I am always heartened when I read something about youth involved in our faith. The latest was a blog post I found this morning.

As I have written here before, I feel in one way I have failed my children by not practicing my faith when I was younger, now they don’t either. This means neither do my grandchildren. I am not quite sure if this is a sin on my part but it certainly isn’t a good thing, after all we are told by God to be good stewards and to pass the Word to our children.

There are some serious problems in this country today. I’ve talked about the erosion of religious liberty, the loss of moral conscience and problems such as the disregard we have for human life, taking millions through abortion. People like me, those who didn’t practice and pass on our faith, have not helped these problems. We perpetuated the myths of the secularists, although unwittingly, such as “God loves us and wants us to feel goes so (insert sin here) isn’t a sin”, or “The Catholic Church wants to control everything you do and doesn’t want you to enjoy life”. And then there is my favorite, “You don’t need to go to confession, after all doesn’t God know everything and see everything? Why do you have to go tell a priest?”

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” in 2224 states:

The home is the natural environment for initiating a human being into solidarity and communal responsibilities. Parents should teach children to avoid the compromising and degrading influences which threaten human societies.

If we fail to teach our children to avoid these influences, are society, especially a free society like we have here in the United States could very well disappear.

In Sarah’s blog she starts with:

The culture in which young adults live now is not an easy one. We are expected to be all things to all people. We struggle to find balance in our lives. We battle the stereotypes of being called lazy, entitled and ungrateful. But most difficult of all, we are searching for something

And she is right, the culture is not an easy one. I blame myself and those of my generation for this. Many of us turned away from our faith, allowing the secularist to integrate their ways into our culture, and now we are dealing with the fall out.

In my case I have learned the error of my ways and I hope my children and grandchildren will also change and see the “light”. And this is why when I see young people involved in the faith, who certainly are more into it than I ever was at that age, it makes me feel good about life and that maybe there is hope for us yet. We can only pray it isn’t too late.