Are young Catholics Cultural Orphans?

Recently a Catholic group concerned with promoting relationships with other faiths sent me a collection of brochures describing family life and traditions in Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, and Japanese Shinto cultures. Catholics were urged to establish contact and learn about the different festivals.

But there was nothing for them to take with them about their own culture. Despite the widespread ignorance among young Catholics about the Church's feast-days, fast-days, calendar and traditions, they were expected to go empty-handed with no materials speaking of our beliefs, prayers, or way of life.

A friend described to me enthusiastically a visit made with her Catholic women's group to a magnificent Hindu temple — the decorations, the grandeur, the formalities to be observed. They had been careful to dress appropriately and to observe any rituals required of them. They were intrigued by the meanings of the various things they saw.

These incidents came to mind as I spoke to a group of Catholic writers about Catholic customs — the origins of things like pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, the scattering of flowers before the Blessed Sacrament in procession, May crowning of a statue of Mary, the blessing of throats for Saint Blaise in February.

In discussion afterwards, it became clear that there was widespread concern at the loss of our sense of Catholic culture — of belonging to a community rich in a heritage of faith stretching back 2,000 years. Many Catholic boys and girls today are more familiar with football rituals than with some of the basic signs and symbols of our Faith. Few would be able to explain confidently, for example, why we genuflect before the Tabernacle or why the priest wears vestments of different colors at various times of the year.

What are we doing? Many young Catholics don't even know we are meant to fast on Ash Wednesday, or attend Mass on various Holy Days. They don't have a liturgical "map" in their heads with landmarks such as Advent, Lent, or Pentecost. Their ideas about Christmas and Easter are formed not by Christians traditions but by commercial ones, and increasingly a paganized Halloween is replacing even the vaguest notions of All Saints Day and All Souls Day and praying for the dead in November.

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.

The willful destruction of many statues and shrines in churches in the 1970s (under the guise of "implementing Vatican II") is now generally acknowledged to have been a disaster, along with the deliberate and unnecessary abandonment of virtually all Latin in some parishes, so that words and phrases such as "Gloria in excelsis", "Pater noster" and "Sanctus" now mean little or nothing to many people.

But perhaps the greatest loss was the sense of "folk Catholicism", a confidence in our own value as a faith community, a people on pilgrimage together with ideas, songs, traditions and customs that bind us with one another and with those who have gone before.

It's not too late — it is never too late — to make things right. We can and must revive our Catholic memories and traditions. Modern life makes many things easier: we can travel to shrines and places of pilgrimage at home or abroad, we can enjoy great paintings and music via art galleries, CDs, and the Internet, and even family celebrations are easier thanks to supermarkets, freezers and modern kitchens, which take much of the grim labor out of preparing and serving meals.

Pope John Paul II has spoken often of the "domestic Church", the little human community that is the family. A Catholic family home should be a place of welcome and hospitality, where visitors can "catch" something of the flavor of the Catholic faith and absorb its message.

Grace at meals — perhaps varying according to the season, or to reflect specific events or needs. A special meal on the feast-day of the patron saint of each member of the family as it comes round. Traditional dishes for great Church feasts, perhaps discovered on trips abroad or in one's own country. Candles on an Advent wreath. Simple meals in Lent with funds saved going to Catholic projects. Commemorative candles from Baptism or First Communion carefully saved and re-lit for special occasions.

All of these things require planning — and encouragement, via the Sunday pulpit, from the clergy, who do need to remind us from time to time that our homes should not be shrines to television or merely places where we sleep, launder clothes, and grab snacks from the fridge.

We need reminders, too, about the importance of having a crucifix hanging in our home, together with perhaps a statue or picture of Our Lady and/or of the Sacred Heart — and that every Catholic should possess a Rosary, and know how to use it.

Catholic culture should obviously be widely reflected in our schools. It is a delight, on entering a Catholic school, to find a statue of Our Lady that is obviously well cherished and has a votive light or a fresh posy of flowers in front of it. It is sad when our schools seem keener on emphasizing their secular credentials than on celebrating the real values on which they were founded. I once passed a Catholic girls' school boasting the slogan "Educating girls for success", which struck me as being a quite horribly inaccurate vision of what such an establishment should be doing!

We need to think about Sunday as a special day. How often you hear people speak with respect of the ways Jewish families honor their Sabbath rituals, and yet we seem to think we can ignore Sunday Mass if it is a bit inconvenient, or treat Communion lightly, with snacks and sweets munched without thought to the need for an hour's fast.

In today's society, each of us needs to be evangelistic. People are hungry for real spiritual truths. Aromatherapy, counseling, and various diets may have their uses, but cannot answer our deepest needs. We are made for God, and there is an ache in our hearts until we find Him. Using our Catholic traditions and customs, we can restore our confidence in our own faith and learn to share it with others.

The next time some one asks you about Catholic customs and traditions, don't just mumble that we don't seem to have any — make it your business to rediscover them and pass them on.

Joanna Bogle is a British Catholic journalist who frequently appears on radio and television. Excerpts from her A Book of Feasts and Seasons appear on several pages of the Prayers and Devotions section on the WFF web site. She is the author of a book for girls aged nine and up, We Didn't Mean to Start a School ($10 - write Mrs. Bogle at 34 Barnard Gardens, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 6QG, England.)

This article previously appeared in Voices, the journal of Women for Faith & Family, and is adapted by permission.

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?????

You're remembering right, and most people still adhere to that, but I am not going to remain in that monstrosity where I grew up any more. It wasn't feeding me the way I needed to be fed.

Actually, there's a lot more moving around than we're supposed to have, but around here nobody says anything.

I was wearing a doilie (I guess the real name is a chapel cap).

LOL...funny story, I don't know if you know but I use to be Catholic. I now attend an independent Baptist Church.

Last year we were attending a different church, no one there at that time knew I use to be Catholic. I get a bit irate sometime when I hear Catholics bashed in these churches (really, I do:) and this church seemed to be especially bad about always naming the Catholics to come down on. Anyway, I had contained myself up to this point, but in Sunday School this lady who knew nothing about Catholics started talking in a rather condesending tone about the ladies wearing doilies on their heads. IMO, doilies are table scraves, her comment was " the catholic ladies wear these, I don't know what you call them, doilie thingys on their heads,"

I turned to her and said "those doilie thingys are called hats, catholics were at one time required to wear hats to church"

She said "Oh no, they're these round lacy things that look like doilies,"

I said I know what you are talking about, I was born and raised catholic and they are called HATS!",,there was an audible gasp from the rest then silence. then an OH, well, OK. Then the subject changed. LOL...it was really rather funny. Shortly after that for various reasons we did not make that church our church home:)

Becky

Please remember here, that I am really trying to have a civil discussion. It's so hard at times to ask questions posting because you can't get my tone or expression, and I know you and I have had trouble communicating in the past:) I mean no disrespect.

Why is this any different than a Protestant changing church? It seems that after all these years of posting here I find that argument as one of the bases that Catholics use as why "Protestants" are wrong, because there are so many of them.

Now if you are not attending the church that the catholic church would like for you to attend, in this area are you submitting to the authority of the Catholic Church? I know they can't make a person do anything, but if you are catholic should you not follow their guidlines? Do you think maybe God has you living where you are so you would attend the "bad" catholic church so you could help effect some change?

I am only commenting about this because I have been reading here on the forum about alot of catholics who do not attend the church they should by catholic guidlines because of various reasons,and it seems that when people started picking and choosing where they were going to attend is when so many of the churches got "bad". Clickes formed. And now you have "good" and "bad" according to what side you are on. If the people had not started spliting up and going to where they got what they liked, maybe there would not be so much division. Just a thought from an outsider looking in.

Becky

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