Posted on 09/06/2016 3:57:16 PM PDT by NYer
.- Young Catholics are leaving the faith at an early age – sometimes before the age of 10 – and their reasons are deeper than being “bored at Mass,” the author of a new report claims.
“Those that are leaving for no religion – and a pretty big component of them saying they are atheist or agnostic – it turns out that when you probe a bit more deeply and you allow them to talk in their own words, that they are bringing up things that are related to science and a need for evidence and a need for proof,” said Dr. Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
“It’s almost a crisis in faith,” he told CNA. “In the whole concept of faith, this is a generation that is struggling with faith in ways that we haven’t seen in previous generations.”
Gray recently published the results of two national studies by CARA – which conducts social science research about the Church -- in the publication Our Sunday Visitor. One of the surveys was of those who were raised Catholic but no longer identified as Catholic, ages 15 to 25. The second survey was of self-identified Catholics age 18 and over.
In exploring why young Catholics were choosing to leave the faith, he noted “an emerging profile” of youth who say they find the faith “incompatible with what they are learning in high school or at the university level.” In a perceived battle between the Catholic Church and science, the Church is losing.
And it is losing Catholics at a young age. “The interviews with youth and young adults who had left the Catholic Faith revealed that the typical age for this decision to leave was made at 13,” Gray wrote. “Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 63 percent, said they stopped being Catholic between the ages of 10 and 17. Another 23 percent say they left the Faith before the age of 10.”
Of those who had left the faith, “only 13 percent said they were ever likely to return to the Catholic Church,” Gray wrote. And “absent any big changes in their life,” he said to CNA, they “are probably not coming back.”
The most common reason given for leaving the Catholic faith, by one in five respondents, was they stopped believing in God or religion. This was evidence of a “desire among some of them for proof, for evidence of what they’re learning about their religion and about God,” Gray said.
It’s a trend in the popular culture to see atheism as “smart” and the faith as “a fairy tale,” he said.
“And I think the Church needs to come to terms with this as an issue of popular culture,” he continued. “I think the Church perhaps needs to better address its history and its relationship to science.”
One reason for this might be the compartmentalization of faith and education, where youth may go to Mass once a week but spend the rest of their week learning how the faith is “dumb,” he noted.
In contrast, if students are taught evolution and the Big Bang theory at the same school where they learn religion, and they are taught by people with religious convictions, then “you’re kind of shown that there’s not conflicts between those, and you understand the Church and Church history and its relationship to science,” he said.
With previous generations who learned about both faith and science as part of a curriculum, that education “helped them a lot in dealing with these bigger questions,” he explained, “and not seeing conflict between religion and science.”
Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, who worked in youth ministry for four years, emphasized that faith and science must be presented to young people in harmony with each other.
A challenge, he explained, is teaching how “faith and science relate” through philosophy and theology. While science deals only with “what is observable and measurable,” he said, “the world needs something non-physical as its origin, and that’s how to understand God along with science.”
“It was the Christian faith that was the birthplace of science,” he continued. “There’s not a contradiction” between faith and science, “but it’s understanding each one in their own realms.”
How can parents raise their children to stay in the faith? Fr. Schneider cited research by Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who concluded that a combination of three factors produces an 80 percent retention rate among young Catholics.
If they have a “weekly activity” like catechesis, Bible study or youth group; if they have adults at the parish who are not their parents and who they can talk to about the faith; and if they have “deep spiritual experiences,” they have a much higher likelihood of remaining Catholic, Fr. Schneider said.
More parents need to be aware of their children’s’ beliefs, Dr. Gray noted, as many parents don’t even know that their children may not profess to be Catholic.
The Church is “very open” to science, he emphasized, noting the affiliation of non-Catholic scientists with the Pontifical Academy of Science, including physicist Stephen Hawking.
There is “no real conflict” between faith and science, Gray said.
“The Church has been steadily balancing matters of faith and reason since St. Augustine’s work in the fifth century,” he wrote.
“Yet, the Church has a chance to keep more of the young Catholics being baptized now if it can do more to correct the historical myths about the Church in regards to science,” he added, “and continue to highlight its support for the sciences, which were, for the most part, an initial product of the work done in Catholic universities hundreds of years ago.”
Sorry, but I’m not.
I went to a Catholic university and our dorm priest frequently bedded down with young men seemingly every weekend.
No apology forthcoming.
Sorry.
Erik, my main issue with the Catholic Church is how they fail to develop spiritual relationships with God in most of their children and rather force them into a bunch of exercises that cause them to resent the whole package.
Jesus loves us and God wishes for all to be saved but unless one invests themselves in Him, he will never be drawn to simply a building of imperfect people who sing songs and hear speeches. Churches are not meant to be social clubs. They are meant for people to find God.
Until that interest is there, don’t go back. You’ll only find more of what drove you away. In the meantime, try to lose the bitterness. Your mother was only trying to do what she thought was right and some get a little too forceful if the child isn’t cooperative.
God is always willing to forgive. Ask Him sincerely and you will find Him.
“No apology forthcoming.
Sorry.”
Umm...
Re : Post #5 ~ ...jammed a cracker down my throat along with some wine while babbling a bunch of nonsense in an extinct language. Yet there are those, including a rabidly Catholic brother in law, who think this makes me a catholic for life. ~
Sorry you were not man enough to move on, but if you may like it - or if you may not; if you were Baptized by a Catholic Priest on God’s Holy Altar, then you are - and ever shall be a Catholic.
Lighten up, Erik. Talk with your ‘rabid’ BIL & you may be surprised.
I feel sorry for you. You’re really effed up.
That's the spirit! Blame the victim!
Because puberty?
Of all people on FR, you seem to be a leading candidate for “those most in need of thy mercy”.
No.
It's simple: the Second Vatican Council, the New Mass, the new catechism, etc.
I waited till I was out of my parents house, but I think you and I both know why I left. 😀😆😄
Victim of what
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe anybody ever shoved a consecrated communion host down your throat. In lieu of that, I don’t believe anything you say.
He does. He needs prayers.
He had things forced on him, against his will.
You quickly tell him he is messed up.
Love the compassion. No doubt, he will come back now because of the attraction of your compassion.
My desire for him is that he comes to faith in the real Christ as Savior and comes to understand His amazing love for each of us. Perhaps he already has.
Rather, those who in self-righteousness, condemn those that see things differently
You disbelieve him, not having been there. He has spoken about his own experience, as he saw it happen. I hear echoes of those saying priests would never abuse children. Why? They are priests!
Yes, I do disbelieve him. I’ve already stated that fact.
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