"We sacrificed to send them to Catholic school. They went to youth group. We did everything we thought we were supposed to do. What happened?"

It's one of the most common questions we get from callers to our radio program and clients in our pastoral counseling practice. And despite its frequency, it never gets any less heartbreaking to hear.

The Catholic Church is facing a spiritual epidemic. A recent study found that only 15 percent of children raised in Catholic homes will grow up to be faithful Catholic adults.

The conventional wisdom about raising Catholic kids doesn't work, but until recently, no one knew what to do instead.

As a result, we've clung to giving the same old advice to parents (go to Mass, send them to Catholic school and youth ministry, and hope for the best).

Then, when it fails 85 percent of the time, we chalk it up to our kids' "free will." Of course, that's true as far as it goes. We can't force our children to be faithful adults. But it's cold comfort, and parents need better answers.

Looking for better answers

To try to provide those better answers, The Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life (an apostolate of Holy Cross Family Ministries) worked with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate to create the Future Faithful Families Project.

First, we looked at data from the Global Social Survey, a representative sample of 2,600 Americans, to identify the general characteristics of families that successfully raised faithful adult kids.

More importantly, we identified Catholic families that successfully raised all of their children to a faithful adulthood, and we interviewed both parents and faithful adult children from those families.

We found that while things like regular Mass attendance, Catholic education, youth ministry and parish involvement were important, they were seen by these families as secondary and supportive of the way they lived their faith at home.

I want to clarify the last part of the above statement because when people hear us talk about the importance of living their faith at home, they tell us that they imagine that these families are always on their knees in prayer and somehow immune from the pressures of the real world. That is not true.

While families who successfully raised all of their children to a faithful adulthood did have regular family prayer times (usually some kind of morning, mealtime, and/or bedtime prayers), that doesn't appear to be the main factor responsible for their success.

Faith as a source of warmth

What mattered most was a family dynamic in which the family (especially the children) experienced their faith as the source of the warmth in their homes.

Children raised in these households experienced their family's faith as something that drew them together in good times and bad.

Of course, these families faced the same stressors and conflicts that all families encounter. Still, they felt their family prayed about these problems in a way that led to better conversations and stronger relationships. Read more

• Dr. Greg Popcak is an author and the director of www.CatholicCounselors.com.

That's the negative news. There's better news though.

It results from a new study that questions why some Catholics continue to practise their faith and attend weekly Masses. Data from the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago didn't cover this.

Researchers at Georgetown University's CARA conducted the "Future Faithful Families Project" study. CARA is the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and the Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life.

The new study

They interviewed 28 people from June 2021 to February 2023. These included qualifying participants from past CARA surveys.

The study found that participants from these Catholic families generally described their households as "warmer and more affectionate than the average family". Most indicated "very good communication" within the family.

These families also have routines including eating and praying together. Most said faith was a part of their specific family practices.

All emphasised the importance of weekly Mass attendance. Most reported doing service work and giving to charity, generally through their parish or church.

While the findings from these qualitative interviews aren't a "checklist" of things to keep one's child Catholic, the study authors say parents could gain insight from common responses.

These show "their faith wasn't just something that they went and did on Sunday morning; their faith was present in the household. It was present every day. It came out in conversations about the faith, with prayer, with things that are in the home."

When these children mentioned doubts about their faith, most parents said "Well, let's see why the church teaches this" rather than avoiding questions about Church teachings.

The study also included an analysis of existing data from the General Social Survey (GSS) as far back as the 1970s.

This showed a marked decline in the number of US adults who were raised and remained Catholic while still attending weekly Mass.

In the 1970s, they accounted for "an average of 36 percent ... peaking at 40 percent in 1977".

GSS data later showed "this ... declined to 32 percent in the 1980s, 25 percent in the 1990s and 21 percent in the 2000s. In the 2010s, this averaged 15 percent and was 14 percent in the 2018 study."

This doesn't include Catholic converts not raised Catholic. The study notes many Catholics have immigrated to the US.

Among the 51 percent of US "cradle Catholics" who remained so between 2010 and 2018, there were some commonalities.

Among weekly Mass attendees who had remained Catholic, 81 percent were "more likely to have been living with both parents at age 16" compared to the 72 percent who attend Mass less often than weekly or the 63 percent who left the Catholic faith.

The Catholic families the study interviewed noted the importance of children observing their parent being "Catholic every day of the year, not just on Sundays".

It also found Catholic adults had parents who "listen to their children, have conversations with them and guide them through what the faith teaches and why the faith teaches it."

Source

• OSV via Diocese of Scranton

The Catholic Church cannot claim to safeguard marriage and family life if it simply repeats its traditional teaching without supporting, encouraging and caring for real families.

This is especially when families are struggling to live up to that teaching, Francis notes.

"It's not enough to repeat the value and importance of doctrine if we don't safeguard the beauty of the family and if we don't compassionately take care of its fragility and its wounds."

Francis made the comments on 19 March in a message to a Rome conference marking the fifth anniversary of "Amoris Laetitia," his 2016 exhortation of marriage and family life. Most participants took part in the conference online.

The conference was sponsored by the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life, the Diocese of Rome and the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family.

Celebrations of the "Amoris Laetitia Family Year," will conclude on 26 June next year at the World Meeting of Families in Rome.

Francis told conference participants that his exhortation was meant to give a starting point for a "journey encouraging a new pastoral approach to the family reality.

"The frankness of the Gospel proclamation and the tenderness of accompaniment," must go hand in hand in the church's pastoral approach, he explained.

Francis said the task of the church is to help couples and families understand "the authentic meaning of their union and their love" as a "sign and image of Trinitarian love and the alliance between Christ and his church."

At the same time, that message of the church "cannot be and must never be given from on high and from outside," Francis stressed.

The church's ministry to families can proclaim the truth and assist families only by "immersing itself in real life, knowing up close the daily trials of spouses and parents, their problems and sufferings, all the small and large situations that weigh them down and, sometimes, block their journey."

The Gospel is more than that, he stressed. It is a way to proclaim to the world the love of God and the beauty of his plan for humanity.

While many modern people believe the importance of the traditional family has diminished, Francis noted the pandemic has shown that for most people, the family is "the most solid reference point, the strongest support system and the irreplaceable basis for the defense of the whole human and social community."

"Therefore, let us support the family," he said.

"Let us defend it from that which would compromise its beauty. Let us draw near to this mystery of love with awe, with discretion and with tenderness."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Catholic Courier