Young People Leaving the Catholic Faith

[Jeanne_S]

Makes me wonder to an extent how much even in prior generations how much faith formation was done at home. I mean my own parents didn’t receive much in the way of faith formation from their parents at home. My grandmother and grandfather were reasonably religious (my grandfather for example served as an altar server in the Navy during WWII and could recite the entire Tridentine Mass from memory in Latin). And their own parents (my great grandparents) were even more devout from what I know of them. But again, I don’t know that they provided much in the way of religious teaching at home to my grandparents. It seems that going back at least 4 generations religious teaching has been primarily been left to the Catholic Church and their associated schools at least as it pertains to my family.

Could that be another aspect to the decline perhaps. A weakening in religious schooling in concert with a decline in home based faith (and teaching)? I’m admittedly asking semi-rhetorically because I know this is yet another aspect of the decline as it pertains to at least the RCC (though again I suspect all Christians religions are suffering from it to some extent as well). That schooling as well has been in decline.

I think that may be a lot of the reason.Recalling my own Catholic upbringing.I and my siblings,cousins,lived a pretty Catholic centered life,while we had non catholic neighbors,our exposure to other faiths was limited.Pretty much all my friends were Catholic.The Nuns were a huge influence in our faith formation.Our faith became part and parcel of who we were.
Having said that,I was coming of age in the mid to late sixties.When all the changes in the Mass occurred etc.I had a hard time getting into the Mass as an adult in my early twenties.Somehow Mass in a gymnasium just did’t do it for me. I was very lazy for years before fully embracing my faith in my early fifties.So glad to be home!

 

[phil19034]

I don’t know if that’s the only reason people leave the RCC. I mean it will be interesting to see what the study referenced in the OP has in it when the more in depth version is released. But at the very least it seems that a fair number have a grasp of Catholic teaching since 50% left as a major reason that they didn’t agree with Catholic teaching. Meaning they had to have some understanding of Catholic teaching and some formation. I don’t think parents are exclusively to blame when someone drifts away from the RCC or God in general. But again the larger study results would be helpful in this regard.

Anecdotally we do hear from good Catholics on this board whose kids left the RCC despite strong formation that included active parents.

By the way, the link to the article isn’t good in the OP. Here is the correct link.

osv.com/Article/TabId/493/ArtMID/13569/ArticleID/20512/Young-people-are-leaving-the-faith-Heres-why.aspx

I think this depends on what is meant by leaving for religious differences. Everyone who leaves the Catholic Church does so because they don’t believe the Church is the one, true Church founded by Christ. So from that point of view, 100% of them leave for religious differences.

However, in my experience, those who officially leave for another Church do so for one of two reasons, which is often distinguishable based on where they go.

1. Catholics who leave for liturgical, high Protestantism or Orthodoxy they usually do so over differences in theology, dogma, doctrine, and/or discipline.
2. Catholics who leave for evangelical, low Protestantism usually do so because they misunderstand understand Church teaching, esp regarding the Bible.

But in my experience, most who leave because they disagree with Church teaching never take the time to study why the Church teaches what she teaches. They never join an RCIA class, they never take a Catachsim course, they never talk with a good priest, etc. Instead, they study what another religion teaches and then make the jump. My Father and Sister are perfect examples.

 

[truetofaith]

I’m posting so I get on this new (old) Topic.

 

[phil19034]

Makes me wonder to an extent how much even in prior generations how much faith formation was done at home. I mean my own parents didn’t receive much in the way of faith formation from their parents at home. My grandmother and grandfather were reasonably religious (my grandfather for example served as an altar server in the Navy during WWII and could recite the entire Tridentine Mass from memory in Latin). And their own parents (my great grandparents) were even more devout from what I know of them. But again, I don’t know that they provided much in the way of religious teaching at home to my grandparents. It seems that going back at least 4 generations religious teaching has been primarily been left to the Catholic Church and their associated schools at least as it pertains to my family.

Could that be another aspect to the decline perhaps. A weakening in religious schooling in concert with a decline in home based faith (and teaching)? I’m admittedly asking semi-rhetorically because I know this is yet another aspect of the decline as it pertains to at least the RCC (though again I suspect all Christians religions are suffering from it to some extent as well). That schooling as well has been in decline.

My grandparents (three of them are still alive) practiced the faith, and my mother’s parents were very devout and still are. Attending adoration, etc.

My parents were in high school during later part of Vatican II and were in their 20s during the craziness of the 1920s.

Form what I gather from my grandparents and some priests, etc is that after Vatican II, parents didn’t know how to explain the changes to their children. For example, my father to this day can’t understand why it used to be a Mortal Sin to eat meat on Friday before Vatican II and why it wasn’t afterwards. His parents couldn’t explain the theology, so when many outward disciplines changed, they couldn’t explain how the theology didn’t. In regards to meat on Friday, my dad still can understand that we still should to do penance on Fridays, but that we are now free to do what we want if we are not assigned a Penance. Dad still doesn’t understand that the sin wasn’t eating meat, it was failing to obey and failing to do pennance.

Finally, when our grandparents were young, cradle Catholics, they typically grew up in Carholic neighborhoods and typically went to Catholic Schools. And even if they attended public school, they were embedded in a Catholic Culture. For the families that didn’t know their faith very well, they still followed what they were supposed to do out of cultural (if not religious) reasons.

But after World War II, the Catholic Neighboorhoods were being dismantled and families were moving to the suburbs … Catholics were now mixing with Protestants and Catholic kids were now exposed to the non-Catholic cultural majority. Instead of saying “Mom, I want a crucifix like the one Paul has” they were saying “Mom, no one else in school wears a crucifix” or “it’s not American to pray the Rosary.”

Is basically, our grandparent’s generation were hit with multiple things at the same time, none of which they were prepared for: the sexual revolution, the distruction of the Catholic Neiborhoods, Vatican II, the height of the Americanism heresy, and finally the rise to dominance of individualism, hedonism and minimalism.

I pray this is helpful.

God Bless!

 

[truetofaith]

my father to this day can’t understand why it used to be a Mortal Sin to eat meat on Friday before Vatican II and why it wasn’t afterwards - Quote, Phil 19034

Easy, it was a Church rule & could be changed by the Church.

The 10 Commandments are God’s law & cannot be changed.

 

[Lea101]

My friend kind of left the church because she found it very boring (the mass) and that she cannot have sex, have an outdoor wedding, and that she thinks the church is sexist, and she doesn’t see why contraception is not allowed

But she still believes in God and the assumption and everything. She doesn’t care about any obligation, she’s like “I’m sure God doesn’t care if I have sex, it’s 2016”.

I’m sure a lot of teens have the same POV. If a child does not have a personal connection to the church, you can’t really do anything, they just don’t care. While parents can do their best by educating them about the faith, it’s not always going to work, and to some kids, it might sound as if you are forcing the religion onto them. Others do it nicely. I feel like conferences like Steubenville are more helpful than parents because they connect with the teens in a unique way

 

[Richca]

While I’m not Catholic, I did find this article about Catholicism and those young people who leave it interesting personally seeing as I was one of those that left the church before I was 25 like those that were interviewed for this study.

osv.com/Article/TabId/49…Heres-why.aspx

One set of numbers that struck me as pretty damning of Catholic formation, particularly post Confirmation, was that 86% of the 1 in 3 young Catholics who leave the Church before they’re 25, do so before they’re 17. With 23% of those that leave dropping out of the Church by age 10 and a whopping 63% leaving between 10 and 17 years of age. Average age of leaving the Catholic Church was approximately 13 years of age. I always figured it was mainly high school and college age young adults who left the church, but it turns out far more leave far younger than I ever figured. And of those 1 in 3 young Catholics who leave the Church, 1 in 5 do so because they no longer believe in God, 11% because they no longer agree with organized religion, and a whopping 50% because they no longer agree with Catholic teaching.

And worrisome for the Catholic Church, only 13% could ever see themselves returning to the Church.

What is worrisome here is the eternal fate of the souls who leave the Catholic Church, not the Catholic Church itself which has a divine founder in which nothing can prevail against it as Jesus said “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” and which Church is destined to last til the end of time and even unto eternity.

 

[truetofaith]

My friend kind of left the church because she found it very boring (the mass) and that she cannot have sex, have an outdoor wedding, and that she thinks the church is sexist, and she doesn’t see why contraception is not allowed

But she still believes in God and the assumption and everything. She doesn’t care about any obligation, she’s like “I’m sure God doesn’t care if I have sex, it’s 2016”.

I’m sure a lot of teens have the same POV. If a child does not have a personal connection to the church, you can’t really do anything, they just don’t care. While parents can do their best by educating them about the faith, it’s not always going to work, and to some kids, it might sound as if you are forcing the religion onto them. Others do it nicely. I feel like conferences like Steubenville are more helpful than parents because they connect with the teens in a unique way

She has a good point there…it’s 2016!

We should leave this old fashioned religion & have some fun…although my wife won’t appreciate me breaking the 6th commandment…the old fuddy duddy !

 

[AClaire11]

My grandparents (three of them are still alive) practiced the faith, and my mother’s parents were very devout and still are. Attending adoration, etc.

My parents were in high school during later part of Vatican II and were in their 20s during the craziness of the 1920s.

Form what I gather from my grandparents and some priests, etc is that after Vatican II, parents didn’t know how to explain the changes to their children. For example, my father to this day can’t understand why it used to be a Mortal Sin to eat meat on Friday before Vatican II and why it wasn’t afterwards. His parents couldn’t explain the theology, so when many outward disciplines changed, they couldn’t explain how the theology didn’t. In regards to meat on Friday, my dad still can understand that we still should to do penance on Fridays, but that we are now free to do what we want if we are not assigned a Penance. Dad still doesn’t understand that the sin wasn’t eating meat, it was failing to obey and failing to do pennance.

Finally, when our grandparents were young, cradle Catholics, they typically grew up in Carholic neighborhoods and typically went to Catholic Schools. And even if they attended public school, they were embedded in a Catholic Culture. For the families that didn’t know their faith very well, they still followed what they were supposed to do out of cultural (if not religious) reasons.

But after World War II, the Catholic Neighboorhoods were being dismantled and families were moving to the suburbs … Catholics were now mixing with Protestants and Catholic kids were now exposed to the non-Catholic cultural majority. Instead of saying “Mom, I want a crucifix like the one Paul has” they were saying “Mom, no one else in school wears a crucifix” or “it’s not American to pray the Rosary.”

Is basically, our grandparent’s generation were hit with multiple things at the same time, none of which they were prepared for: the sexual revolution, the distruction of the Catholic Neiborhoods, Vatican II, the height of the Americanism heresy, and finally the rise to dominance of individualism, hedonism and minimalism.

I pray this is helpful.

God Bless!

That’s very insightful! Thank you for sharing.

 

[AClaire11]

I think this depends on what is meant by leaving for religious differences. Everyone who leaves the Catholic Church does so because they don’t believe the Church is the one, true Church founded by Christ. So from that point of view, 100% of them leave for religious differences.

However, in my experience, those who officially leave for another Church do so for one of two reasons, which is often distinguishable based on where they go.

1. Catholics who leave for liturgical, high Protestantism or Orthodoxy they usually do so over differences in theology, dogma, doctrine, and/or discipline.
2. Catholics who leave for evangelical, low Protestantism usually do so because they misunderstand understand Church teaching, esp regarding the Bible.

But in my experience, most who leave because they disagree with Church teaching never take the time to study why the Church teaches what she teaches. They never join an RCIA class, they never take a Catachsim course, they never talk with a good priest, etc. Instead, they study what another religion teaches and then make the jump. My Father and Sister are perfect examples.

I’ve known a few who have really made the effort to understand why, but I think this captures what happens very well.

 

[Thom18]

One set of numbers that struck me as pretty damning of Catholic formation, particularly post Confirmation, was that 86% of the 1 in 3 young Catholics who leave the Church before they’re 25, do so before they’re 17. With 23% of those that leave dropping out of the Church by age 10 and a whopping 63% leaving between 10 and 17 years of age. Average age of leaving the Catholic Church was approximately 13 years of age.

That’s how it was with me. I “left” after Confirmation, and even before that I was more interested in the Episcopal church before then. I think most of my childhood was spent as an Episcopalian. It’s definitely a lot more “fun” than the Catholic Church. We went on frequent retreats, and Sunday school was fun (also there was an awesome playground outside the nursery/dining hall/storage place). I wasn’t drawn to it for doctrinal reasons. I didn’t even really care about the church stuff at the time, just the retreats and opportunity to drink coffee in Sunday school.

Poor catechesis is largely to blame, I think. The only things I remember from Sunday school are Adam and Eve, Noah, David- I didn’t even know that Jesus was Jewish (and I don’t think the idea that He is God really hit me, either). Of course a child has to be interested in what they’re learning as well, so stopping this trend starts with getting them excited about learning.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I don’t really understand the role of parents. I’m not a researcher or statistician but anecdotally most people I know live away from where they grew up and work in a different industry to their parents. I don’t know a lot of people who do things purely because their parents did, I always thought teens were more influenced by their peers than parents. That was certainly the case when I was a teen.

This is why I would advocate for a youth ministry that encourages young people to make their faith their own faith rather than assume that they will passively follow their parents to church. Even the most authoritarian parent will eventually lose influence over their child.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

A lot of “bad things” happened after the 1960’s.

But I think the worst thing was abandonment of the Baltiimore Catechism, which explained everything in a compact and concise form.

The next worst thing, in my opinion, was the giving up of abstinence from meat on Friday.

And then, there was the folding of Holy Days of Obligation.

There was a certain “Catholic Identity” … and we have lost that.

[The info on that saint was not in their parish bulletin either.]

 

[Rosebud77]

Makes me wonder to an extent how much even in prior generations how much faith formation was done at home. I mean my own parents didn’t receive much in the way of faith formation from their parents at home. My grandmother and grandfather were reasonably religious (my grandfather for example served as an altar server in the Navy during WWII and could recite the entire Tridentine Mass from memory in Latin). And their own parents (my great grandparents) were even more devout from what I know of them. But again, I don’t know that they provided much in the way of religious teaching at home to my grandparents. It seems that going back at least 4 generations religious teaching has been primarily been left to the Catholic Church and their associated schools at least as it pertains to my family.

Could that be another aspect to the decline perhaps. A weakening in religious schooling in concert with a decline in home based faith (and teaching)? I’m admittedly asking semi-rhetorically because I know this is yet another aspect of the decline as it pertains to at least the RCC (though again I suspect all Christians religions are suffering from it to some extent as well). That schooling as well has been in decline.

Ireland here and some small points… My landlord has 4 under ten kids. He prays with them, teaches them, and has fought long and hard to keep the tiny rural Catholic school open. Hopefully they will stay strong in faith.

I was sent to Church, not taken,So was my brother and we both became strong lifelong members. Sadly he was killed at 19.

There was something else but my memory is taking a rest so expect a PS!

 

[bmaj]

Since the original thread vanished without warning and we were having a good conversation I thought I’d repost it.

…

It looks like the original thread with 5+ pages was moved over to the Apologetics forum for some reason, Padres! I thought I was in the Twilight Zone unltil I discovered that! God’s blessings always…

 

[Blessedwithfive]

It looks like the original thread with 5+ pages was moved over to the Apologetics forum for some reason, Padres! I thought I was in the Twilight Zone unltil I discovered that! God’s blessings always…

Can you post a link? I didn’t find it. Plus this thread has a Warning half way thru about being charitable and stated that several posts have been deleted.

 

[redbetta]

Can you post a link? I didn’t find it. Plus this thread has a Warning half way thru about being charitable and stated that several posts have been deleted.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=1023005

 

[Padres1969]

Can you post a link? I didn’t find it. Plus this thread has a Warning half way thru about being charitable and stated that several posts have been deleted.

It’s been closed now for some reason. I’d just keep the conversation here since this thread’s already on its way and hasn’t had any issues with charity or the like.

 

[Padres1969]

I don’t really understand the role of parents. I’m not a researcher or statistician but anecdotally most people I know live away from where they grew up and work in a different industry to their parents. I don’t know a lot of people who do things purely because their parents did, I always thought teens were more influenced by their peers than parents. That was certainly the case when I was a teen.

This is why I would advocate for a youth ministry that encourages young people to make their faith their own faith rather than assume that they will passively follow their parents to church. Even the most authoritarian parent will eventually lose influence over their child.

True peers do have an impact as well. It’s not like we’re going to find a smoking gun that explains why Catholics and other Christians have been leaving the faith. It’s an amalgam of reasons to be sure. But peers are definitely one. And in a way it probably ties back into the previously mentioned idea that most Catholics used to live in Catholic neighborhoods 70 years ago (and likewise Protestants lived in Protestant neighborhoods, etc…), but have been dispersing out among each other far more in the last half century. I mean just look at who your own friends and acquaintances are today. I doubt very much for most people that the majority of those who you call your peers are of the same faith as you. Mine certainly aren’t. The only other Episcopalians I know even as casual acquaintances are members of my church and my newly baptized daughter. Outside that, my other friends and acquaintances are all of various other faiths be their Christian or otherwise.

And that’s not a new development in my life. Even in Catholic High School when I was still Catholic, only about half the kids were Catholics, and in Catholic university an even lower percentage were Catholic. If I’d gone to public school I’m sure those numbers would have been even lower still.

 

[JimG]

A lot of “bad things” happened after the 1960’s.

But I think the worst thing was abandonment of the Baltiimore Catechism, which explained everything in a compact and concise form.

The next worst thing, in my opinion, was the giving up of abstinence from meat on Friday.

And then, there was the folding of Holy Days of Obligation.

There was a certain “Catholic Identity” … and we have lost that.

[The info on that saint was not in their parish bulletin either.] At first, I thought that the Baltimore Catechism would be replaced with some kind of teaching tool with more in-depth content. But it wasn’t. It was replaced with some feel-good texts with lots of pictures and no serious content. The drop in catechesis was dramatic and profound. Several generations were taught nothing. I think that has now changed, but a lot of damage was done.