Join Cy Kellett as he welcomes Catholic Priest Fr. Mike Schmitz to discuss the vital topic of keeping young people engaged in the faith. In this lively segment, Fr. Mike shares insights on the challenges and strategies for fostering a lasting connection to the Church among youth, drawing on his experience and understanding of contemporary culture.
Transcript:
Fr. Mike: There was actually this fantastic study done. I know at least one of the men. His name is Dr. Mike Roda. He just concluded this basically nationwide study of what is happening. What are the contributing factors to why young people are leaving the faith?
Basically, 80 to 90% of young adult Catholics who were raised Catholic end up leaving the faith. So we only retain 10 to 20% of those raised Catholic. And so he and some others did some really big digging into the contributing factors. They came up with essentially four contributing factors that caused what he said are a Catholic disaffiliation.
Okay, and the four things are, very briefly, declining consensus is one of them. And so what that means is we just have so much division. We live in this kind of pluralistic social networks. We have secular media, smartphones, where everyone has an opinion. And there’s not a lot of cohesion when it comes to, hey, here is how we look at the world.
So declining consensus like that. And so in the past too, I mean, you stayed Catholic because this is your home, this is your family. And now there’s less and less of that. So declining consensus is number one. We’ll come back to this in a second.
Number two is weak certainty. And in what he pointed to, what the studies pointed to was along the lines of parents, even how they speak. One of the examples I gave was these things, they say things like, well, we believe as Catholics, such and such, instead of saying this is true. You know, there’s a difference there.
There’s even the subtle kind of thing like, you know, well, we as Catholics believe that such and such is wrong as opposed to, oh, this is wrong. Like, we believe abortion is wrong versus okay, abortion is wrong. And so what it does is it kind of subtly, but not so subtly signals doubt to their children.
And this isn’t like any. I don’t think this is a personal choice. I think this is actually just kind of the air we breathe that we always have to couch our statements in terms of, well, my subjective position. So declining consensus around us, weak certainty in the family at times, or even how we talk as priests, we can even say that, you know, well, we believe as Catholics, such and such.
The third is, and this is kind of the most obvious, which is lost credibility. And, you know, the clergy abuse crisis and every kind of failure of a publicly professing Catholic slash Christian, you know, we lose more credibility, more and more credibility. So that when we do speak out in something and say, oh, this is true, they can point to us and say, well, you’re not living like it’s true.
And so these three things, declining consensus, weak certainty, lost credibility. And then fourthly is what they titled general compounding in the sense that all of these things continue to add up so that if you’re going to choose to be Catholic, there’s got to be a couple bright spots in your life that can work their way through this.
Declining consensus, weak certainty, and lost credibility. So we can look at it from two different angles. And again, this article by Dr. Mike Roda and Steven Bullivant, that’s his name, they pointed out parental factors like family factors that people can do and then also the factors of the young people.
So here are four important factors. They’re not the end all be all, but they are very important. And these four quick factors that they highlight are:
It really helps if both parents are Catholic. Okay. It really helps if the parents are united in their faith. And that’s kind of might be obvious, but at the same time, again, not necessary. If someone’s, you know, in their heart and their chest just withered a little bit as they’re listening to this, it is important. It’s a critical factor, but it’s not obviously absolute.
So that’s one. Number two, intact marriages are actually a really important contributing factor to holding on to the faith. Statistically, it contributes a lot. We’ll say it like that.
And then when it comes to stability and credibility, the third is that the faith is practiced by the parents authentically and visibly. And so that sense of just, it’s not just something we say, it’s something we really strive to live. That doesn’t mean perfection. Even those first three of both parents being Catholic or intact marriages doesn’t mean perfection.
But that third factor being the faith is lived visibly and authentically. We’re striving to live the faith that we profess.
And the fourth factor from parents is that parents talk about their faith. They talk about religion with warmth and consistency. And that’s really important because we can talk about our faith angrily, especially with what’s going on in the world right now, or what’s going on in the church, or I can’t believe Father said that from the pulpit.
You know, whatever. The thing is, these parents speak out their faith with warmth and consistency. And so there’s a sense of a positive experience, not perfect, but positive.
That’s the first. That’s parents.
Right away, Father Mike Schmitz is our guest. Father, every single line is full. You feel okay going to the phone?