The secret to raising kids that stay Catholic

Catholic

“I did all the things,” said Carli, mom of four grown children who have stopped practicing the Catholic faith. “We went to Mass as a family.

“We sacrificed to send them to Catholic school. They went to youth group. We did everything we thought we were supposed to do. What happened?”

It’s one of the most common questions we get from callers to our radio program and clients in our pastoral counseling practice. And despite its frequency, it never gets any less heartbreaking to hear.

The Catholic Church is facing a spiritual epidemic. A recent study found that only 15 percent of children raised in Catholic homes will grow up to be faithful Catholic adults.

The conventional wisdom about raising Catholic kids doesn’t work, but until recently, no one knew what to do instead.

As a result, we’ve clung to giving the same old advice to parents (go to Mass, send them to Catholic school and youth ministry, and hope for the best).

Then, when it fails 85 percent of the time, we chalk it up to our kids’ “free will.” Of course, that’s true as far as it goes. We can’t force our children to be faithful adults. But it’s cold comfort, and parents need better answers.

Looking for better answers

To try to provide those better answers, The Peyton Institute for Domestic Church Life (an apostolate of Holy Cross Family Ministries) worked with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate to create the Future Faithful Families Project.

First, we looked at data from the Global Social Survey, a representative sample of 2,600 Americans, to identify the general characteristics of families that successfully raised faithful adult kids.

More importantly, we identified Catholic families that successfully raised all of their children to a faithful adulthood, and we interviewed both parents and faithful adult children from those families.

We found that while things like regular Mass attendance, Catholic education, youth ministry and parish involvement were important, they were seen by these families as secondary and supportive of the way they lived their faith at home.

I want to clarify the last part of the above statement because when people hear us talk about the importance of living their faith at home, they tell us that they imagine that these families are always on their knees in prayer and somehow immune from the pressures of the real world. That is not true.

While families who successfully raised all of their children to a faithful adulthood did have regular family prayer times (usually some kind of morning, mealtime, and/or bedtime prayers), that doesn’t appear to be the main factor responsible for their success.

Faith as a source of warmth

What mattered most was a family dynamic in which the family (especially the children) experienced their faith as the source of the warmth in their homes.

Children raised in these households experienced their family’s faith as something that drew them together in good times and bad.

Of course, these families faced the same stressors and conflicts that all families encounter. Still, they felt their family prayed about these problems in a way that led to better conversations and stronger relationships. Read more

  • Dr. Greg Popcak is an author and the director of www.CatholicCounselors.com.
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