Younger Catholics Lost to the Faith

by Letters Editor · March 6, 2014

RG Pitchford, Middelburg – We constantly read in your informative Southern Cross, both in letters and articles, of the aims and objects of our ever-smiling Pope Francis to revitalise the Church by bringing Roman Catholics into the 21st century and making the Vatican bureaucrats more friendly to the needs and aspirations of the laity, whom they continually ignore.

The same problems are here in South Africa. As an octogenarian, I see clearly that we have lost two generations of younger Catholics, as almost every family can confirm.

Let us ask two questions:

1. Why have large numbers of formerly practising Catholics given up the practice of this faith of their forebears for centuries?

2. Why have so many of these so-called lapsed Catholics worldwide turned to the pentecostals, the fundamentalists and, in South America, the pope’s home ground, to the Seventh Day Adventist Church?

At my age I have heard the same monotonous homilies chirped out 25 times. Many of the parables in the Gospel teachings could easily be rewritten in today’s language, and about situations which face the faithful every day. Without a doubt, the faithful could then relate to them.

Christ preached to the masses in his day in terms they could understand, and they were mainly people of the land. Today our priests must preach to the masses who understand cellphones and computers. I am sure that some of our wonderful priests could write the gospel parables in today’s terms that people could relate to.

In my younger days, educated and inspirational priests would take one or two verses from the readings, and often parishioners would leave the church strengthened spiritually and physically to face the problems of the coming week. This is exactly what our Protestant ministers do every week, otherwise they would be out of a job.

My advice is to scrap homilies based solely on the readings and let the priest be led by the Spirit to produce a homily to which the faithful can relate in today’s world.

As one non-Catholic attending a Catholic Mass said to his Catholic friend: Do you have to put up with this week after week?, to which his Catholic friend said rather shamefully and reluctantly: Yes, we do.

Today we have the messengers but, unfortunately the messengers have lost the message.