For Faith, Family and Country

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The Hibernian magazine is a publication dedicated to the promotion of Irish Catholic Culture

Our aim is to provide quality media that will help bring people to a greater understanding and appreciation of our Catholic Faith and Gaelic heritage

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Issue 7 - November 2006

A Lack of Faith among the Irish Youth
Martina Caffrey

Ireland has been known for many generations as a Catholic country. We have been responsible for sending out priests and missionaries in their hundreds for many generations, men and women responsible for spreading the word of God to countries far and near.

In the last few decades though, there has been a considerable shift in this status. If St. Patrick were around today, I am sure that he would wonder just what has happened to this country which he evangelised. We seem to have sunk into a sense of indifference with our faith. This is most obvious among my peers, the young people of Ireland. Baptised and raised as Catholics, they no longer seem to show any interest in the most precious gift of belonging to the one true faith. Many young people have become disinterested, disillusioned and in some cases resentful towards the Catholic faith or even any kind of religion. This may seem to be a view which is too generalised and in the case of some, it is. There are still some young people who actively practise their religion, as I do, but when I look around at all those who do not, it can seem like a lonely and overwhelming place to be.

Looking around at Mass in recent times, there seems to be a considerable lack of people under the age of forty. It seems that the vast majority of young people in Ireland are no longer attending Mass or the sacraments. Why is this so? That is the question which was on my mind when I came to do my thesis in my final year of college so I set about trying to find a few answers. I ran a case study among my class mates, asking them what their views on the Catholic faith were. I also asked them about their practise of religion and why they no longer go to Mass or the sacraments if that was indeed the case. As you can imagine, the results were hardly surprising. I am not going to bore you with a lot of statistics and charts but there were some findings which I think are important to share. The vast majority of the people I surveyed still believed in the existence of God but this belief is not carried forth in their attendance at Mass. In fact the only times when they seemed to go near a church at all were to attend funerals or weddings. In spite of this, there is still a spirituality present within them. The numbers of those who prayed several times a week were considerably higher than I thought as were the number of those who believed in life after death. This is where it got interesting because most of my classmates believed in Heaven but none believed in Hell or even in sin. They don’t believe in the infallibility of the Pope and their views on key Catholic teachings are in complete opposition to the Church. The almost unanimous feeling among the group was that abortion is not always wrong especially in the case of rape and that contraception, pre-marital sɛҳuąƖ intercourse and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ sɛҳuąƖ intercourse are never wrong. I asked them for their opinions also on the Church’s teachings on these topics and the majority of the responses can be summed up by saying that they feel the Church is too old fashioned about these issues and that it needs to be changed.

From undertaking the study and talking to them, the overwhelming feeling which I got is that these young people are not going to suddenly change their minds about the Catholic Church and its teachings. Maybe in time, as they get much older, they will reconsider their views on the importance of attendance at Mass but at the moment they feel like they are not part of the Catholic Church. The only problem is, I wonder if they will have time to reconsider. The numbers of young people who are dying on our roads or through ѕυιcιdє or drugs is phenomenal. If you look at the records of those who are dying in road accidents, the vast majority are under the age of 35. Nearly every weekend, we have a fresh spate of tragic and senseless deaths on Irish roads and the main characteristic behind it is that there is nearly always a young person among the dead. Similarly, the numbers who are dying due to ѕυιcιdє in our country are heartbreaking. Young men are among the most likely to take their own lives in this country. No one can make sense of this but one thing which I wonder is: How many of these young men have religion in their lives? If they still practised their religion and had developed a relationship with God and Our Lady, would they still consider such terrible actions?

I am not trying to lay any blame here but these are the thoughts which strike me as I am sure they do others. We don’t even have to go so far as death tolls among the youth to see the effects of a lack of practised religion. The numbers of young people who are engaged in drink, drugs and sɛҳuąƖ promiscuity from an ever decreasing age are frightening. Most young people (I say most as there are a small minority who do not engage in such practices) are involved in at least one of the above. Every weekend, the young people of Ireland let loose and drink flows down their throats at an astonishing rate. The aim of the night out for some is to get as drunk as possible. This behaviour is linked to the ever increasing rate of sɛҳuąƖ promiscuity among teenagers and young people. The numbers of single teenage mothers are visible to everyone. What has happened to our society to lead to such a breakdown among the youth? My belief is that it is yet another consequence of the lack of religion in their lives. They are only interested in having fun while they are young but there are consequences for such fun. Without going into the socio-economic and cultural consequences, has anyone informed them of the consequences to their souls? I don’t mean to judge anyone as only God can do that but are they aware of just how much sin they are in if they do not stop these practices and attend confession? Our youth are being lost to the pleasures of the world without a backward glance at all that they are discarding.

What struck me as I read through the answers I received in my thesis to questions about the Mass and the key beliefs of the Catholic Church, was that there is a lack of knowledge among young people in general about their faith. It seems to me that they have never been properly taught the main tenets of our faith. This education in their faith has been neglected by parents and priests. How many priests will actually preach about the beliefs we hold and why we hold them? In my experience, there are very few priests who do that. I have, of course, met some very good priests who are well capable of and do deliver a striking sermon but it does not reach the people who need to hear it, the young people, who are not at the Mass any more to hear their faith being preached about. Where are the Padre Pios and Fulton Sheens of our time? We need priests who are actually going to get out to the young people and teach them.

The young people I have talked with do not understand their faith. They know about the Holy Trinity, the Virginity of Mary, Jesus as the Son of God and the Sacrifice of Easter but they do not understand them. They say quite plainly that they do not accept these beliefs because they are too hard to understand and seem unbelievable. I will not go into detail on exactly what their opinions were, as it verges on blasphemy in some cases, but it impresses upon me the belief that if they were properly educated in their faith and the beliefs of the Catholic faith were explained to them, then there may be a slight turnaround in their views. Again, if the teachings of the Catholic Church on ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity and contraception among others, were explained to them, they may have a different view of the Church. There are a lot of misunderstandings out there about the Church’s teachings. Many of those whom I questioned, felt that the Church was too old fashioned and basically out to spoil their fun.

All of this draws serious questions about the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland. What will happen to the Church if these young people do not come back to Mass? We are already seeing the effect of this in the lack of vocations to the priesthood. In the Meath diocese in which I live, there is such a shortage of priests, that priests are no longer able to retire and live quiet lives of prayer. Retirement homes for priests such as Dalgan Park are being emptied of any priests who are capable of saying Mass, to supply the parishes with even the basics of Sunday Mass. Small parishes are being amalgamated together as there is a shortage of priests to serve the small rural parishes. In the seminary in Maynooth, the numbers of seminarians are only a handful of what they should be. Attendance at Sunday Mass seems to grow smaller each year as we have all noticed and even the basics such as Confession are no longer readily available in many churches, as no one bothers to turn up, so the priest does not see the need to be there in the Confession box. There is a growing trend of general confession ceremonies instead which do not provide an adequate confession for each individual. At some of these ceremonies of reconciliation, you do not even have to mention your sins but just say to God that you are sorry for them. Is this further evidence of the growing Protestantism within the Catholic Church? No wonder the young people are so lost if we are changing our Catholic practices in the liberal wave which is sweeping through the Catholic Church since Vatican II.

There is a growing apathy among Catholics in this country towards their religion and the morals of the Church. If the young people are not there to invigorate the atmosphere of the Church, a sense of despondency can set in. If their parents are becoming more apathetic towards the Church, how can we expect the children to feel any love or value in their faith? The time has come when we can no longer rely on the priest to teach us our faith or to draw in the numbers to Mass. It is up to us to teach ourselves and to try to bring others back to the Church through prayer and talking about our faith openly. If parents or grandparents took the time to sit down with their children from an early age and to explain to them about their faith, then we may see a revival of the faith in young people. This is already happening in some places. Those young people who come into contact with true practice of the faith in the home or in churches, feel drawn back to their faith or never feel a need to pull away from it. Those who experience a truly holy Mass, such as the Latin Tridentine Mass, and see the old Benediction and the praying of the Rosary, feel drawn back to God. We need to bring prayer back into the homes and let God and Our Lady work on the hearts of young people. I feel that it is only through divine intervention that we will see a change.