Help! My loved one is not Catholic anymore!

Venerable Fulton Sheen (source: CatholicGag)

I came across two great blog posts by a very passionate (and sometimes blunt) priest. I particularly love to hear what he has to say when it comes to lax, lukewarm Catholics or "American Catholicism." He's never afraid to say what needs to be said, even if many people find his words to be a little harsh. Sometimes the truth hurts.

These two blog posts go together: one is called, "Help! My children aren't Catholic anymore!" and the other is "Help! My kids still aren't Catholic!"

His ideas have been on my mind a lot lately. I know many people, some of my own family and close friends included, who still claim to be Catholic, but don't live it. I'm thankful that they remain in the Church, but it still hurts nonetheless to see them as Catholic by name only. On the flip side, I have also seen many people, again friends and family included, who have fallen away from the Church all together. Many of them left the Church and sought some non-denominational, "new-age," trendy, "nice" Christian church. This pains me too because they don't understand what they have left...

If I may, some quotes from the aforementioned blogs (emphasis my own):

What’s the problem? The problem is not now. The problem is back then. The problem is how we have educated a whole generation of young Catholics. We’ve driven them off with being nice. The Catholic Church over the last fifty years in the USA has become just another nice American institution. Nice like McDonald’s. Nice like Disneyland...We’ve made catechesis nice...[T]here is another aspect to the gospel which we’ve quietly forgotten. We’ve forgotten that part about, “If anyone would be my disciple he must take up his cross and follow me.” Or that part which says, “The world will hate you as it has hated me.” or “Broad is the way that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate and few there be that find it.”...So our children aren’t dumb. They grow up and they figure that if it’s all about being nice that you don’t have to go to church to be nice. You can be nice without church. You don’t have to be Catholic to be nice. You can be a nice Methodist if you want. So if they want to be nice they just go along being nice without church, and they believe that because that’s actually what we taught them even when we didn’t know that is what we were teaching them.

Because we never told them it would be difficult and that it would require discipline and that they should have some backbone and determination if they were going to make it in the spiritual life, they learned that lesson, and therefore when it did turn out to require a little bit of grit and determination and difficult things like confession and self discipline and prayer–they went scooting off because they thought it was all about being nice and praise and worship songs that made you feel good and a warm comfy sermon from Father about loving each other more. 

There is another huge contributing factors to the hemorrhage from the Catholic Church. It is indifferentism, and the indifferentism has three aspects. First is the aspect that it doesn’t really matter what church you go to...The unique claims to Catholic truth have been watered down or denied completely. So if we have been telling our kids for the last fifty years that all the other Christian denominations are pretty much the same.

Indifferentism also applies in a second way: we became indifferent to the importance of doctrine. Doctrine didn’t matter. Experience was everything. Warm, fuzzy experience. In fact, not only did doctrine not matter, but it was considered divisive...If we were taught to be indifferent about doctrine, then the logical conclusion is that doctrine doesn’t matter, and if doctrine doesn’t matter then it doesn’t really matter what you believe, and if it doesn’t really matter what you believe then you can make up your own religion and believe pretty much whatever seems right and good to you and makes you feel like a nice person. Consequently, the next generation didn’t really see any solid reason to remain Catholic.

The third aspect of indifferentism is simply being indifferent. Careless. Complacent. Worldly. Lacking in passion. Lukewarm. Boring. 

One more excellent, motivating link: "Why the world doesn't take Catholicism seriously"

Just some things to think about.