David Ancell / Sunday March 02, 2003
I remember being in a meeting of my church’s young adults’ group (Frassati Society) when the topic of Call to Action came up. Our speaker was our recently-ordained associate pastor. He defined them as “the dying gasps of liberalism.” Indeed they are dying out, though, as as this post indicates, they don’t wish to admit it.
It makes sense that they would die out. They are utterly depressing. Who wants to put time and energy into a Church that is nothing in particular? There is no commitment, no divine calling, just some warm fuzzy feeling that doesn’t really indicate anything. Then again, the warm fuzzy feeling itself is an illusion since many of these people are bitter that the Church won’t do what they want.
Colleen Caroll’s book The New Faithful is encouraging. Many people my own age or younger are turning away from the nonsense and towards the truth. However, is this the entire picture? Is this all that is taking place? I think not.
Some yong people, having taken the heterodox views to their logical conclusion, have just stopped going to Mass. Through the efforts to make Mass more entertaining, they still manage to find better entertainment elsewhere. Through the demystification of the faith, they have found nothing unique to believe in. When faith in the Real Presense is lost, what is the point in being in the Church? After all, God is omnipresent.
Others remain, but are lukewarm. They go to Mass, but they may leave right after Communion. They don’t practice the faith outside the Church. They have no idea that there is anything to practice. Some could not even recite an Our Father or a Hail Mary from memory.
So, there is hope, but there is also a lot of work to do. We should be encouraged by the dying of the faithless heterodoxy that values “conscience” over Church teachings (funny, I thought we used to call that sin). However, let us not think that the battle is over.
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