How Young Catholics Lost Their Faith

 One of the things I remember well from my youth are the Parish Retreats.   At that time Catholics gazed in awe at the Divine Mystery of the Body of Jesus living among us.    No University modernists had been sent by bishops to tell us that the Body of Jesus was not to be adored.  It was not meant to be, they said, it was a practice from the Middle Ages, etc, etc. ad nauseam.    You did not dare to talk about the beliefs of the Early Church, after all they were 'experts'.     But back to my youth,    Because the bread being turned into the flesh of Jesus was clearly taught, many people conscience that they had not lived up to the commandments that Jesus had told us was a sign of our love for Him, did not come forward for Holy Communion.  To make them faithful again the priest would call on a religious order to conduct a retreat in his Parish.   They happened very often.   Two, in Glasgow, usually Passionist priests would attend a parish and conduct a week's retreat.

They would say Mass on Sunday then outline the Retreat Programme.    Far from being "We will discuss the Devil on Monday, Hell on Tuesday, and Damnation on Wednesday" as the enemy in our midst today would have you believe, it was mostly a programme about Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the lives of the Saints, Mary our Mother, the Sacraments, and yes, there was one night devoted to the loss of our souls and the flames of Hell.    Strangely this proved to be the most popular night, for again contrary to the 'opinion' spread today, schoolchildren were not threatened and tortured by their teachers  into fearing Hell.    The Church was a place of beauty and love which drew us to God, and as  children we thought little of Hell.   My great saint was St Therese of the Child Jesus and I even wrote a poem to her.   Confession at the Retreats was conducted again by the priests as a place of love and forgiveness, and Holy Pictures were handed to those who confessed,  which was nearly the whole Church and parish.

But times change and though before the war we lived in slummy tenements and men worked for a pittance, after the war a more prosperous time began.  We became totally focused in the things of the world and then there came the sexual revolution which destroyed so easily the morals of our young people.   I will not say they were all saints before, for we all struggled with our personal sexuality but we we knew what was right and wrong, but soon young people were laughing at such ideas as purity.   And in the Church there came false prophets in the form of bishops and clergy who told them that all the stories of sin were out of date.   So young people separated the sexual act for loving relationships, and enjoyed multi-partners which destroyed the belief in love, they then dulled their conscience to kill their unborn babies, and  the separation of love and sex led to single parenthood and poverty, and children who grew up without the love of a father, and little hope of fulfilling their own destiny.

Jesus and Mary, pray for us. 

 

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