Letter sent in from a Reader: […] It seems [that a certain] Newman Club membership is now down to ZERO. [Someone asked me whether I] had any ideas on how to revive it.
What I basically told them was:
- They are stuck in the 1960s and not ministering to this generation of students.
- They have reduced campus ministry to a social justice club, drained of all spirituality.
- They conduct the ministry as if they were embarrassed of religion and wanted to avoid bringing it up.
- That if you peddle only social activism drained of the Holy Spirit, the re-emergent socialist and communist groups now leafleting the students are gonna eat your lunch.
I told them that this kind of embarrassed Catholicism does not attract young people today. (If you believe a really great essay written decades ago by Tom Wolfe, it wasn't attracting kids in the '60s either. They were flocking to Bible-thumping, Hare Krishna chanting sects that offered them theology, rules and discipline.) I also told the club's faculty advisor how disturbed I was last year when he told me (I quote), “Students join campus ministry activities for the same reason they join any activity. They want [impurity]!”
This was meant as an explanation as to why it is nearly impossible to get students involved.
I guess I really slammed it to them. Maybe I should have been more diplomatic, maybe not. One indication of the size of their problem is that at a college full of Catholics, the 1960s-style guitar masses they hold on holy days pack the room but contain literally no students and almost no one under 45.
My Reply:
Gentle Reader, in Christ,
Diplomacy here would only serve for the damnation of souls: you did the right thing. At the end of time, you may only regret you weren't stronger. How many souls are lost because of political correctness? I think your answer is right on, and it’s far more eloquently put, and with more clever perception, than any answer I could have given. Bravo.
[…] There's a further problem: the youth come to college already messed up theologically, morally and spiritually from priests who abuse the liturgy, pathetic homilies, ridiculous catechism, liberal-green-communist “parish youth groups,” and so on. We need to offer something better to our youth, they deserve better.
But you're right: everyone is searching for the same thing, the real God, the Holy Trinity, and the one Church he gave us. Honest souls will keep on going until they get the real thing, and if the Newman Club is not about God or the Catholic Church, and those things IN TRUTH, then they will die. It's the hard logic of life. A branch not united to the vine cannot bear fruit (Jn 15:4).
Yet those in charge of such programs, like many others today who lead apostolic works of the Church, don't see the obvious. Perhaps some who should see don't due to their pride, for they'd have to admit their mistakes, repent, and repair the damage which they have perpetrated and to which they have dedicated their lives. Given the nature of human character, it is more likely they will remain hard of heart and strive to justify themselves by taking whatever action they can against brothers in the faith like you and me.
Note: I have updated the link to Fr. Paul's website so it should be working now if you had previous problems getting there.
Now go browse his website - if you can handle a dose of truth!