Posted on 07/10/2003 5:17:05 AM PDT by Desdemona
by Joanna Bogle
Are Young Catholics Cultural Orphans?
7/10/03
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.
Losing "Folk Catholicism"
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.
Revival of the "Domestic Church"
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.
Re-Catholicizing Schools
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.
Copyright © 2002 Women for Faith & Family
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.
Well, in the Latin Rite the dark purple is the color signifying penance and preparation. Advent and Lent do prepare for major events in the Church calender, namely Christmas and Easter where the lighter and bright colors of white and gold are used. I believe the rose color is allowed a couple of Sundays before each feast to signify a slight lightening of the "dark" mood of penatential (sp?) preparation as you look to the major feast to occur. Sort of like our Lord's transfiguration before His Passion and eventual Resurrection.
Since Liturgy and Faith reinforce the other, proper catechesis with decent material would help in the explanations. Of course, this has been a huge problem these last 40+ years. But with newer and more orthodox Catholic Bishops and Priests leading the way as the Teachers they are meant to be, better catechetical programs may be on the way for the newer generation. Won't happen overnight...
Sorta gets to the whole point of the article. Our Faith is more than an intellectual exercise of belief. It is a surrender to follow a Person Who is the Way, Truth, and Life. It involves our whole being, and since by nature we are social beings, the rise and development of customs and traditions surrounding our lives to deepen our life of Faith is natural and necessary. This process is called "culture". The weakening of traditions and customs goes hand in hand with a weakening of the Faith in our lives. We, first and foremost, have a crisis in the Church of a lack of, as you said, will-power. The will to be holy! Lack of holiness is the source of all the problems in the Church, and therefore secular society in general. I find the majority of Catholics and other Christians (myself included) to tend to indifference and mediocrity. Our society demands it of us. This opens the door for the small but effective leftist/liberal groups to have caused the damage that they have, often with good intentions, over the past generation. Because of the loss of identity, many future Catholics have been "aborted" from the Church, having no identity with Her and lacking the capability for zeal for holiness because the Gospel has not been effectively preached to them through all levels of our common social institutions meant to do just that (family, parish, etc.). However, since Truth always beckons us to wisdom, many will wake up and search, with little help, for her. And they eventually find her. And some of them will respond to the call to Religious Life - orthodox Religious Life. And they will be zealous for Truth and Holiness. And they will be the new Teachers of the Faith and draw more people to the Church. And this cycle, which has happened before in the history of the Church (and Israel), will climb back up to the top once more with the Holy Spirit leading us and calling us to holiness.
JMJ - Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I'm pretty sure. Is AMDG the Latin for "For the Greater Glory of God"?
I've started reading Sister Faustina's Diary, and she seems to have JMJ starting out a lot of the entries.
They might be able to get by without formal training if they had the aesthetic sense God gave geese!
We used to go there sometimes when we lived in Roxbury when I was a kid -- lovely church. Not exactly handy to get to for me now, though.
Yes, but WHY? Why is this? And why can't we answer right off the tops of our heads like we should be able to.
Right -- rose used to be the liturgical color for Gaudete (rejoice) Sunday (third Sunday in Advent) and Laetare (rejoice) Sunday (fourth Sunday in Lent) when we were called to, well, rejoice even in the midst of sorrow. I haven't seen rose vestments in decades, though the advent candles still have the rose candle for the third week (though I wouldn't know why if I hadn't gone to decent Catholic schools in the late 50s and early 60s -- before the deluge, so to speak.
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