TWO of my sons have been reading a little book on the saints, taking a particular morbid interest in those who died gruesome deaths (a sort of religious ‘Goosebumps’).
I started thinking of the awful persecutions that many have suffered and continue to suffer around the world today for their faith.
Compare this to my generation, brought up in a politically stable country, dragged off to church as children and then dropping our bundle, so to speak. We get our kids baptised, go to Mass for the ‘biggies’ and that’s about it.
Sure, we’re all busy and Mass clashes with our kids’ soccer schedules. It’s too hard to get organised on a Sunday morning and find matching shoes for everyone and the thought of hissing at the three year-old to get off the altar or else for a whole hour is less than appealing.
When my older kids were little, I just about packed a picnic to shut them up during Mass, and then needed a dustbuster to clean up the carnage afterwards!
I know, I know, we’re all so much busier and involved in everything than our parents were and our kids do so many more extra-curricular activities.
And yet, are we missing something? Has our idea of a moral challenge become getting to Mass on time? No chance of us ever being slowly roasted over an open fire in order to denounce our faith!
I was talking to a young guy in a music shop recently and he commented that he ‘used to be a Catholic’.
I laughed and said, ‘you can run but you can’t hide’, but it’s not funny.
No one ever says they used to have black skin (well, maybe Michael Jackson) and yet shouldn’t being a Catholic be an equally integral part of us?
Why are the little old ladies running the Church? Where are all of us in our twenties, thirties, forties? Oh that’s right, we’re working, raising families, playing sport, doing lunch and generally ‘having a life’
Maybe it’s about time a few of us younger ones put our money where our mouth is, sorted out a few priorities and got involved in our faith. Why baptise our children and pass on to them an empty church?
GABRIELLE McPHERSON
Wongaling Beach, Qld
