Had what I thought was a decent talk last night down in Richmond, IN – a Catholic community which seems to have weathered the priest shortages quite well. The three Catholic parishes in town still exist, but share resources and two priests. Schools still exist, too, having been restructured, and, as I posted yesterday, a new high school well on its way.  Many thanks to all who hosted me and the new friends I met.

It was especially nice to run into Brandon Evans, online editor of the Indianapolis Archdiocesan newspaper, the Criterion (the link takes you to their blog) and his wife Laura, who were kind enough to make the trip over!

I always feel kind of beat up after these trips, although the 90+ miles drive back and forth to Richmond didn’t even approach the insanity of going back and forth to Cleveland or Columbus for evening talks both of which I’ve done.

An interesting subtext to the evening which has been on my tired mind in the hours since: young adult and adult children leaving/absenting themselves from Church. It seemed as if most of the people who bought copies of the Loyola Saints or Heroes book, for example, sighed, as they bought it, "It’s for my grandchildren. Their parents don’t go to church anymore, but maybe they’ll read to them…" And when buying Here. Now. .."I’ll leave it around…maybe my son will read it."

When you work in a parish, and are involved in the daily lives of parishioners, especially those stalwart daily Mass attendees, that’s the most common prayer you hear voiced – for adult children who have left the Church.

Brandon’s blog post I linked to above touches on that problem, by way of the "new" study on Catholic young adults noted by CNS last week or so.  I have to say, I think he’s right. Step out of your uber-involved, hyper-informed Catholic bubble for a moment, and look at things from the perspective of the typical shoddily-catechized young adult who steps into a typical parish on a typical Sunday.

Given their background, which usually consists of the message, "Be nice and admire Jesus" and given what they typically encounter in that Mass which is more of the same plus perhaps a more urgent, "It’s really important to be a part of Church and for faith to be important in your life…we can’t get more specific, but trust us…it’s really important…"…

And since probably the primary moral precept they absorbed along the way was, "Don’t have sex before you’re married" (for reasons that were probably never really explained), and since most of them probably have or are presently or are at least not ill-disposed to having sex before they are married, they are already predisposed to seeing themselves, in some sense, as irredeemable outsiders to this group of families and old people gathered here…

Why would they come back?

Update: I’d just like to clarify something. I didn’t say in this post that people leave because they are uncatechized. I said that if poorly-catechized folks venture back for whatever reason, and have no deep sense of the Christian faith – with that unfortunate background and with what is too often presented to them in parishes…what’s "there" inside or outside of them to open them to the deeper call of Christ? Big obstacles, that’s what I’m saying.