Comments on: Do young people get cold shoulder in our churches?

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 00:47:29 +0000

The religious orders and dioceses who founded schools and colleges in this nation will be surprised that all the time and treasure, their entire lives, which they invested in hope is interpreted as a “cold shoulder”. Quite a dishonor to our whakapapa also who build the schools and parishes.

As a 40-year old, I’m young enough to remember this same “youth” narrative as a “youth” from the turn of the millennium . That also makes me old enough to recognize that the Church hasn’t done what it has always done for quite some time and also recognize the straw-men and tropes of my elders, “always onward, no revisionists, relevance, never look back!”

As a bright-eyed 20-year old in 2000, just before the Boston-global sex scandal, it was painfully obviously that the supposedly youth-focused (?) university chaplaincy had no intention of opposing the secularism of the campus across the road. Now, 20 years later at the time of the Cardinal McCarrick scandal, and while we locally consider euthanasia and late-term abortion (imagine if the chaplain had stepped up 20-years ago?!), there’s little to suggest that our sentimental appeal to “youth” will help them resist the state let alone match the vision of Campion and Champagnet.

By: Wayne McTague

Wayne McTague — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 02:41:06 +0000

Couldn’t agree more. Drop the posturing, the language and the push to always do things the way they have been done.For Gods sake stop taking the moral high ground stance and lecturing. Show some respect! We are all sinners, we are in this together, no-one is better than anyone else. Do you get it?

By: Sarah Gentry

Sarah Gentry — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 23:42:03 +0000

What a load of nonsense!

By: Bruce Jones

Bruce Jones — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 09:03:55 +0000

Thank you for raising the issue.
Yes, it is a perennial problem.
Every parish has a duty, ongoing, to use groups such as Taize, YCS, YCW, Schoenstatt, and the like as a deliberate attempt to keep alive the optimism of young people, and their important role in building families, so easily forgotten, instead with the focus on making money out of mortgages, that so often cripples their interest in family building. This callous disregard has immediate effects on the Judeo-Christian birthrate- or if you like the Catholic birth-rate.
When youth leave the church, it means living out an alternative relationship, so often without parental support.
They are targeted by the many distractions, from porn pushers to drug pushers, and politicians deliberately try to delude them and entice them.
It is not a crutch they seek, but integrity in their own church. It is simply called “the faith”.
Or for those more committed, a personal Jesus in those they meet.