{"id":5936,"date":"2015-10-23T09:08:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T13:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=5936"},"modified":"2015-10-23T09:08:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T13:08:34","slug":"future-ex-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/family\/future-ex-catholics\/","title":{"rendered":"I look at my students and see our future ex-Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"

My post over at Aleteia<\/a> today:<\/em><\/p>\n

When it comes to teenagers, you expect a certain amount of eye rolling and apathy, but put those same kids in a faith formation class for an hour and fifteen minutes at the end of a long school day and right at the dinner hour and you\u2019ll see a level of teenage disinterest that could make you wither on the spot. That\u2019s what my husband and I faced when we stood before the 21 high school sophomores we teach at our upstate New York parish.<\/p>\n

The scene was nothing new and nothing unexpected. We taught most of the same kids last year since they\u2019re in a two-year program that will culminate in confirmation this spring. However, I\u2019m willing to wager that their apathy isn\u2019t necessarily related to a surge of teenage surliness but rather to a lack of foundational catechesis, and I say that while having taught many of these kids in fourth and fifth grade. I have used every trick in the book\u2014from group activities to stump-the-teacher sessions to outright bribery through baked ziti and brownies\u2014to get these kids to hear me when I talk about the Mass, about the Gospel, about our beautiful Catholic teachings and traditions. Yet every year, when they reluctantly return to class, I find I\u2019m grateful if even half of them remember the Our Father.<\/p>\n

When I look out at these kids\u2014regardless of age, regardless of whether they\u2019ve gone to Catholic or public elementary school\u2014I assume I am seeing 75 percent as future ex-Catholics.<\/p>\n

Read more HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My post over at Aleteia today: When it comes to teenagers, you expect a certain amount of eye rolling and apathy, but put those same kids in a faith formation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81,30],"tags":[4,88,149,493,514,329,530,531],"class_list":["post-5936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-family","tag-children","tag-church","tag-community","tag-faith-formation","tag-future","tag-parish","tag-teaching","tag-teens"],"yoast_head":"\nfuture ex-Catholics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you went to Mass at your church for the first time, do you think you'd ever return? 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