Keeping Kids Catholic

By Paul Dusseault

As a young priest serving a parish, Norbertine Father Sebastian Walshe initiated monthly “ask anything” sessions. One question popped up again and again: “How, after 12 years of Catholic schools, could my child elect to no longer practice the Catholic faith?” According to Pew Research Center data, the vast majority of Americans who leave their childhood religion do so before the age of 30, and Catholicism experiences the highest rate of attrition among major religious groups in the U.S.; for every one person who joins the Catholic Church, eight people leave it.

“It’s an acute and heartbreaking problem for practicing Catholics when their young adult children leave the faith,” said Father Walshe. “But being a priest is like being a member of a thousand families, so I quickly gained a lot of experience on this subject.  There are families who managed to keep their kids in the faith, and we can learn a lot from them.”

Those lessons became Father Walshe’s 2021 book, "Always a Catholic" (Catholic Answers Press), which has helped thousands of families create households with children who retain the Catholic faith into adulthood. His presentation on the role of education in Catholic formation is scheduled for Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. in the Bonzel House at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Parish in Colorado Springs. This free event is part of the Lecture Series of Our Lady of Walsingham Academy, Colorado Springs’ first classical Catholic high school.

Father Walshe spoke to the Herald from his office at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, where he is a professor of philosophy and theology in the seminary program.

THE HERALD: When surveyed by Pew, 81% of young former Catholics who now profess no particular religious affiliation stated they believe they can be a moral person without any religious affiliation.  How should Catholic families respond to that? 

FATHER WALSHE: Many families have admirable external practices but none of the real interior dispositions that mark a flourishing Catholic family.  The family plays board games together, watches movies together, attends cookouts in the park, etc. But there’s no Family Rosary, no Holy Hour or Eucharistic Adoration, no Sunday Mass together, no proclamation of supernatural dogmas like the Blessed Trinity or the incarnation of the Eucharist. I knew the father of one such family and told him, brother, remember, you want to die a Catholic, not a virtuous pagan. 

We need to proclaim the fullness of saving truth and live a life that is genuinely sacramental, that elevates us beyond basic morality, because grace builds upon perfect nature. That’s the life to which Jesus calls us.  That’s the path to salvation. That’s the Christian religion.

College campus ministries report that 80% to 85% of Catholic freshmen stop practicing their faith regularly after leaving home.  How much influence can parents really have on this age group? 

I have observed that parents with children who remain in the faith are not the ones who say, “OK.  You’re 18.  Pick any college and we’ll help you pay for it.”  Successful Catholic families almost universally invite their children to select from among a small list of authentically Catholic colleges.  Thomas Aquinas College, Benedictine, Christendom, Ave Maria and others recommended by the Cardinal Newman Society are an excellent start. 

What most Catholic parents don’t understand is that college today is not like it was when they attended 25 or 30 years ago.  In those years, college was a place to learn and explore new things. Of course, there was some partying and a relaxing of parental constraints, but it was largely innocuous. Today the college experience typically includes a concerted intellectual effort by faculty and the culture to dismantle Christianity. It’s an unwritten campus mission to separate young people from the Judeo-Christian traditions and morality in which they were raised. A lot of parents are shocked to find their young adult children indoctrinated in ways they didn’t know anything about.  It wasn’t always so. We used to live in an ambiently Christian society, but that doesn’t exist anymore. The secular university system has turned aggressively hostile to Christianity. 

What about Catholic colleges that do not appear on the Newman list? 

Many ostensibly Catholic colleges are nothing of the sort.  There are red flags to look for.  Does the course catalogue include listings for subjects like queer theology? Does the student activities calendar include celebrations of “reproductive freedom” or “transgender identities?”  Are the majority of the faculty practicing Catholics?  Have they taken an oath to the Magisterium? Are they pledged to teach authentic Catholic doctrine?

Some well-meaning and devout Catholic families believe that as long as kids are well-formed through high school it does not matter where they go to college.  But I’ve seen years of excellent early formation completely undone.  Kids need Catholic education and a Catholic environment all the way through college. 

Can children be chased away from the faith by parents too enthusiastic or stringent in their religious practice? 

On the one hand, you have people that don’t recognize the goodness of the natural order. I know families, for example, that do not permit their children to read anything but overtly religious books. That’s counterproductive.  You don’t want to close the door to a vast horizon of goods and truths that every practicing Catholic ought to know. 

On the other hand, you have these very traditional Catholic families where dad drinks and mom is always anxious and there’s little affection shared between the parents and kids, but they’re all dressed up every Sunday for church with the boys in suits and the girls in hair ribbons. It looks perfect on the outside but it’s all fear, fear, fear with the kids being told that they are going to hell if they don’t embrace these external practices of the faith. But there’s no internal charity, no evidence of the conversion of the heart the faith is meant to foster. You can’t call that being too Catholic. I think it’s not being Catholic enough.

How has personal technology affected the challenge of raising children who remain Catholic into adulthood?

Most parents are under the impression that their kids can use a smart phone and be on the Internet for school work and socializing with their friends without much supervision. They don’t understand that bad actors are everywhere. 

The national studies put the average age of first exposure to pornography at 12 or 13.  But when I ask, the answer is more often nine years old. That’s not because young children are actively looking for bad things. They’ll be conducting themselves perfectly innocently on their phones, playing a game or something, and a pop-up banner appears advertising swimsuits.  And that link brings them to ads for lingerie.  And three clicks in, they’re seeing some very nasty stuff that they’ll never be able to un-see.  

It’s not like when we were kids when such images were only available in adult bookstores that as children we would never, never enter.  Parents should know this: the Internet fishes for children. 

What can be done about that? 

As a parent, you don’t have to buy your kids smart phones with full Internet access. Flip phones for calls and text are fine for younger kids, and even as they get older, there are minimalist phones that do all the things people need — GPS, search, shopping, social media —with a host of parental controls built in.  

I bring my flip phone into my spiritual counseling sessions.  When I recommend to parents that they only use restricted devices in their family, they say, “Oh, no. I could never do that.” I say “Baloney.  I can prove it to you.  Here’s my phone.  I conduct all sorts of business and travel all over the world. It works just fine.” It’s a minor inconvenience. I’m willing to bear this little cross for the good of all those I can help.  The Internet can bring wonderful things into our lives, but it should be seen as a hammer or wrench — a tool to use when we need it, not a ubiquitous influence on every waking moment of our day.

Regarding the challenge of helping young people stay strong in the faith, are things getting better or worse?

In some ways they’re getting better. Catholic parents now in their 30s grew up with the Internet and are more alert to its dangers with regard to their kids. And there is clearly a surge in young people exploring Catholicism as they seek meaning in their lives. I’m hopeful that will progress to an appreciation for traditional practices and a sacramental exercise of the Catholic faith.