Why our children must not be allowed to fall away

Beautiful post by Fr. Chori Seraiah over at The Anglo-Catholic:

It is estimated that, among Protestant congregations, 87% of children leave the Christian faith entirely by the time they are eighteen years old. Some do come back, as I understand, but no one should have to "come back" if they can be kept in the first place. Is the Catholic (or Anglican Catholic) situation any better? Many people that I talk to do not want to discuss this disturbing reality. I am not writing to step on anyone's toes but this is an issue that is dear to my heart (and especially to my own family) and it cannot be ignored.

I, myself, did not actually "fall away" from the Church, it was more like a kidnapping. I never received a Catholic formation as a child, and when my family slowly and quietly faded out of the Church they took me with them. No fanfare, no flashing lights, they just decided not to go anymore. To my knowledge, no priest (there were about four of them at our parish) or nun (I vaguely recall that there were about three or four) ever visited to find out what had happened to us, or why we weren't showing up any more. We just slipped through the cracks and no one even noticed. My relatives wandered off into some kind of new age mysticism and I got left to "decide for myself" (with no regard for Proverbs 29:15). There are many people with similar stories.

When I got to my teens and started thinking about my faith, I would say to people that I "used to be Catholic" and they would usually try to get me to accept their faith. Eventually, I accepted an invitation to a Protestant congregation and spent the next twenty-five years trying to find my way back to Mother Church. Yet, I have met many "used-to-be-Catholics" who say that they left in their late teens and early twenties, and this was done very consciously and intentionally. Frequently this happens in college (which happens to be one of the best places to lose your faith [as well as your self-respect] in America), because most colleges are not only brothels, but they are also pits of philosophical perversion (and that includes some of the Catholic colleges as well). Yet, the seeds of this "falling away" are planted long before that.

Please read the whole thing.

For those parents looking for ways to prevent their university-bound children from losing their faith, Augustine College's one-year program here in Ottawa, run by devout Christians of various persuasions who also have a record of excellent scholarship---has a great record in equipping students with the arguments they need to keep their Christian faith intact when they hit the insanity of modern academia.