On any given Sunday morning when I celebrate Mass in a parish church, it is obvious that many young people missing. For some reason, the Church is losing contact with younger Catholics. I wonder why. Although I have not scientifically researched this to discover the reasons, I speculate the following may be some of those reasons.
It appears that many young people after they leave home and go off to college or work, leave behind their church practice. One reason they leave behind church practice may be because of family tensions they experienced at home. It is their way of rebelling against their parents and the difficult relationships they had with them. Their leaving church practice behind is not so much being against the church as it is rebelling against their parents.
In some families, the faith of parents may also have been weak, and hence, an appreciation of the beauty and value of faith relationship with God in the Church has not been passed on to their children. Since the children did not see church practice as important, they grew up thinking a relationship with God was not important. The attitudes and values of parents are often passed on to their children.
For other young people, even though they grew up in families practicing their faith, perhaps their religious formation was inadequate, and they never truly internalized their faith. The religious education programs they may have participated in may not have inspired them or motivated them to seek a deeper relationship with God. As a result, they may rationalize their lack of an integrated Catholic spirituality by claiming they are angry with the church or a priest or because of some other reason, rather than acknowledging the weakness of their own spiritual formation. Without having received adequate religious formation, they may not fully understand church practice, such as Mass and other sacraments. Because they don’t understand what is happening in Catholic worship, the liturgies may seem boring and preaching irrelevant to their concerns.
Perhaps they want a more participative role in more exciting and inspiring worship than is offered to them in their parish church. Not finding worship services that address their spiritual hungers, they may find it more comfortable to worship in a Christian worship service of another denomination.
Other young people may feel put off by their understanding of the Church's teaching about sexuality, relationships, divorce and remarriage. Their life experiences with sexuality, sexual identity, premarital sex, and living together seem at odds with the position of the Church. And so, they absent themselves from the church believing they are not accepted or welcome in the Catholic Church. Their understanding of the Church's position may be inadequate. But at the same time many priests and bishops may also reinforce this sense of their not being welcome.
Some young Catholics may have experienced church situations which deeply angered them and turned them away from the Church. A situation involving a priest, a religious, or bishop may have deeply troubled them or angered them. Unable to separate the failures of the person from church, they blame the church and walk away.
For other young Catholics, they may be following the crowd without giving serious reflection to the importance of their Catholic faith. It is more "in vogue" to be a "non-believer," an agnostic or atheist, than to admit to one's friends that one is a churchgoer and growing in one's faith. How many conversations or interviews have I heard where young Catholics have been embarrassed to admit that they are Catholic!
Many young Catholics (and their parents) may not have heard or understood the laity’s mission of bringing transformation of society. Not only does the Church want them to grow in their relationship with God, but the Church wants them to help continue Christ’s mission of bringing the Reign of God or renewal to the contemporary world.
I suspect that many young Catholics, absenting themselves from the Church, still have a hunger for God but do not know where or how to find help for this need. The rich heritage of Christian spirituality in the Church is unknown to them. The parish church may be too understaffed or unware of this rich spiritual tradition to share it with young Catholics.
If these are some of the reasons why the Catholic Church is losing its young people, then it seems the Church should seriously reflect on these speculated causes to see if they are true and then to develop strategies to address the causes which encourage young Catholics to leave church participation.