Family Challenges

What are young people coming to?

Celestine Cullen, O.S.B., a former headmaster of an Irish Abbey school, asked that question in the July/August issue of Spirituality. He says, "Everywhere I meet worried parents whose children seem to have abandoned the faith. My first reaction is to read them the following document and ask them if it is part of a bishop's pastoral or the editorial of a Catholic weekly paper. 'The world is passing through troubled times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are immodest and unwomanly in speech, behaviour and dress' (Peter the Hermit, 1274 A.D.).

"Their relief on hearing that it was written in 1274 A.D. highlights an important reality. Our problems are in no way new or unusual."

Cullen writes: "There is a seed of goodness buried deep within your children and through the touch of the Spirit, through the formative power of grace, that seed of goodness will eventually triumph. But the process of growth in goodness is a delicate, a difficult, and a bewildering one." Taking the longer view can give parents patience, a virtue we have plenty of opportunity to exercise.

 

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