Author Topic: Where have all the children gone? (Read 5625 times)

Arsenius · « **Reply #5 on:** February 08, 2017, 11:02:08 PM »

Let me speak as a member of the "young generation". I've been around quite a bit of traditional chapels/parishes either as a regular attendee or attending once or twice on invitation or because I happened to be passing through town.

Resistance chapels are so small and unstable that I don't think a parish community could ever really arise from one in the current state of things. Think about for a second - Resistance chapels are so understaffed, you don't even have First Friday, First Saturday devotions, holy days of obligations are at random times and probably always low masses, Sunday mass is even irregular week to week, month to month. Here in America, you're probably putting yourself into a recusant situation if you are Resistance only. How on earth is a tightly knit community supposed to form in such an atmosphere, especially considering that a lot (most?) attendees also live great distances apart from each other and only congregate semi-regularly to attend mass?

Then there is the issue of the actual attendees. On my last trip to a Resistance chapel, I saw maybe 2 unmarried ladies, and 2 or 3 bachelors. Are we really down to the point where we literally have no choice of who to marry so we just have to marry the person sitting the next pew over for the sake of marrying "within the Faith"?

I found a virtuous, young lady at the Novus Ordo who I helped bring to tradition. She didn't know of the Latin Mass before meeting me and now attends SSPX regularly - she hasn't been back to the Novus Ordo for quite a while now.

I really think the older generation is partly at fault for creating such a suffocating and anti-social environment at many of these chapels. We are all infected with the spirit of the modern age simply by being born into it. It's no use pretending that our chapels are insulated from the spirit of the age. We must, obviously, resist it. We cannot, however, pretend that we are somehow protected from it within the confines of our chapels. This "us versus them" mentality has certainly not helped...

Brennus · « **Reply #6 on:** February 09, 2017, 11:04:02 AM »

There seems to be a good bit of crypto-feminism in Traditionalist circles as some of you on this forum are well aware. Maybe that is part of it, but I suspect it is a small part.

I think traditionalist communities can become stifling. We tend to attract nuts on one extreme, and people who want to be be extolled for their contributions on the other. That latter drives ME nuts more than the former.

I remember being young and that is the sort of thing I would have been ready to flee.

There is a lot of apocalypticism among traditionalists. We can be as bad as Protty fundamentalists. A grown up might forget what sort of lunacy he was spouting three years prior, but three years is a long time in a child's life and that failure of some apparition to turn out correct, or some catastrophe to befall, or the SSPX thing to finally be worked out, or whatever. Well those failures at prediction will make a big impression on a child. It might make "the folks" look like a bunch of fools when a young man or woman is looking at the wide world awaiting them.

There is economics, as mentioned. Can a young man find a way to earn a living and keep a wife and large family?

I think we must work harder to secure a future for our children in this world, just in case this world doesn't go away. I have an old book, a century old, called Marriage and the Catholic ideal. One of the duties of the father is to secure gainful employment for his sons and good marriages for his daughters. Jone has that as well.

Last but not lest -- indeed, most important -- we should just whine about all the trouble the young ones have. We must also confront the fact that the sin is theirs as well. No matter what evil times we live in and no matter how goofy our communities may be at times, it does not excuse the young from discerning their vocation and acting accordingly. In short, a lot of these are sinning. So, what do we do about that>? Pray, fast, and give alms.

TKGS · « **Reply #7 on:** February 09, 2017, 12:10:19 PM »

I often hear about how far a Catholic family has to travel to get to a chapel. At the two chapels I regularly attend, both have families (some with babies and children) who weekly travel between one and three hours to attend Mass.

We, ourselves, travel an hour and fifteen minutes to one chapel and just under two hours to the other chapel. This is not unusual. Most families don't live within a short distance of a traditional chapel.

Every once in a while, I also hear about new chapels being established and that the only reason there are not more founding of chapels is because the number of traditional priests available to serve them is still limited.

Even if a particular chapel isn't "growing", I wonder if it's not because people who attend a chapel aren't founding new chapels closer to them. Furthermore, children who grow up at a chapel often need to move in this day and age in order to make a living. While there are some problems in general, I don't think they are quite as bad as some on this topic make it sound.

Arvinger · « **Reply #8 on:** February 09, 2017, 01:56:56 PM »

I guess most of you are Americans, so living in Britain I will share my perspective from here. The situation is even worse than you describe - as our priest once said, there is no future for Tradition in Britain. In my chapel some 70-80% of parishioners are elderly people, many of whom remember the Latin Mass from before Vatican II. Out of the remaining 20-30% most are between 30-50 and married. I'm 26 and there are literally only two or three other people of my age in the chapel. I have visited several other chapels accross Britain and the situation there is very similar. It is slightly better at Indult Mass centres which I have visited, but not by a significant margin. Overall, chances of meeting a Trad Catholic lady of roughly my age who is single are extremely slim. In other words, Traditional Catholic population here is on the verge of extinction.

Ekim · « **Reply #9 on:** February 10, 2017, 04:14:47 AM »

I think why Tradition is dying. Many kids grew up in families in the 70's and 80's hearing that Gods wrath was on its way...first the Fatima 1960, then three days of darkness, then "The Warning", Firey comets to hit the earth, imposter Pope Paul VI, Sister Lucy and Joey L. dies without without fulfillment of the prophecy...the list goes on and on...

I remember being in high school in the 1980's thinking I'd never graduate. Many of my family members eventually got tired of unfulfilled prophecy and riddle filled apparitions that they just started to become lax. Their children eventually took no stock in Tradition because they simply saw it as a lifeboat from the doom and gloom prophecy. With prophecy unfulfilled/ no longer worthy of belief/ they see no need for the lifeboat.