>The same thing is going to happen to American Catholic >Churches. However it will not be due to conservative-liberal >underpinnings. It will be due to the fact that the church has >done little to engage children and young adults. I look at my >church on Sunday and it is filled with gray hair.
I agree. I'm still a Catholic (for now) and I am in this group. In my case it is as if the church acknowledges that they have a problem connecting with youth but they refuse to modernize (not theologically, just presentation). They are stuck in the 1950's collectivist (dare I say socialist) model of Catholicism where the priest talks down to the people and assumes they can preach and lead without question from an uneducated parish. Maybe in the past when most people didn't even finish high school they could get away without having to deal with rigourous introspection from the people but that isn't the case nowadays.
Society now is more individualistic, is is much less collectivist and socialist. The Catholic Church has the exact same problems that the Democrats have.
I totally disagree. It is the parents that are the first teachers of the faith to their children as the Rite of Baptism so rightly declares. Most parents don't care about educating their children in the faith and pawn it off to someone else.