[Investment Biker]

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. Over the next twenty - third years they will die and there will be very few left in the pews. It is a shame and it may be two late to engage the age group.

[tbird5]

My catholic church is packed with young people and babies. The catholic schools here in Kentucky are packed.

[Campion]

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.

Funny, my Catholic church is full of families with lots of little kids.

[RobbyS]

Depends on where you are. My church is full of people of all ages and growing.

[AnAmericanMother]

Don't know where you are, but our Catholic parish is packed to the rafters with babies, young children, teenagers, and young parents enthusiastically presenting the parish with more. We middle-aged former ECUSAers brought a few teenagers with us, too. There were nearly 100 kids in the last confirmation class. They had to stand them on the chancel steps turned sideways to get them all in the official photo with the Archbishop.

Our kids' choir is jumping and the youth group has outgrown two different meeting rooms.

Maybe you need to look into outreach for your parish?

[PAR35]

The same thing is going to happen to American Catholic Churches.

Sounds like you don't have any Spanish language masses. There are plenty of young folks in the big Catholic churches around here. And there is the brand new Catholic high school in town - although those are primarily Anglos.

[Clemenza]

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.

That and the fact that the Church has done little to make itself appealing to MEN of any age.

[rasblue]

>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.