A comment I saw on an online forum topic about ‘managing decline in the Church’ read “Sometimes I want to scream! We have a problem. We have lost, and continue to lose, the young people”

I thought it might be worth putting my reply here (modified very slightly for context), for wider readership (assuming anyone’s actually reading this!)...

I'll add my voice in agreement with this statement too.

There are too few Catholic schools and the opportunity to start them is minimal as they would not be sustainable in today’s secularised climate.

For the youth we DO have contact with, we need a programme of continual reinforcement of their faith. That means their parents need to work with them, and they need to hear more from the Church (at a personal level) than 'just' going to Mass. It seems to me that children get their First Communion instruction and then they're just left 'flapping in the wind'... There's no obvious continuing youth catechesis. The Faith needs to be kept alive for them. Mass alone can't do it if they go to secular and non-religious schools. We need to bring back 'Sunday School' - although perhaps in a modern form.

It's a very real ambition of mine: on a personal level I'm itching to be able to talk to and teach the youngsters in my parish. I want to engage their minds, get them thinking about God in their lives, point to the Tabernacle and ask them not what but WHO is living within it. I want them to feel that the Church is a lovely warm embracing place to come into and not somewhere that they get dragged unwilling of a Sunday morning or Saturday evening. I want to forestall the intransigence of teen age, the digging in of the heels and refusal to come with Mum and Dad to Church because they don't feel either wanted, appreciated, valued or plain old interested. I want to draw them so close to God that they can't wait to come to the next Mass.

This is achievable. You know how?

Kids love to be given responsibility. They like to feel part of something. They want to feel valued for the contribution they can give. They need affirmation and affection from the Church. If we can communicate with kids at a level appropriate to their age and that they feel that we're hearing them and appreciating their efforts they'll keep coming back.

On catechesis, we must have teaching at more than just First Communion and Confirmation levels. We need it at the ages in between and beyond. In fact we probably need it right up to and including adulthood - an interactive engagement with religious ideas and the Church that goes beyond the homily. Kids need 'rites of passage' experiences and we can easily build them into their experience of Church. We can engage them with the ways in which we can teach them to worship. Here’s an idea, perhaps for older children: coming to the first morning Mass where the kids make a special resolution to ‘break their fast’ with the Sacrament, for example. Perhaps not as a regular thing - the rules don’t require it, after all - but as something significant for them to experience. (I remember, as an adult, the huge symbolism that it had for me the first time I did it). Perhaps it could happen early in the Summer Holidays? And not just 'abandoning them' afterward but getting them together and asking them how they feel and what the experience meant to them.

That’s just one single idea. Here’s another. How about giving children the opportunity for regular Eucharistic Adoration as part of their exercises in learning spirituality? Let them talk about what they think and feel. I know that as a child I never had that opportunity and on the exceptionally rare occasions that I caught sight of the Monstrance I wondered at its beauty. I would have benefited from exploring it more.

There are so many ways we can attach worship to our daily lives  that our faith can quite easily and reasonably become subsumed into everything we do. Once that happens it becomes part of the fabric of your life. 

We need a radical and practically heroic effort to bring these experiences of faith to our young. It'll stem the flow of youth as they fall away from the Church. It needs to be done NOW and we can ALL help.

Is my vocation showing, do you think? ;)