By Joe Pisani
Mark was on a roll. He had a captive audience, and he wanted to tell everyone about everything that was wrong with the Catholic Church since the Council of Jerusalem, circa 48 AD, until September 29, 2019, when his pastor said something from the pulpit that he disagreed with.
He also felt compelled to tell us in excruciating detail why he almost left the Church several dozen times and why he still just might. It was a fiery diatribe for a 22-year-old. Nevertheless, we chastened Baby Boomers listened, half in shock and half in regret since we felt somewhat responsible for the exodus of young people from the pews.
They estimate that for every person who comes into the Church about six leave, many of them Millennials. All of us have heard ad nauseam about the so-called “nones,” those burgeoning ranks of young men and women who shun organized religion because to their thinking they’ve found a better way — a more enlightened spiritual path in reiki or Eastern beliefs or atheism or “nothing in particular.” In our secular humanistic society, organized religion is increasingly blamed for the ills of the world.
Sad to say, I’ve heard this young man’s complaints many times before, sometimes from my own kids. I should also confess that Mark reminded me of myself when I was young and had countless arguments about the Church with my mother. Back then, I had several thousand reasons why I didn’t want to go to Mass — from the lady who sat in the front pew and wore large ostentatious hats to the priest who supported the Vietnam War. My mother wisely advised me to take my own inventory instead of everyone else’s, but I didn’t listen to her.
As it turned out, Mark’s complaints about the Church were pretty familiar. He didn’t like the music, the sermons, the teaching on gay marriage, priestly celibacy and the way the sex abuse scandal was handled. He also suspected that his pastor voted for Donald Trump, which meant that Mark and the priest were often on opposite sides of issues.
My feeling has always been that problems develop when you place your political views first and the teachings of your faith second, regardless of whether you’re a liberal or a conservative. Quite simply, politics is passing, but faith is forever.
My father, who found Alcoholics Anonymous at 50 and lived the last 25 years of his life sober, would often repeat a fundamental tenet of his recovery program. “You have to put principles before personalities,” he’d say. That same reasoning should apply to our faith.
If our faith rests on a person, a group of people, popularity or political views, it will never be secure. Principles should come first, not personalities — unless that personality is Christ.
There’s a long list of excuses why people leave the Church, and sometimes I get the impression that right at the top is laziness because it’s easier not to go to church than it is to go. I’ve found that people who fall into this category generally don’t appreciate the gift that our Catholic faith is.
And the best way to gain that appreciation, I’ve found, is to talk to converts to Catholicism, who are very often fervent believers. I recently read a book titled “Chosen,” which contained the personal accounts of 23 people who decided to become Catholics. They were atheists, agnostics, evangelicals, a whole ragtag slew of believers and non-believers.
Against all odds, even in the face of resistance and ostracism from their families and friends, they were attracted to the tabernacle because they came to believe that Jesus is really present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist. And do you know who was responsible for leading them to that understanding? Christ himself.
If you think your Catholic faith is nothing more than having your kids baptized, confirmed and married in the church, nothing more than 50 minutes on Sunday with an entertaining homily and a few jokes, you’re missing the point. I know because I admittedly missed the point for a long time.
What Mark didn’t understand is that all the answers to why you should be a Catholic lie in the tabernacle. And that’s the message we should be sharing with young people who are pursuing all kinds of modern half-truths instead of the one Truth, who is Christ.
(Joe Pisani is a freelance writer from Orange. He can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com.)