This is surely an unusual subject for today’s conference, "How To Keep Your Children Catholic." The subject may be unusual but it is desperately important. I would like to briefly address myself to three questions, expressed in three words, Why? What? and How?

Why?

I don't think anyone here has any doubt about why we should speak about keeping our children Catholic. The widespread loss of young Catholics to the true faith is unparalleled in Christian history. Millions of teenagers and those in their early twenties are leaving the Catholic Church in one so-called developed country after another. I will never forget the dinner I had with a Catholic father and mother who sadly told me that their seventh child had just left the Church. All seven had been given a nominally Catholic education, at great sacrifice to their parents.

The experience in the United States has been duplicated in Europe. Young people in England, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy are leaving the Church of their Catholic heritage in droves.

What?

What is the cause of this tragic phenomenon? To begin with, let me say that no one loses the Catholic faith. It is the Church's infallible teaching that a person who has been ...

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