Redefining Revival | A Call to Build Parallel Infrastructure
What it REALLY means to live in an Apostolic Age.
If you care about your faith and are working to change the trends, you need to reorient how you’re approaching it.
Here’s what Catholics mostly seem to think. Other faiths have their version of this too:
We need to catechize harder!
We need discipleship!
We need better content!
We need better marketing!
We need better homilies!
All of this is true, but it misses something very fundamental.
People are leaving because the infrastructure their entire lives are built on hates us.
That may sound extreme to some, but only if you’re not looking around. I will not elaborate; either you’re awake at this point, or your head’s in the sand.
This is a very big deal for us because traditional faith is not a set of beliefs. Being Catholic, LDS, etc is not a hobby. The extent to which you are (insert your faith here) has a lot more to do with what your life is organized around than it is about what doctrines you asent to at any given time.
Given that, we’ll look at how ordinary people spend their time, and you’ll see what we’re truly up against. We’ll start with teens and move on to parents, then sum this thing up with the takeaways.
High School Students
Negative Inputs
In school - 6 hours
Sports - 5 hours on average, 20 if talented
Social Media - Average 3 hours per day
Positive Inputs
Average time with parents - 80 minutes
Average time at Church? Lol
Average time with peers intentionally talking about faith? Yeah…
Average time with a wise values-aligned mentor? What’s a mentor?
Average time spent praying? Don’t ask.
I don’t think any honest parent thinks public schools, extracurriculars, sports, ticktock, and movies teach kids how to be great, virtuous, healthy adults. But what are they going to do, quit their job and homeschool? They can’t afford that.
Now let’s look at the parents who could go one way or another over the next few years.
“Mostly” Religious Parents
The average amount of time at working: Both parents are working very hard
That leaves probably 40 hours of housework and driving to do.
Average time with values-aligned friends? They going to sports games and work events.
Average time doing spiritual direction? Who has time for that? Who’s HEARD of that?
Average time in prayer? 10 minutes a day, now thanks to Hallow?
I’ll tell you what they aren’t doing. Sleeping.
And what’s the culture like at work?
Well, here’s Target’s “Live, Laugh Lesbian” shirt that they partnered with a satanist clothing brand on. Also, corporate spent 8 billion on DEI training in 2022.
At what point do parents just throw in the towel in the fight against mass culture too?
It’s hard right now
Families are drowning and doing whatever they can to get by.
The state says “We’ll keep your kids in school for 8 hours a day at LEAST, for FREE.”
Most parents are going to say, “Take them.”
The culture says “They have to be socialized and check these credential boxes to have a great career.” Most parents shrug their shoulders and say… “Sure. We’ll keep our eye on it…whatever gives them the best chance!”
And here we are saying: “Here are some educational resources on prayer; I’m sure you’ll love them.”
As a Catholic, I can say very firmly that we don’t have product market fit right now. We’re not even close. Other faiths may have different issues, but the data says we’re all in the same boat.
We won’t see this turned around until we have invested and scaled things like:
Values-aligned schools
Values-aligned businesses
Values-aligned childcare
Values-aligned gyms
Values-aligned sports teams
Values-aligned investment firms
Values-aligned co-working spaces
ETC.
Until we do this, no amount of better homilies, apologetics, discipleship, apps, or anything will dent the numbers.
I’m not saying we should NOT be building prayer apps and bible studies. We need those, too. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think these things will have a wide-ranging cultural impact on the numbers.
I increasingly hear from young people from various Christian backgrounds that their parent's church simply doesn't have relevance in their lives. You spell out well why that's the case.
I agree that parents need to first build lives independent of these institutions and then they'll have a chance to bring the kids along with them.
Marcellino, what follows could be a column of itself. I'll be as brief as I can. One can't argue with what you have described. I wish to point out the following:
1) The 2nd Vatican Council (1965) listed M&F life as its "first problem of special urgency" (Gaudium et spes, 47); and, that parents role in "the transmission of faith is so essential that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it" (Educationis gravmissimus, 3)
2) Pope John Paul II (1981) echoed the urgency, and directed the Church's leaders (i.e. bishops and pastors) to “follow the family, accompanying it step by step in the different stages of its formation and development (Familiaris consortio, 65).”
3) In the same Exhortation, he defined the ecclesial mission of M&F life in 4 tasks (FC 17 ff), which is an
excellent, concrete description how the OTHER Vocation and Sacrament at the Service of Communion (CCC 1534) can be lived out. But engaged couples and young parents need to be taught this with an engaging methodology - during marriage preparation and infant baptism preparation, and the next 3 sacraments, as per FC 65.
The opportunity to renew, restore, and equip couples and parents as pastors of the domestic church is hiding in plain sight. Ever since the Council, for the most part, the Church has colluded with lukewarm faith by permitting couples and parents to drop out of their own faith formation and drop off their children at “CCD” (or Catholic schools) for someone else to teach and form them in the faith. The Church has tried to do FOR the family, what it should do WITH the family. It cannot adquately compensate for its own rescuing of parents from their baptism promises.
So while I cannot argue with your article, I can assert that the core problem is that the foundation is cracked. And instead of trying harder, as JP deGance points out in his chasing smoke vs the fire analogy (focusing on youth rather than the family), we need to work differently, more foundational, something more organic. I believe Pope Francis' Catechumenal Pathways for Married Life may provide the best path, but the resistance will likely be greater than it was to the RCIA.
As the cynical 7 Last Words of the Church states: We've never done it that way before. St. John Paul presciently saw the crisis we are in. Our leaders have failed to respond. Meanwhile our youth and adults spend more hours on screens in one day than they spend in a week in catechesis and/or Sunday mass. Forty years later, deGance is concerned that this is our last chance. I hope he's wrong.