A NAVAL CHAPLAIN LOOKS INTO THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT TRAGEDY OF LEAKAGE FROM THE CHURCH

Boys Lapse from an Unknown Faith
By Fr. FREDERICK HEMUS, R.N.
RECENTLY there have appeared in the Catholic Press many letters on the immense problem of the leakage of our youth from the Faith, on its extent, and the remedies to be adopted. Although all are agreed that the problem is a real one, and that great numbers of our young people do cease to practise their religion shortly after leaving school, nobody seems to know precisely what proportions remain faithful and the proportions of those who fall away.
As a small contribution to the study of the problem, I have assembled seine statistics, and though the number of cases considered has necessarily been limited and cannot therefore serve as the basis of a complete statistical analysis, the findings do serve to emphasise the importance of home and school influences. They show also that defection from the Faith begins at an earlier age than is commonly supposed.
Background
IAM the chaplain of an establishment for the training of new entries for the Royal Navy. We receive annually about 1,500 boys between the ages of 151. and 16, and train them for approximately one year before they arc sent to sea.
About I I per cent. of these boys are nominally Catholics. For the past 11 months it has been my practice to ask these boys on entry to write down the following particulars on their joining cards:
1. Whether both parents or only one of them is a Catholic.
2. Whether they haVe been to a Catholic or non Catholic school.
3. How long it is since their last Confession and Communion. It was my intention to continue the practice for as long as possible, but now that I have received a posting overseas I must be content with the result of questioning only 145 boys.
It would have been interesting to include other factors in the questionnaire-for example, the part of the country from which they come, the extent to which their parents go to Mass, the size of the family, the social standing of the family-but to assess accurately the result of these factors would have needed a vast number of observations.
Suffice it to say that these boys come mostly from the workingclass section of the population, that they are drawn from all parts of the country, and that I have included the handful of boys from Eire, though not Maltese boys, of whom we have a number.
Some 10 per cent. only of these boys come from grammar schools; the rest from secondary modern schools.
Early drift
THERE are many fine lads among them, and many come from splendid homes, as I can guess from the letters 1 receive from their parents.
There is, perhaps, a higher proportion of boys from broken homes than is general throughout the country, for such boys tend to enter the Services. Boys from Catholic institutions I have regarded as having Catholic parents.
I have made what I think is a fair assumption. It is that if a boy of this age, while still under the influence of his parents, has omitted to fulfil his Easter Duties before entering a new life in the Navy, he is most likely, if not certain, to become a lapsed Catholic. It is appalling to find how many of these youths, within a year of leaving school, have started to drift from their Faith.
In the following table I have analysed the results of questioning these 145 boys. What conclusions can he drawn from these figures will be seen later.
of mixed marriages the proportion rises to 45 per cent. (32/ 70).
4. That of boys coming from Catholic schools, 19.6 per cent. (22/112) have not been to Easter Communion.
5. That of boys from nonCatholic schools, 79 per cent. have failed (26/33).
Mixed marriages
WITH results like these it is easy to understand the abhorrence of the Hierarchy for mixed marriages and their insistence on the importance of Catholic education.
These figures can be used to show the relative importance of
these two factors, although, of course, we have no means of knowing the degree of Catholicity in the homes concerned, nor tilt efficiency of the schools, nor the length of time that the boy was a pupil.
We therefore now divide the boys into four categories and show the percentage in each category of those who have not made their Easter Duties:
1. Boys with both parents Catholics and who have also been to Catholic schools, 14 per cent. (8/57).
2. Boys born of a mixed marriage but who have been to Catholic schools, 42 per cent. (14/33).
, 3. Boys with both parents Catholics but from non-Catholic schools, 80 per cent. (8/10).
4. Boys born of mixed marriages and from non-Catholic schools, 78 per cent. (18/23).
It is obvious from (3) that the parents sending their boys to nonCatholic schools must be themselves non-practising or lukewarm members of the Faith, for the home influence seems to count for very little in the absence of the Catholic school.
It is obvious, too, that (4) is a completely misleading figure. In my estimation, 90 per cent. would be a closer estimate of the proportion of boys in this category who fall away.
None of these boys had any intellectual difficulties with regard to the Faith (perhaps at their age it is hardly to be expected), a few professed resentment at having been made to go to church as children, but all with encouragement and the example of the good ones came voluntarily back to their duties, though in some cases considerable instruction was necessary.
Nevertheless, they need continual exhortation and encouragement to frequent the sacraments even while they are here, and many slip back during leave to their old habits of missing Sunday Mass.
I fear that when they go to sea (far from home and priest, and there are only 15 Catholic chaplains in the Royal Navy) many will join the great number of ratings who are Catholics in name only.
Nevertheless, it is true that many have come back to their Faith, to which they certainly would have been lost if they had not joined the Navy. Ignorance
IT is obvious that the combination of Catholic home and Catholic school is the great safeguard of our youth, yet even among those who have a sound background there is a great leakage. Why should they, at 16 years of age, need continual supervision if they are to continue in the way in which they have been brought up?
One reason is their appalling ignorance of their religion, and it is appalling even in those from Catholic schools. Sometimes they know quite a lot of Catechism but practically nothing about the meaning of Grace, or the Mystical
Body, or the relation between our service of God and our daily lives.
They know nothing of the history of their Faith, its origins, purpose and teaching. The Faith for them is a collection of ill-understood duties and prohibitions.
There is only rarely among these boys any sort of movement of love of God. They have no idea as to why they should believe, for they have been taught no apologetics or have forgotten what they have been taught.
Holy Communion for most of them is a dull duty and not a joy. Many, when they arrive, sit passive at Mass and do not know when to stand or kneel. Alas, too, since Holy Mass here is a compulsory parade, many are tempted to regard it merely as another routine obligation, to be dodged like all other obligations, if it can be done. Thank God, not all, by any means, are like this, but no chaplain in the few half-hours at his disposal can compensate for 10 years of defective instruction.
Religion remote
BUT the greatest reason for their falling away is that religion seems remote from their daily lives. They live in a nonCatholic (dare one say, almost a pagan?) milieu. • Religion is not a part of their daily lives. It is not talked of except sometimes in criticism. The heroes in their novels and comics seem to get on well without it. It rarely features in any helpful way in the stories they watch on the screen. It becomes regarded as an idiosyncracy, the enthusiasm of a few well-intentioned faddists who are as justified in their hobby as the stamp collector, but who, like him, have no right to force it upon other people.
And so we come back to what has been said so often. The only real preventatives of the dreadful wastage are strong Catholic homes, where there is example as well as precept; Catholic schools where the spirit of the Faith is taught as well as the words of the Catechism, and the continuance after school, as far as is possible. of a Catholic milieu, through clubs, guilds and societies.
There is nothing original in all this, but I can only hope that the facts I have given may awaken some parents and teachers to a new sense of urgency of the problem, and that through their efforts a few of those who would have drifted may be saved for Our Lord.