Are young Catholics Cultural Orphans?

Catholic Exchange ^ | July 10, 2003 | Joanna Bogle

[maryz]

Collecting Holy cards

You used to have a place to keep them -- in your missal. Including the cards they used to send with acknowledgement notes for attending a wake, with a prayer for the deceased on the back.

[maryz]

one sister asked me if I was trying to be Jackie Kennedy

Jackie Kennedy didn't wear mantillas to church -- she wore headscarves, folded into a triangle and tied under her chin -- which our nuns considered hardly one step above the Kleenex girls sometimes pinned to their heads to make an unexpected visit. (She may have started to wear mantillas at one point, because there was a lot of negative talk about the headscarves, but I don't remember.)

[maryz]

Lovely!

[Desdemona]

Collecting Holy cards

You used to have a place to keep them -- in your missal. Including the cards they used to send with acknowledgement notes for attending a wake, with a prayer for the deceased on the back.

Well, now most of them are lamenated. I've been collecting them and have accumulated quite a stack, too.

[VermiciousKnid]

Believe it or not, our parish DOES have rose vestments, though they are decorated with Kente cloth stoles (in an odd rose and purple pattern)-- don't ask me why, because the North Shore of Long Island isn't exactly an enclave for African immigrants.

Regards,

[VermiciousKnid]

On the day Sister asked me the Jackie Kennedy question, I happened to be wearing a pink linen dress with cap sleeves. I suppose it could be said that my DRESS was Jackie-esque, but I was not wearing a headscarf or a mantilla as JKO did, I was wearing a doilie (I guess the real name is a chapel cap).

Your rememberences of growing up Catholic in the 50's and 60's are much like my own. I seem to be 5-10 years younger than you, so I had the unfortunate experience of having everything go kaflooey on me right after First Holy Communion. Back then we had a tradition for everything, and with those traditions came the opportunity to learn about God and His works and sacrifices, the saints, the miracles and mysteries, and the history of our church.

Today it's much harder to do that since many of the traditions are completely gone.

For example:

I've been trying to get our parish to bring back the Sodality. When I was a girl, we LOVED being in the Sodality. We had important tasks to perform, like decorating the church for feast days; we were part of every procession -- the most important was Easter Sunday. On Easter, all of us girls dressed in white, with the little ones not yet able to receive Communion wearing flat blue ribbons on their heads, with the first communicants and those not old enough for Confirmation wearing white flat ribbons, and those who had been Confirmed wearing short white chapel veils. We all wore Miraculous Medals strung on blue satin ribbons around our necks, and we all carried beautiful Easter lillies in the procession. (The boys were all altar boys and they were ALL in attendance for the Easter Mass and procession.) We knew what everything meant, we knew why we were doing it, and we ejoyed both being a part of the celebrations and serving the church.

So far, I haven't gotten anywhere with the parish. Mostly what I hear is, "Why would the girls want to do this? They are already participating as altar servers."

*** SIGH *** I've got a long way to go...

Regards,

[Aquinasfan]

We are creating generations of cultural and spiritual orphans — expecting them to remain Catholics without any links with the past, and without the sense of belonging to a community that has a glorious heritage of which they are a part and to which they can make their own contribution.

This is true. I grew up without Catholic culture. My dad was Catholic (good-hearted but ignorant) and my mother was Protestant. Public school and secular culture made me feel embarassed about Catholic cultural trappings.

My wife and I have made a determind effort to reverse things in our home. We homeschool with a Catholic curriculum that's suffused with the faith. We provide lots of age-appropriate spiritual literature, videos, etc. My girls collect holy cards like other kids collect Pokemon cards. Me, "don't you want to collect them all?" "Yeah!"

Last night when I went upstairs to tuck in the girls, my 8-yr-old showed me the shrine she had set up. She had placed holy cards around the feet of a statue of Mary, draped a rosary around her neck, and put a flower on her head. "Daddy, do you like how I taped the St. Francis picture on the wall?"

"Yes, very nice."

"It's funny how other kids have pictures of Superman on their walls and I have St. Francis."

"Yes, well, St. Francis was real, I mean is real, and Superman is make believe. St. Francis was a real hero."

"Yeah, it's just make believe. It's kind of funny. I might take Frances as my confirmation name. Either that or Therese. I like Therese. Or maybe Veronica. But they don't know very much about Veronica, do they?"

"No, they don't."

The joys of homeschooling and preserving a Catholic culture.

[Aquinasfan]

A phenomenon in my parish, too. I'll bet I've heard the word "Catholic" in homilies maybe 2 or 3 times over the past few years because they use "Christian" instead.

People seem to think that the term "Christian" is more universal than the term "Catholic." But the word "Catholic" means "universal," of course, and is a perfectly appropriate descriptor of Christ's (Universal) Church.

The term "Christian" probably isn't the best term to describe "followers of Christ," since the most fundamental belief of all Christian faiths is the Trinity. "Trinitarians" would be a better term than "Christian."

We should probably describe ourselves as Trinitarians belonging to the Catholic Church.

[Aquinasfan]

When I told my mother all this and that I had never heard the term Doctor of the Church until last year,

"I didn't know the Catholic Church had doctors!" is the usual response I get.

[k omalley]

AMDG means for "the greater glory of God" or "all honor and glory to God", I can't remember which as my Latin is quite rusty. We also always made a little + above the JMJ and AMDG.

[k omalley]

I agree with you Des. So many of these cultural practices reminded us of Jesus throughout the day. Pausing at noon to say the Angelus, the whole class stopping a lesson to pray when we heard an ambulance siren, writing AMDG and JMJ on our papers, blessing ourselves when we went by a Catholic church. It was a constant reminder that Jesus is Lord and our lives should constantly reflect that belief.

[k omalley]

I had a huge collection of holy cards stuffed in my Pius X Missal. Unfortunately, my mother who was not Catholic tossed it all in the trash when I was away at school. She figured it wasn't all that important. Fortunately I had a duplicate copy of the Missal but the holy cards are all gone.

[maryz]

I had the unfortunate experience of having everything go kaflooey on me right after First Holy Communion.

Right -- didn't start going on me until high school and college. I'm so glad I at least got some of the old Holy Week services; the parish we were in was small and poor, so the seventh grade and the eighth grade girls were the choir (I'd never be allowed in a choir where you actually had to be able to sing!). We sang Holy Week -- in Latin, of course. I loved it.

[maryz]

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

[maryz]

Actually, "To the greater glory of God."

[man of Yosemite]

I recently talked with my cousins daughter who had just graduated high school and was thinking of going to a Catholic college to study Theology. I asked her if she was born again and she said she wasn't. It doesn't sit well with me that a girl raised up in a Catholic church, and educated in Catholic schools, doesn't understand one of the most important teachings of Christ. That is the same thing I experienced as a child. The church makes you so afraid of anybody who is not a Catholic that you think they are some kind of devil. The fact is many persons in other churches have a tremendous relationship with Jesus, knowing his word and will often better than those who have sit for a lifetime hearing priests who never say to them "you must be born again."

[Desdemona]

We say that one must have a conversion of the heart. There is no being born again. The heart must be open to accept Christ, His teachings and His Church - that means the whole kit-and-kaboodle. One must turn away from sin and accept Christ in life.

[Aquinasfan]

Most all my friends are just ladies I ride horses with, I find lately I don't do a whole lot of talking anymore when I am with them, unless it's about horses or the weather.

"...born again of water and the Spirit." This is a reference to Baptism and has been so taught by the Church since its beginning.

The common Evangelical and Fundamentalist interpretation is a historical novelty.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

They might be able to get by without formal training if they had the aesthetic sense God gave geese! 98 posted on 07/11/2003 12:59 AM PDT by maryz

To paraphrase a well-known conservative formulation, we would probably be better off with ten people selected randomly from the telephone directory making such decisions.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

This is where I have been going to Mass of late.

So can you choose the church you attend?

Am I not remembering right, was it tradition, has something changed...I could have sworn that when I was a kid that areas were designated at to which church you attended, depending on where you lived?????

Becky