Young people are leaving in droves 2

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Alightforalltosee

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There was a recent thread about young people leaving the Church and what ought to be done to solve it. As a young person this is my final answer : Traditional Latin Mass:
 
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Catechize your children at home. Most kids leave because they go to Church an hour a week (being generous here) and that is the extent of their Christian experience. As parents we need to make faith formation an integral part of our household. We need to make things like praying before meals and bedtime, family Bible studies, discussion about values and our faith, faith based activities such as participating in youth group, attending Church, and performing outreach as something we do just because it is part of our identity as Christians. If we are faithful as parents in doing those things with our children, I think we will be much more successful at retaining our youth. Not sure that one divine service liturgy over another is the answer here. Kids leave because they see from the priorities of their parents that their faith isn’t a central part of their identity and because we haven’t taught them what it means to be a Christian and to live in communion with one another in a community of faith.
 
My recommendation for the best resource is (are you ready? I want to say this gently, and in hope that you will not take this as a personal slight…)
– the best resource for a child is his well-formed father and mother.

Or, how about this. Get two copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one for you and one for your spouse. Map out a schedule for the two of you to work your own adult selves through the entire Catechism (this map will be a long one - the Catechism is long. The Faith is big.).

(1) Parents meet, after privately reading and praying over and pondering the 1st section. Parents discuss the 1st section at an adult level. And after you two adults have discussed the 1st. section of the “curriculum” and determined that you two understand it well, then discuss how you can adapt that section to the level of the child or children.
(2) Then schedule a to-become-regular “Family Faith Time” (or some better name for it), to present and talk about the things in the section with the child or children at their level. You may be surprised at the depth that a child can see into divine mysteries, and in a surprisingly simple way.

(3) Then advance to the next section, and repeat (1) for the next section in the “curriculum”.

(4) Repeat until you finish the Catechism, or your children move out and get married, which ever comes first.

note: the Catechism is an immense resource, with many references that can expand and deepen your grasp of the matters presented. I’d especially urge you to look up every Scriptural reference that is given as you encounter it, and every cross-reference to other Catechism sections that are given, as you encounter them.

note: if you get confused, seek help on anything that becomes a barrier. “This is not rocket science” - it’s even more challenging than rocket science! But God is on our side, in this venture into His revealed Truth for you and your family.
 
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If you like the Latin Mass, great. But, when you suggest that as a solution, you’re forgetting the millions of Catholics that have never used Latin. (Melkites, Chaldeans, Maronites, etc)
 
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fide said:
My recommendation for the best resource is
…
– the best resource for a child is his well-formed father and mother.
Click to expand...
All the data I’ve seen suggest that a faithful active father is even more important than a faithful active mother. So fathers, you can’t just let mom take care of it.
 
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adamhovey1988 said:
If you like the Latin Mass, great. But, when you suggest that as a solution, you’re forgetting the millions of Catholics that have never used Latin. (Melkites, Chaldeans, Maronites, etc)
Click to expand...
I would extrapolate to the most beautiful, solemn and traditional liturgies possible in those rites.
 
Last month Bishop Barron spoke to the US Bishops on why young people are leaving the Church, and on facebook the USCCB asked the reverse question, why are young people staying in the church. They got many hundreds of replies by young people, and I waded through a few hundred of those replies, and at least half of them spoke of tradition, beauty, reverence, and the Latin Mass.
 
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Certainly - neither one alone nor the other alone is best - what is best is mother and father both speaking, teaching, living the same one holy Truth of the Gospel. And this witness will be sealed by the warmth and goodness of their love for one another, and for the child.
 
Is there any actual evidence to support the idea that young people who attend Latin Mass with their families are more likely to remain Catholic?
 
Of course both parents being active and faithful is best. The point that the data made is that children are more likely to leave the faith if they have a faithful mother and an unfaithful father, than if they have a faithful father and an unfaithful mother.
 
I don’t think it really takes a lot to do this. Know the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the 10 Commandments, for example, and be able to explain them to your children and use them in your daily prayers together. I am Lutheran, so for this I rely upon Luther’s Small Catechism as a pretty good guide, but I am your faith tradition has some good resources for this as well. A decent Kids’ Bible works for Bible Studies at the younger ages. For the older kids I use a readable adult Bible translation. Just pick a story and think of 2-3 things you want the kids to walk away from that story with and talk through it. Take your kids to mass, be involved in a ministry that your family can adopt as their own (such as serving at a soup kitchen, or maybe collecting clothing and diapers for a pro-life pregnancy center, etc., I am sure your diocese has multiple things you can get involved with). Put your kids through religious education and prioritize it over other commitments such as sports practice, etc.
 
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We need to fast and pray for each other.

The world hold out a lot of glittering lures, and we attacked where our wounds are. We need to uplift each other.
 
Considering that Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio is only 12 years old and that until that time, a huge majority of American Catholics at least never even had the chance to attend a Latin Mass, when it comes to the kind of evidence (numbers) that most people consider compelling, the jury is still out.

However, we have nearly 50 years now of numbers of young people over those years attending the OF with their families and how likely they were to remain Catholic (hint, the numbers are VERY low) as opposed to centuries before say 1950 (giving that as a date in order to address people who were aged 30 in 1950 and were in a position to raise their own children to say age 20 in a ‘changing’ church), when in those centuries people who attended the only Roman-rite Mass (which was in Latin) seemed to pretty much raise families that remained Catholic. . .

Correlation may not imply causation, but again, looking at the numbers of people who were raised with only, or with ‘the majority’ of their Masses in the OF and whether they were more likely to remain Catholic. . .well, it’s pretty staggering to see how many have ‘left the Faith’. . .
 
Introduce them to Jesus as a real person, let them witness you as a disciple. Encourage personal prayer.

Let them ask the HARD questions. Seek with them to find answers that are not bumper stickers.
 
This was actually one study " “The Demographic Characteristics of the Linguistic and Religious Groups in Switzerland” by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner " in 1994.

The entire world is not Switzerland, this study is interesting but it ought not be considered “gospel”. A faithful mother ought never feel that she is inadequate.
 
Darn me for overthinking. It literally didn’t occur to me to use what I already have at home; the Catechism. Having actually read it…I wanted to see if there was a version better suited for kids, and I see that there is: Catechisms for Your Kids: Baltimore Catechism & YouCat

"The second version is The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism. It’s based on the Baltimore Catechism but revised with the addition of lots of pictures, large print, and easy-to-understand language and presentation that’s more attractive to children. It also includes discussion questions, T/F, fill-in-the blanks, bible reading passages, projects, and prayers after each section. In the back are the Holy Rosary, Stations of the Cross, Catholic Prayers including the Mass, and a dictionary of terms. This is divided into No. 1 and 2, for elementary and middle school respectively, which are available individually.

If you have young children, the St. Joseph Revised is your best bet, which is also an ideal version for classroom or homeschool use. Older children are probably fine to read the original Baltimore Catechism, and this one is also more suited to individual reading and reference."

I ordered it, thanks a million.
 
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