Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Bishop Robert Barron is one of a number of Church leaders engaged in evangelization and catechesis who has noted that the apparent conflict between “science” and religion is one of the main causes of the mass exodus of young Catholics out of the Catholic Church. An article published by CAN/EWTN News reported on two studies showing that young Catholics are leaving the Church in droves at earlier ages than ever before.
“Those that are leaving for no religion – and a pretty big component of them saying they are atheist or agnostic – it turns out that when you probe a bit more deeply and you allow them to talk in their own words, that they are bringing up things that are related to science and a need for evidence and a need for proof,” said Dr. Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. . .
In exploring why young Catholics were choosing to leave the faith, he noted “an emerging profile” of youth who say they find the faith “incompatible with what they are learning in high school or at the university level.” In a perceived battle between the Catholic Church and science, the Church is losing.
And it is losing Catholics at a young age. “The interviews with youth and young adults who had left the Catholic Faith revealed that the typical age for this decision to leave was made at 13,” Gray wrote. “Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 63 percent, said they stopped being Catholic between the ages of 10 and 17. Another 23 percent say they left the Faith before the age of 10.”
The article goes on to quote Dr. Grey to the effect that students need to be taught evolution and the Big Bang theory in Catholic schools:
if students are taught evolution and the Big Bang theory at the same school where they learn religion, and they are taught by people with religious convictions, then “you’re kind of shown that there’s not conflicts between those, and you understand the Church and Church history and its relationship to science,” he said.
In other words, the article wants us to believe that if Catholics with “religious convictions” taught all of our children Big Bang theory and evolution along with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, our children would see that there is no conflict between faith and reason and they would remain Catholic. But this is absurd. The irony is that Catholic students are being taught Big Bang theory and evolution in almost all of our schools and religious education programs and have been for decades. To say that more instruction in these things will stop the unprecedented loss of faith among our youth is like Planned Parenthood arguing that sex education programs, free contraceptives, and pornography are not leading to teen pregnancies and that what is needed to prevent them is more sex education at an earlier age!
All over the world we have found that young Catholics who are taught the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and its attendant philosophical principles--and who are shown the scientific evidence that refutes molecules to man evolution and harmonizes with the “sacred history of Genesis”—those young people have a firm faith on a rock-solid foundation. Indeed, the young people are not the problem. The adults in positions of authority are the problem, because not only do they not teach the truth to our children; they will not even allow others to present it to them for their consideration.
Eight years ago, we interviewed a number of young Catholics between the ages of 18 and 24 who had held fast to the traditional reading of Genesis. Three were home-schooled high school students and one was a university student. Eight years later, one is a professed traditional Carmelite, another is a novice with a traditional religious order, a third is a priest and fully professed member of a Cistercian monastery, and the fourth is an ardent Catholic still discerning his vocation. If you have not listened to their testimonies, I believe that you will be greatly edified by listening to them at this link.
A member of our leadership team, Ed Taraba, has written an excellent pamphlet entitled “Twenty Reasons to Reject Evolution” which can be viewed and downloaded gratis at this link on the Kolbe website. On Easter Sunday, millions of Catholics who have abandoned the Faith, both young and old, will attend Holy Mass, under compulsion from parents or for various other reasons. If they could all be given literature like Mr. Taraba’s pamphlet, it is very likely that many of them would realize that their faith in the modernist evolutionary creation myth has been misplaced and that they need to return to the Faith of their Fathers.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata, in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
P.P.S. In a previous newsletter and in various publications, we have shown the link between the abandonment of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and the acceptance of the so-called "brain death" criterion for determining human death. An important document on this subject was published a few days ago entitled Catholics United on Brain Death and Organ Donation: A Call to Action. The PDF version of the statement can be found at this link.The HTML version of the statement can be found at this link.
