Sunday, August 16, 2015

Evangelizing Catholic Men

We have become a woman-oriented Church. Let's reach out to men. From Church Militant:
The New Emangelization Project has documented that a key driver of the collapse of Catholicism in the United States is a serious and growing Catholic "man-crisis." One third of baptized Catholic men have left the Faith, and the majority of those who remain "Catholic" neither know nor practice the Faith and are not committed to pass the Faith along to their children. Recent research shows that large numbers of young Catholic men are leaving the Faith to become "Nones," men who have no religious affiliation. The growing losses of young Catholic men will have a devastating impact on the U.S. Catholic Church in the coming decades, as older Catholic men pass away and young men fail to remain and marry in the Church, accelerating the devastating losses that have already occurred.

While there are massive cultural forces outside of the Church (e.g., secularism, pluralism, anti-Christian bias, radical feminism, pornography, media saturation, etc.) and missteps within the Church (e.g., failure to make men a priority, sex abuse scandals, homosexuality in the priesthood, etc.) that have contributed to the Catholic "man-crisis," the New Emangelization Project has conducted dozens of interviews with top Catholic men's evangelists that suggest that a core reason for the "man-crisis" is that bishops and priests have not yet made the evangelization and catechesis of men a clear priority. Men are being ignored by the Church. (Read more.)
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1 comment:

Stephanie A. Mann said...

Cardinal Heenan of England warned that changes in the liturgy were going to drive men away. During the Second Vatican Council he stated: "At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel we would soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children." He was certainly proven right.