Acton Power Blog | August 1, 2007
The boy crisis is not a myth. David Von Drehle’s article, “The Myth About Boys,” in this week’s Time Magazine argues that the boy crisis of the 1990s has leveled off and is now improving. Not exactly. This assessment, however, is completely dependent on one’s moral framework. Boys are still in crisis, regardless of what feminists and other women, like some published in the Washington Post, are saying. It’s a crisis of morality. The ongoing crisis will have dire consequences because the market produces whatever men want, good or bad. Immoral men, immoral market. It’s that simple. The real issue is “what kind of men are we forming,” not “what bad things aren’t men doing.” Tragically, 90 percent of boys raised in the church will abandon it by the time they turn 20-years-old, so there is much work to be done.
“Statistics collected over two decades,” says Von Drehle, “show an alarming decline in the performance of America’s boys–in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex.”
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What church is this referring to? If it means “The Christian Faith,” then, according to that statistic, no more than 10 percent of adult men in this country are Christian, and I don’t think demographic data show that to be true. Is it a meaningless sentence, or can someone clarify it?
By my parish the 90% figure is way high, thank God. We have many fine young men and women who are dedicated and active. That being said, young people leave because they are not mentored into the Church, they are not given a reason to stay or an adult place. Many Christians, just as the society around us, have bought into the idea of a “youth culture” and all the associated garbage that goes with it. We fail to parent our children allowing schools to do it instead. Why? So we can have a career, etc., etc. We do not make the Church a priority in our lives, so why should our children? One thing children are very good at is recognizing nominalism and hypocrisy. Finally, after effectively ignoring them as far as the Church is concerned, we “send them away to college” where they have even less support. In short the vast majority of our actions, individually and collectively are saying to our children that the world is more important and attractive than the Church and the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead of assisting our children with discovering and entering their vocation (not limited to the priesthood BTW) we often allow them to drift away.
My limited experience with the Orthodox Church is that is tends to be more attractive to men. Often men proceed their wives into the Church or instigate the move.
I’d be interested in knowing the foundation for the 90% figure as well, it sounds pretty alarmist.