A new study has found that an alarming number of young Catholics, some as young as 10 years old, are leaving the faith due to the prevailing trend that sees atheism as “smart” and the faith as a “fairy tale.”

CNA/EWTN News is reporting on two studies conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University which measured the rate at which children between the ages of 15 and 25, and over the age of 18, are leaving the faith.

“The interviews with youth and young adults who had left the Catholic Faith revealed that the typical age for this decision to leave was made at 13,” wrote Dr. Mark Gray, CARA senior research associate. “Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed, 63 percent, said they stopped being Catholic between the ages of 10 and 17. Another 23 percent say they left the Faith before the age of 10.”

Of those who had left the faith, “only 13 percent said they were ever likely to return to the Catholic Church,” Gray wrote. And “absent any big changes in their life,” he told CNA, they “are probably not coming back.”

So what is causing this exodus of youngsters from the faith?

“Those that are leaving for no religion – and a pretty big component of them saying they are atheist or agnostic – it turns out that when you probe a bit more deeply and you allow them to talk in their own words, that they are bringing up things that are related to science and a need for evidence and a need for proof,” Dr. Gray said.

The most common reason given for leaving the Catholic faith, by one in five respondents, was they stopped believing in God or religion. This was evidence of a “desire among some of them for proof, for evidence of what they’re learning about their religion and about God,” Gray said.

This way of thinking goes along with the trend in popular culture today to see atheism as “smart” and religion as a “fairy tale”, he explained

“It’s almost a crisis in faith. In the whole concept of faith, this is a generation that is struggling with faith in ways that we haven’t seen in previous generations.”

One of the solutions is to do a better job of addressing the history of the Church and its relationship to science, he suggested. Otherwise, students are compartmentalizing faith and education, going to Mass once a week but spending the rest of the week learning how the faith is “dumb”, he said.

By contrast, if students are taught about evolution and the Big Bang theory at the same school where they learn religion, “you’re kind of shown that there’s not conflicts between those, and you understand the Church and Church history and its relationship to science,” he said.

According to Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, who worked in youth ministry for four years, faith and science must be presented to young people as being in harmony with each other.

While science deals only with “what is observable and measurable,” Fr. Schneider said, “the world needs something non-physical as its origin, and that’s how to understand God along with science.”

Catholic students need to understand that the birthplace of science was the Christian faith. “There’s not a contradiction” between faith and science, “but it’s understanding each one in their own realms,” he said.

Father Schneider went on to cite the research of Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who found that a combination of three factors produces an 80 percent retention rate among young Catholics.

If they have a “weekly activity” like catechesis, Bible study or youth group; if they have adults at the parish who are not their parents and who they can talk to about the faith; and if they have “deep spiritual experiences,” they have a much higher likelihood of remaining Catholic, Fr. Schneider said.

Dr. Gray also pointed out the need for parents to be more aware of their children’s beliefs because many don’t even know that their children no longer believe the faith.

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com