You're the Church. Young people are leaving in droves. What do you do?

  • Thread starter Thread starter snarflemike
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Can you specify? Are you speaking about your parish? Your country?

What studies or or reports?

Sweeping generalizations?

At my parish, the majority of our parishioners are under age 40, the vast majority of converts are young couples with children.
 
snarflemike said:
You might as well say that if a horse is going to starve by being fed sawdust, it probably would have starved anyway.
Click to expand...
No, that’s not the same at all, and doesn’t make any sense.

The situation is multi-faceted, and far more than “just” the Church. There’s been a whole societal upheaval. Never before in history have we been bombarded 24/7 with cultural pressures. People are lost, they’re trying to fill the hole in their hearts, and they’re pulled in a million different directions being told how to do that.

But I guess it’s somehow comforting to have a simplistic answer – it’s all Vatican II’s fault. It’s all the music’s fault. It’s all my priest’s fault.
If that’s what makes you comfortable, so be it.
 
Nothing she can do. Jesus said He only wants those who want Him back. The Church lost her way when she began being an institution and worrying about numbers of membership. God said whoever wants it. No compromise for success needed.
If you ask me, adult baptism is not such a big deal also if UN demands it. St John Chrysosthom was baptized at 22 and he was awesome!
It is clear that the numbers of people attending church is bigger than of those who actually believe.
 
angel12 said:
But I guess it’s somehow comforting to have a simplistic answer – it’s all Vatican II’s fault. It’s all the music’s fault. It’s all my priest’s fault.
If that’s what makes you comfortable, so be it.
Click to expand...
You guess wrong, and you guess uncharitably.
 
Sarcelle said:
What constitutes beauty to you may not constitute beauty to another.
Click to expand...
I was just at a shrine here in the US that I would consider the kitschiest failed imitation of Baroque church architecture that I could every imagine. A hideous and oppressive mish-mash of naked chrerubs with splotches of goldleaf and so much plaster of Paris scrollwork that it was difficult to determine the shape of the building itself. To the point of being a parody. The only thing that was missing was a pair of pink flamingos. Designed by someone who completely lacked any idea of what Baroque church architecture was supposed to evoke.

But there were enough people in my group who thought it was magnificent.

And if you think that I have something against Baroque church architecture, my favoritest church in the whole world is the former Jesuit church in Poznań, Poland, which has recently been restored to its original glory. One of the finest examples of a Baroque church in Europe.

https://www.google.com/search?q=koś..._P_iAhUFn-AKHa7cC7wQ_AUIECgB&biw=1366&bih=649
 
Last edited:
I’ve done youth ministry and catechesis for teens.

My biggest heartbreak was knowing young people just like you. They read Scripture and can quote apologetics better than the folks on the radio. They stay after Youth Ministry or RE Class and will talk as long as the adults will stay. Blown away by their zeal.

Then, they go to college where there is an on fire Catholic community (so that is not an “excuse”) and they meet someone. This person is a Christian, in fact, their parent(s) were raised Catholic but left for XYZ non-denom or Baptist group (in my experiences in this part of the world, these two groups draw away the most Catholics).

While the Catholic young person was chock full of head knowledge, somewhere along the line, I failed because I did not talk to them about a relationship with the person of Christ.

I talked too much about Scriptural Apologetics until that kid could do sword drills with any Baptist in town, they knew all the mysteries of the Rosary in order (because that was on the Confirmation test, which they aced) and not enough time about developing a deep prayer life.

When they encounter people who have a relationship with Jesus, they see what they were missing and they leave. They marry that person, outside of the Church.

They come back for holidays, go to Mass with the fam, and I stand there near them at the Easter Vigil when they stay silent during the profession of Faith and I want to prostrate myself on the floor before the altar and repent again because I failed them.

So, keep doing what you are doing but please, get to know Jesus. Develop a well rounded prayer life that includes simply talking to Jesus during the day.

Read Sheed’s “To Know Christ Jesus” and Dubay’s “Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer” if you can afford it, read this book:

books.google.com

I Am with You Always

The devotional life of Christians over the two millennia since Christ has been one of motion, changing and growing in response to the challenges presented to the Church, the temperaments of newly baptized nations, and controversies about how we can and should relate to God. And yet the core of...
books.google.com
 
Catechesis needs to include apologetics classes for our older youth, for say ages 13 and up. At least in the part of the U.S.where I live, Catholics are in the minority and the anti-catholic evangelical/southern Baptist Protestants have just as much a chance of pulling our youth away from the Church as the secular culture does. It’s doubly hard for catholic teens that most of their peers think and say that Catholicism is wrong and many seem to be well prepared to debate the issue from their point of view. Our eldest daughter is 18 now and faced this type of thing throughout high school and we’ve had to educate her on each point as it comes up, as she learned nothing at faith formation in the way of apologetics or even about the early church. She is dating a non-Catholic now, and I’m waiting on an adult apologetics class in our diocese so that I can take her. I think that she will have a better chance of not being swayed away from the faith as an adult if she is thoroughly educated on why we believe what we do.
 
GordonP said:
Or how many potentially sympathetic young people who have been turned off to the Pro-Life movement by the rampant homophobia of LifeSiteNews.
Click to expand...
Opposing the redefinition of civil marriage is not homophobia.

This is what I was talking about when I said a person can hold X position which is really a proxy for Y.. Here, the X is “the Church should emphasize mercy” but the hidden Y is “the Church should change its teaching on marriage (either directly or by means of not promoting sacramental matrimony).”
 
Last edited:
Beauty as it comes from its proximity to God is an objective reality.

However, when you’re talking about taste in music or taste in languages used in the mass then yes it is subjective.
 
Last edited:
There is no silver bullet approach to this unfortunately.

Even if we went back to all Latin masses, banned music that any baby boomer would like, the Church would still face a challenge in winning over people’s hearts and minds.
 
I think young people are seeking answers elsewhere and the results are disastrous.

Granted that the recent sex scandals at the Church have not been helpful and have cast a doubt on many.

However I believe, more youth oriented activities should be encouraged by the Parishes (Bible Study, recreational trips, spiritual trips, etc).

Young people very easily go the wrong path if they are not correctly guided. Specially when dealing with kids who have divorced parents, alcoholic parents, or other family issues.
 
Sarcelle said:
However, when you’re talking about taste in music or taste in languages used in the mass then yes it is subjective.
Click to expand...
So when John Paul II reiterated, “The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savour the Gregorian melodic form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple,” was he wrong?

When Benedict XVI stated, “Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another. Generic improvisation or the introduction of musical genres which fail to respect the meaning of the liturgy should be avoided,” was he wrong?
 
Vatican II did not even suggest any of the changes attributed to it. “distortions of the liturgy” were not from anything Vatican II did.
 
I’ve a friend who says that Vatican ll takes a whole bunch of blame for things done by the SPIRIT of Vatican ll.
 
Vatican II was the useful scapegoat that radicals inside and outside the Church blamed for any problems caused by dissidents, especially those inside the Church in the late 1960s. Catechesis did not get bad by itself. People did this. Catholic higher education did not get bad by itself. The media began to deviate in the 1970s with a little bad, and, as the decades passed, more bad. Until today. Young people need the truth.

www.ncregister.com

4 Big Mistakes We've Made With Catechesis

One of the great struggles in the Church today is effectively catechizing God’s people. In a world so full of error, distortion, and half-truths, this has nev...
www.ncregister.com www.ncregister.com
 
Last edited:
snarflemike said:
So when John Paul II reiterated, “The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savour the Gregorian melodic form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple,” was he wrong?

When Benedict XVI stated, “Certainly as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another. Generic improvisation or the introduction of musical genres which fail to respect the meaning of the liturgy should be avoided,” was he wrong?
Click to expand...
In my opinion I would survey each parish and offer as many styles as a significant number of people want.
 
I cannot speak to what you may have in the way of liturgy, but having been around since well before Vatican 2, the days of sappy liturgy for the most part are long gone, by 2 decades. As to music, your prejudice is showing loud and clear. I have prejudices too - Palestrina being one I will not listen to in Mass, as I choose to go to Mass, not a concert, and that was what I was subjected to the last time I attended one. Crackerjack choir, staffed with professional musicians.

If I were to guess, I would guess that you are in favor of the EF; considering that I was raised on it I can thoroughly understand. I completely back anyone who wishes to attend; and the real world statistics are that it is a minority of a minority who do. However, your comments concerning current liturgies is out of line. You may well not like the current liturgy, but your attitude is going to get in the way of you ever seeing the true beauty of the OF.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top