YOU WILL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND ALL YOUR SOUL...........................

"We have done everything to bring young people to Church"   This is a sad comment from many priests as young people take their first Communion and are never seen again, or reluctant young people turn up to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.   Indeed were there no Catholic Schools the majority of the boys and girls would not be there at all.   But they still cling to the myth that they come back when the evidence is that they do not.  There were two million people going to Mass in the 1960's and the last count I read was about 5 years ago when thee were less than 800,000 and this figure contains the bonus the Church received from 2 million Catholics emigrating from Europe

"OK, OK there I go again.  Talk, talk, talk.  What solution do you have?"

The solution is there before our very eyes in the First and Greatest Commandment.  "Thou shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength"   Loving with your heart is the emotional part of our nature, we want to prove love by giving flowers, saying loving things,  doing things to show others of our love.   The reason young people abandon the Faith is because their emotional side is not satisfied in a Church that has abandoned devotional practices in favour of the intellectual side of loving with our mind and strength power.  We are intellectual and emotional creatures.

I have touched on the Blessed Sacrament before.   The devotions to the Blessed Sacrament were abandoned by the intellectuals in the seventies with no qualms whatsoever.  Get rid of the altar rails, stop people kneeling.   So we intellectually tell others that we believe in the Real Presence and they come along to our Church and see people taking the host in the most unworthy way ever.   Just put in their hands.  Then they hear the priest say that they receive nothing at all really it is in community that receiving Communion means something.   "Are you saying the host is truly God and yet you receive it like a sweet from your aunt or uncle?"    The person leaves and we wonder why are we not getting converts?   Come on we must use our intellect God does not mind.   Nor does my wife if I do not buy or Birthday presents or Christmas gifts?   I am sure.   God wants us to love Him with all our heart and soul, he wants flowers he wants us to demonstrate our love to others that they might love.   I have often spoken about the other problem the Church is responsible for - the thousands of children now feeling unloved and unwanted because of its abandonment and silence on the teachings of Christ on marriage.   To these children expecially there is a need to teach love in a heartfelt way- teach them to experience love by giving love.  Teach them prayers and novenas, teach them to look at a statue and see the person it represents..    Sorry, I asm not teaching an Adult Faith.  But of course I am teaching one that works.

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