CHARLOTTE — Where do our young people currently stand in their faith life?
That was the underlying premise of the Diocese of Charlotte’s Youth Ministry survey of youth who are active in their parish or Catholic school. Results of the extensive survey of 670 teenagers, conducted by principal researcher Dr. Charlotte McCorquodale, were released earlier this month by Youth Ministry Director Paul Kotlowski. It is the first youth survey by the diocese since 2012.
The survey included only youth who already participate in parish life or attend Catholic school, but Kotlowski noted the survey results demonstrated that “involvement in parish youth ministry has a positive impact on youth and their attitudes toward their faith and the Church.”
“These survey results are an excellent selling point for getting and keeping teens involved in parish youth ministry,” he said. “Used correctly, these results can serve as a worthwhile diagnostic tool for parishes, as it can assist in the determination of direction and emphasis in programming and program development.”
Some of the results which Kotlowski highlighted:
- Most of those surveyed said they enjoyed the youth ministry program offered at their parish, with 86 percent calling their experience of religious education either good (49 percent) or excellent (47 percent).
- There was an increase from 26.5 percent to 31 percent of youth who said they have considered a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, over the 2012 survey.
- 66 percent of Catholic school respondents, 66.5 percent of public school respondents, 56.9 percent of home school respondents and 55.6 percent of private school respondents claimed to have a personal relationship with Jesus.
Kotlowski also noted that questions about Catholic teaching showed mixed results:
- While 94 percent of respondents agreed with Catholic teaching that Jesus in truly present in the Eucharist, 39 percent also thought that all religions are equal.
-When asked if God has determined right and wrong, 84 percent agreed. But when asked if right or wrong are a matter of personal opinion, approximately 26 percent of white respondents and 51 percent of Hispanic respondents agreed with the statement.
- 67 percent of respondents agreed with Church teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman, about the same percentage reported in the 2012 survey.
Michael Becker, youth minister at Sacred Heart Church in Salisbury, worked with Kotlowski on designing the survey and evaluating the results.
“In several of the answers you can see how our culture is attacking the moral compass of even our best and most engaged youth,” Becker noted.
He pointed to 20 percent of youth disagreeing that marriage can only be between one man and one woman; 39 percent stating that all belief systems and religions are equal; and 33 percent falling into relativism by agreeing that right and wrong are a matter of opinion.
“This shows that we have a lot of work to do teaching our teens about morality, especially the tough topics. We need to reach out to our youth in a charitable manner and help them to understand the morality of the Church and the teachings of Christ,” Becker said.
Michael Quinn, youth minister at St. James Church in Concord, had 29 youth respond to the survey.
“This survey has given us a better sense of what our youth see as important,” Quinn said. “As a diocese we seem to be supporting and speaking to those needs well. It also helped us identify some ways that we were not as aware of a need in our youth.”
Quinn thought the survey “left us with more precise questions that we need to seek answers to from our youth in order to continue developing our ministries for them.”
Sarah Rose, youth minister at St. Aloysius Church in Hickory, said, “What encourages me most is that, for those who responded, the Mass continues to be central in their faith. I was also encouraged by the additional ‘faith practices’ responses which, again, would be pretty strong given that this was such a small population of active youth.”
Rose said she has made a concerted effort at her parish to engage youth from both the white and Hispanic communities. The youth even helped rename their youth ministry “Infractum,” is Latin for “unbroken.”
“How perfect that our teens chose a name in the universal language of the Church that identified us as a group that was unseparated and unbroken,” she said.
She added, “Imagine if our faith didn’t end on Sunday, but that we went out – with Christ fresh on our tongues – and spread the fire of the Holy Spirit to bring people to the Church. Now there lies the model for Catholic youth ministry.”
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter