Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
A recent article published by CAN/EWTN News reported on two studies showing that young Catholics are leaving the Church in droves at earlier ages than ever before.
"Those that are leaving for no religion - and a pretty big component of them saying they are atheist or agnostic - it turns out that when you probe a bit more deeply and you allow them to talk in their own words, that they are bringing up things that are related to science and a need for evidence and a need for proof," said Dr. Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University . . .
In exploring why young Catholics were choosing to leave the faith, he noted "an emerging profile" of youth who say they find the faith "incompatible with what they are learning in high school or at the university level." In a perceived battle between the Catholic Church and science, the Church is losing.
And it is losing Catholics at a young age. "The interviews with youth and young adults who had left the Catholic Faith revealed that the typical age for this decision to leave was made at 13," Gray wrote. "Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 63 percent, said they stopped being Catholic between the ages of 10 and 17. Another 23 percent say they left the Faith before the age of 10."
The article goes on to quote Dr. Gray to the effect that students need to be taught evolution and the Big Bang theory in Catholic schools:
if students are taught evolution and the Big Bang theory at the same school where they learn religion, and they are taught by people with religious convictions, then "you're kind of shown that there's not conflicts between those, and you understand the Church and Church history and its relationship to science," he said.
In other words, Dr. Gray wants us to believe that if Catholics with "religious convictions" taught all of our children Big Bang theory and evolution along with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, our children would see that there is no conflict between faith and reason and they would remain Catholic. But this is absurd. The irony is that Catholic students are being taught Big Bang theory and evolution in almost all of our schools and religious education programs and have been for decades. To say that more instruction in these things will stop the unprecedented loss of faith among our youth is like Planned Parenthood arguing that sex education programs, free contraceptives, and pornography are not leading to teen pregnancies and that what is needed to prevent them is more sex education at an earlier age!
All over the world we have found that young Catholics who are taught the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and its attendant philosophical principles--and who are shown the scientific evidence that refutes molecules to man evolution and harmonizes with the "sacred history of Genesis"--those young Catholics have a firm faith on a rock-solid foundation. Indeed, our young people are not the problem. The adults in positions of authority are the problem, because not only do they not teach the truth to our children; they will not even allow others to present it to them for their consideration.
On Christmas Day, millions of Catholics who have abandoned the Faith, both young and old, will attend Holy Mass, under compulsion from parents or for various other reasons. If, with the permission of pastors, they could be given literature like the pamphlets on our website, "Your Marriage Made in Heaven," "Evolution and the Culture of Death," "The Geologic Column," and "Evolution and the Message of Fatima," it is very likely that many of them would realize that their faith in the modernist evolutionary creation myth has been misplaced and that they need to return to the Faith of their Fathers.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata,
Hugh Owen
P. S. Our best pamphlets can be found at the bottom of the Handouts page on the Kolbe website. Please allow a couple of minutes for them to load, depending on the speed of your internet connection.
P. P. S. Our DVD series will help to stop the mass exodus of youth out of the Church. If you have not made a donation to support our DVD project, please prayerfully consider going to the Kolbe home page and making one today.
