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.”
You're not adding anything new to justify your denial of another person's abuse at the hands of a priest. If you don't believe this was abuse, reread AlaskaErik's post.
I've seen it before many times on FR.
Unlikely
Aside from casting charges against an individual for which you have no knowledge, you have no cultural sensitivity, which is further proven by your description of Latin as "an extinct language".
“Aside from casting charges against an individual for which you have no knowledge”
He was there. You were not. This appears to be just your opinion.
“you have no cultural sensitivity,”
Ha! This is another way to blame the victim. Also a opinion without evidence. Also an ad hominem attack.
“which is further proven by your description of Latin as “an extinct language”.
It is not a spoken language in use today. It is a dead language on its own. Perhaps you need more cultural sensitivity.
Good article and what it says is what I’ve seen in CCD. I’ve taught from 11-13 year olds.
Kids this age need reasoned logical instruction. The kind of touchy feelly stuff most women like turns them off. It’s hard for our local parishes to find teachers at all so relatively uneducated women is what most parishes can offer their students.
The idea that evolutionary (or any other science) is anti-Christian seems mostly a Protestant idea. Kids taught from a Catholic perspective never think there is a conflict.
The textbooks for kids this age are too simplistic and sometimes simply wrong. I used my university notes and bibles and put together my own scripture class. University style instruction challenges the mind and that intrigues the students.
“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.”
I don’t think that supported by theology or by the catechism. Full rejection of that forced baptism does not make a person a catholic. It also is the position of islam.
Latin is a dead language, as anyone can see...
First it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me...
He opened the windows & all the good nuns left.
Thank you for your reasoned argument. I do pray that you will find Peace and with that the ability to release your anger towards your family and towards yourself.
Moreover, no child would mistake a host for a "cracker" --- they are quite distinct in taste and texture --- and priests do not "cram" a Sacred Host down anybody's throat. It is placed on the tongue.
It sounds like you had a bad experience, and this is sad and disappointing. If this priest were a molester, I can understand how he could have spread trauma and damage which would long persist in the lives of his victims. This is the kind of sin for which Jesus said it would be better for the abuser to have a millstone tied around his neck and that he be cast into the sea.
But that is a judgment on abusers in general, not on Catholics in general.
To bad priests, my tagline applies:
Science and faith do not cancel each other out as this article proposes. In fact, science supports faith.
Read any NDE (Near-Death Experience) account and you will find the answer.
Well I have a lot a Grandkids.One said he was thinking about becoming an agnostic at age 14.I explained what an agnostic is.He said yea.The year before he announced on Thanksgiving he wanted to be a Priest.How do you answer a young man like that.Easy.I told him he wanted to follow his own rules.One Grandson was dating a girl and he worked at the rectory.Father asked her what faith she was and she said agnostic.She went out the window and now he is dating a girl who wants to become Catholic along with her Mother.Father prayed her out/:)
No priest “jams” a host down someone’s throat.
The consecrated host is gently placed on the person’s tongue.
Pure delusion. The clear requirement for baptism is repentant faith in the risen Lord Jesus to save you on His account, by His sinless shed blood, (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) otherwise one only gets wet, which sprinkling an innocent morally incognizant infant does.
It is different at your parish?
And is there some reason you wish to expose the service of the altar to public scorn?
Re : #47 ~ I don’t think that supported by theology or by the catechism. ~
Well, yes; actually it IS supported by both.
This is the fun part :
“Full rejection of that forced baptism does not make a person a catholic. It also is the position of islam.”
First, “Full rejection of that forced baptism does not make a person a catholic.”
Well, no. The sacrament of BAPTISM is what makes a person Catholic!
Second, “It is also the position of izlam.”
Whaaa? Please enlighten and edify all of us breathless Freepers!
All priests are not child molesters. Where did you get that idea?
You can always come back to the Catholic Church, the faith that Christ founded on the apostles.
And being an altar boy, and then an acolyte are the first steps into the world of the priesthood.
FYI, Fourth graders and older can be altar boys.
Reminds me of Vladimir Lenin.
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