks which were filled with ambiguous happy talk rather than Catholic truth. Some parents wondered why their older children turned out to be orthodox Catholics and the ones a few years younger, attending the same Catholic schools, ended up being clueless about their religion. It was the change in curriculum and teaching methods.

Things have turned around in my own diocese. Religion is no longer a ‘soft’ curriculum. I hope that it turns around everywhere.

Part of it, I think, is that too many parents seem to abdicate responsibility for their children’s education to the schools or the Church. Yes, a classroom setting’s important, but if there’s not a parent around making sure they actually learn the basic lessons, how are they supposed to keep in their heads what is taught at school or CCD? I think this applies a lot to school generally - which is why we have a world-class university system but elementary education systems that are… wait, this is a family board.

CruceSignati, there is, I think, a place for world religions - but not in CCD/Religious Ed classes, but in Social Sciences!

 

[DlandFan06]

The question I asked earlier about what people’s attitudes were towards the faith when they were young was for everyone. So I’m still curious about it.