www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Education of Eastern Catholic children in Australia

We have not lost a generation we have in fact lost a few generations. 3 at least. We know how well the youth have been educated by their absence from church. One teenager serving in a church full of adults most of whome are retired, is often as good as it gets in our town Collin on a Sunday morning. There is much talk about doing things for the Youth. The problem goes so far back that the lost youth are now the parents of todays youth. There are hardly any adults in church under 40. We get the occasional 2 or 3 very young children. Thats it. This is reflected all across the Eparchy. Another thing is all of the eastern bishops came to this country as adults, so they have no exprience of the Catholic education system in this country. This is the country where very few catholics go to church at all the figures are about 20%. The sad reality is for many years Catholic schools did not teach the Catholic faith and the whole Church in 'the great south land of the Holy Spirit' is paying the price for this. It is up to each individual eastern church to teach their own tradition but it seems they dont have any coordination among themselves to get that right. We still have first communion and we still baptise by pouring over here. The priests will tell you they learn one way of serving in Rome and then they put all that asside when they get back here. Servers stand if they are not all in the work sacristy off to the left in the same positions to serve the Trendentine mass. We still have Latin altar candles and so it goes on. No good blaming the Catholic Education people for all that.