According to media surveys and global happiness reports, Generation Z is a very, very disillusioned and lonely cohort. Apparently, those born in 1997 and after have none of that Millennial optimism that got soundly dashed in 2008. Our millennial friends’ struggles taught us not to get our hopes up, apparently, about anything.
You say you wished you had been born in the 1970s and thus would have avoided modern media as you were growing up. I grew up in the 1950s which, as you can imagine, was a totally different world. There were the age-old sins that have always been with us, mentioned in the Ten Commandments, but modern transgressions had not yet arrived. My children grew up in the 1970s, 80s and 90s - and also avoided screens and the internet, which did not become widespread until 1997 or thereabouts. But my grandchildren, in their 20s and younger, are in the middle of this maelstrom. Jobs, careers, marriage, relationships, even buying a house (I live in the UK) are all much more fraught and complicated than in the past. Without the Christian faith I think life would be impossible to negotiate today. And it goes without saying that most young people, in the UK at least, live outside the Christian faith. No wonder depression and mental illness is on the rise among the young, so we are told.
I feel terrible about what has happened to the UK with regards to faith. Books could be written about the complete minimization of the faith there and how atheism now seems to be the norm and the polite thing to believe. That's my perspective of the UK at least from the outside looking in.
Well, the UK is a post-Christian culture and society, that is for sure. The US, being a vast and complex country is different: the woke elites on the East Coast, Southern states Bible Belt Christians and so on. But 'religion' is not viewed askance in the US.
However, on my first and so far only trip to the US in September 2022, staying in North Dakota with a small Catholic community of single and married people, I discovered a thought-provoking book written by the President of the University of Mary in North Dakota, Mgr James Shea. It is called From Christendom to Apostolic Mission and essentially it reminds us that the Holy Spirit is always at work in the Church, but that His modus operandi is different in a post-Christian society from its older form and structure ('Christendom').
I am now reading its sequel, The Religion of the Day - which argues that as we are all spiritual beings we will all worship something: if not the true God, then idols of one kind or another. A Christian apostolate must understand these different forms of false worship - in order to be able to defeat them.
So to conclude: do not feel terrible about us over here. Pray that we believing Catholic Christians will listen to the Holy Spirit and use the tools He gives us for conversion of others within our society. If you have not come across these two books they are very suited to the US also, as Mgr Shea is writing from an American perspective and drawing conclusions from his own culture and country.
You say you wished you had been born in the 1970s and thus would have avoided modern media as you were growing up. I grew up in the 1950s which, as you can imagine, was a totally different world. There were the age-old sins that have always been with us, mentioned in the Ten Commandments, but modern transgressions had not yet arrived. My children grew up in the 1970s, 80s and 90s - and also avoided screens and the internet, which did not become widespread until 1997 or thereabouts. But my grandchildren, in their 20s and younger, are in the middle of this maelstrom. Jobs, careers, marriage, relationships, even buying a house (I live in the UK) are all much more fraught and complicated than in the past. Without the Christian faith I think life would be impossible to negotiate today. And it goes without saying that most young people, in the UK at least, live outside the Christian faith. No wonder depression and mental illness is on the rise among the young, so we are told.
I feel terrible about what has happened to the UK with regards to faith. Books could be written about the complete minimization of the faith there and how atheism now seems to be the norm and the polite thing to believe. That's my perspective of the UK at least from the outside looking in.
Entirely accurate, from my perspective as a Brit. It took me a decade of living in Texas to disentangle from that culture of polite atheism
Well, the UK is a post-Christian culture and society, that is for sure. The US, being a vast and complex country is different: the woke elites on the East Coast, Southern states Bible Belt Christians and so on. But 'religion' is not viewed askance in the US.
However, on my first and so far only trip to the US in September 2022, staying in North Dakota with a small Catholic community of single and married people, I discovered a thought-provoking book written by the President of the University of Mary in North Dakota, Mgr James Shea. It is called From Christendom to Apostolic Mission and essentially it reminds us that the Holy Spirit is always at work in the Church, but that His modus operandi is different in a post-Christian society from its older form and structure ('Christendom').
I am now reading its sequel, The Religion of the Day - which argues that as we are all spiritual beings we will all worship something: if not the true God, then idols of one kind or another. A Christian apostolate must understand these different forms of false worship - in order to be able to defeat them.
So to conclude: do not feel terrible about us over here. Pray that we believing Catholic Christians will listen to the Holy Spirit and use the tools He gives us for conversion of others within our society. If you have not come across these two books they are very suited to the US also, as Mgr Shea is writing from an American perspective and drawing conclusions from his own culture and country.