A Protestant Charismatic friend who read my Spirituality Without Spirits wrote me:
That is well-done and definitely says it in terms of the utter cop-out among many young people in terms of religious belief with teeth. Don’t you think this is where a lot of Catholic youth are at? Unless they’re at a university like Ave Maria or Christendom, I find the Notre Dame or Georgetown kind of students the exact sorts who want spirituality, not religion. I don’t like the young Calvinists either but at least they acknowledge the Trinity!
I’m afraid she’s right about young Catholics. The heritage is very strong, even after a post-60s Catholic upbringing, but the adherence to the distinctives, doctrinal and disciplinary, of the faith weak. I think that has a lot to do not just with poor teaching, the usual reason given, but with the loss of the classic devotions, because those grounded the faith for them and made it personal.
But to be fair, the Young Calvinists are the Protestant equivalent of the Ave Maria or Christendom students, sociologically as well as theologically. The average Protestant kid is apparently a version of the kids at Notre Dame (if he’s not at Notre Dame), and even the average Evangelical kid is, judging from the Evangelical laments I’ve read, mostly a more culturally conservative version. In both cases, we have a minority who hold and live by the faith they’ve inherited, but I suspect this is true in every age, and we forget this because when we look back we look almost entirely at the faithful (and therefore creative and memorable) minority.
Speaking of “On the Square” articles, the discussions gratifyingly continue of Robert Benne’s Lutherans in Search of a Church, Archbishop Charles Chaput’s Suing the Church, George Weigel’s Storm Clouds in Ukraine, and Father Edward Oakes’s Atheism’s Just So Scenarios. I can’t promise that you will find every comment helpful, but I think that those of you who read the articles will find the continuing comments (as a whole) stimulating and useful.
May 29th, 2010 | 2:24 pm
While I tend to agree with your sentiment about young catholics, your comments about notre dame are, I think, misplaced.
In my own experience, ND grads are some of the best — if not the best — at putting real orthodoxy into practice through living.
Obviously, ND is different. It is a better school academically, so it attracts some kids who are smart but disinclined to love orthodoxy and the church. Ave and Christendom have the benefit of lower reputations — no one tries to go there but for wanting an orthodox catholic experience.
That said, I think ND does a good job — though could certainly do a better job — of training kids who are open to orthodoxy to use their minds to seek Christ. In fact, I daresay I think they do the best job I’ve seen of doing so, though again they could do better. In possibly the only intelligent think Cathy Kaveny has ever written, she published an article several years ago lamenting that young catholics today think that using their minds to seek Christ is about learning the rules of orthodoxy, following them, and learning the (very good) arguments for them. And she noted, rightly I think, that while there is a place for that, the tradition of using the mind as a tool in knowing God is much deeper than that.
In my experience, your Ave/Christendom types tend to live that trap far more often than do your ND types, who — and I am convinced that this is a sizable portion of the population — can make the arguments fine and try to live it, but also recognize what a small piece of a Catholic education that they play.
Again — sure, a higher percentage of Ave/Christendom kids are orthodox. But that I because ND has a different mission — a necessary one — and in my experience it puts out young people who are ready to be orthodox catholic leaders at a far higher rate than the other two schools do.
May 29th, 2010 | 4:03 pm
I think those are fair points, but as a recent ND grad I feel a bit defensive my alma mater. As Chris pointed out, ND attracts a different demographic of kids than most Catholic universities, and of course there are a significant number of students there just because of the academic prestige. However, there is also a very strong presence of students who take their faith very seriously, and are committed to growing in it during their college years. Masses (in the dorms and the Basilica) are absolutely packed, and confessions are offered multiple times daily and still there is always a long line. Of course there are some at ND who want “spirituality” without religion, but there are also numerous opportunities for orthodox Catholic learning, fellowship, and worship, and a substantial number of students take advantage of this.
May 29th, 2010 | 5:12 pm
As a person with experience both at a small evangelical college and at a not-so-small Catholic college, I would hesitate to say that we are dealing with the same phenomenon at both locations.
At my evangelical undergraduate college, we viewed ourselves as on a slope to liberalism and spiritualism (we saw them these two things as closely related, if not identical), and engaged in a battle to keep from sliding down that slope. And, of course, when people leave their community or times get tough, they get tired of “trying.”
But there is a type of student at my current Catholic university who is so sure of the faith, holds firmly to the tenets of Catholicism, and who sees himself or herself as leading the next generation of Catholics. They aren’t afraid of liberalism, but genuinely curious, albeit sometimes skeptical. And, I would venture to say, most of the students at this university, whether they see themselves as leaders or not, have a similar confidence, a lack of the navel-gazing that plagued the students at my previous university. While this perhaps allows them to roam about the theological terrain in a somewhat careless way, I believe it makes for a good education and a strong faith.
I’m not seeing the phenomenon you describe among young Catholics. While there may be a small minority that fits the description, I’ve actually been quite surprised about how orthodox these young Catholics are, even if they are sometimes apathetic. Perhaps you could follow up and say what it is that makes you agree with this young lady about Catholics, especially wrt Notre Dame and Georgetown. My experience indicates the opposite.
May 29th, 2010 | 6:37 pm
Thanks for the responses. My impression of Notre Dame is gathered mostly from professors and graduates I’ve talked to, who’ve all said some version of, “There are a lot of great Catholic kids but the majority aren’t very committed or interested.” It’s possible I know only the hard pessimists, of course. Some parents of students have said the same thing, in a couple heart-breaking cases bec. their children fell in with the others.
“A very strong presence” doesn’t necessarily mean a majority. However, it may still speak very well of a school in this culture that it has one, and that school may well be the best alternative for training the leaders of the next generation because it has that presence as well as the academic distinction. But as far as I can tell, those kids will still be a minority.
May 29th, 2010 | 11:31 pm
I’d encourage you to attend a Mass at a Notre Dame/Georgetown/(or my school)Boston College.
It’s not the fault of the young. The fact is that we’re given such a terrible example that most of us have no idea what it means to be Catholic unless we go out and seek it on our own. You’d think that going to a Catholic college would be enough that you could find real Catholic tradition fairly easily. You’d be very, very wrong.
Anecdotal example, when I was graduating high school the seniors did the readings at Easter Mass. I jokingly mentioned that anyone who messed up would have to go back and recite their passage from the vulgate, in latin. The priest was shocked that I knew what the vulgate even was. Sunday school certainly doesn’t mention it any longer. This is what we’ve come to.
In retrospect, my sunday school education bordered on heretical.
May 30th, 2010 | 2:33 am
Nominal evangelicals don’t stick around. There’s no point, especially when they no longer live with parents whom they followed to church every Sunday. So, the faithful minority makes up a much larger ratio of self-identified evangelicals. They are continually weeding among themselves through internal and external pressures, largely, I think, because theirs is a faith based in volition. The emphasis on faith, relationship with Christ, and moral assent requires a continuing interest among participants. When the interest fades, so does attendance and participation. Consequently, there will be fewer wishy-washy spiritual types in the mix.
A part of why Catholic Churches are heavy in tares is because the emphasis is based less on volition and more on sacramental ontology. A nominal Catholic will identify as Catholic even if they don’t believe or understand most of the teachings of the Church because, to their mind, they ‘are’ Catholic. It is ‘what’ they are, particular beliefs not withstanding. Somehow the doctrine of the indelible nature of their baptisms sticks deep in their thinking, while most else just rolls off into the gutter.
Involved Catholics – especially young, involved Catholics – are an entirely different matter. My experience, as an evangelical who went to a private evangelical university and who has since converted to Catholicism, has been that involved young Catholics are much more theologically orthodox and informed than their protestant counterparts.
Hopefully, as the swallows return to Capistrano, the atmosphere in Catholic churches will be less conducive to passive participation in the pews. Teaching, as you say, is the most important factor, however. And the burden of teaching young people from nominally Catholic families will have to reside in the priest and parish. In most parishes the pulpit could acquire an imperative tone here and there, mix in a little humanae vitae, stir in some zeal, and, just maybe, add a touch of fire and brimstone now and again.
It would challenge the ‘spiritual’ among us.
May 30th, 2010 | 9:59 am
Putting together survey results from both the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life as well as a Gallup opinion poll on belief in God, it looks like anywhere from 15% to 25% of adult Americans have a very weak relationship with organized religion. These kinds of people tend to say they believe in an “impersonal God,” a “universal spirit [but not 'God'],” or who do not affiliate with any religious denomination.
Among Catholics, 31% of Americans say they were raised as Catholic but only 24% currently identify as Catholic. So it appears there is a drop-out rate of at least 20% with Catholicism. It might be higher because the number of Catholics is being boosted by immigrants from Latin America.
Among Catholics, 39% attend mass only a few times a year or less. 32% are not official members of a local church. 29% claim to believe in an “impersonal God” as opposed to a “personal God.”
May 30th, 2010 | 11:22 am
It’s not the fault of the young.
Oh, definitely not. Or maybe I should say definitely not mostly their fault — we all make choices and surely some are less observant than they could have been because they knowingly choose things that drew them away from the Church.
My own upbringing was ambiguously religious, yet I can still remember refusing to explore something I thought might be true, not because I didn’t want to find out, but because I didn’t care enough to pursue it. I wish, now, I had. A lot of young Catholics are probably in the same ambiguous position and some of them make the same choices I did. I was brought to think about these things more seriously because I knew some real saints, especially a Baptist deacon and his son.
May 31st, 2010 | 1:24 pm
Pardon me, but I get the rather distinct impression that the mission of Notre Dame is to take faithful young Catholics and strip the faith away from them. Isn’t that, for example, what the likes of Fr. Richard McBrien, and Father Hesburgh before, and Fr. What’s His Name who is now the president have done for decades?
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