CV NEWS FEED // Having recently finished his five-year tenure as Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Boston, Catholic education expert Thomas W. Carroll has launched a new effort to address the crisis of faith among young people.
Responding to the “alarming percentages of young children walking away from their Catholic faith during their school years,” Carroll founded The Catholic Talent Project, a ministry that seeks to help “cultivate faithful Catholic witnesses” that will help lead young people to grow stronger in their faith.
According to its website, the project takes inspiration from the words of Pope Paul VI, who said: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
“I believe our Catholic schools – properly ordered – can lead the renewal of the Catholic Church,” Carroll wrote in a recent LinkedIn post regarding the new project: “But, it will require us to make sure that for starters we have witnesses to our Catholic faith throughout the almost 6,000 Catholic schools that now serve 1.6 million students.”
According to Carroll, 50% of children raised Catholic are no longer faithful by the time they turn 13. By age 18, “a staggering 86 percent have left their faith.”
“If we don’t address this crisis, the Catholic Church in America will go the way of Europe in a generation – and I don’t mean that as a compliment,” he wrote. “We cannot lose our young and think we will be able to save our Church and pass on the Catholic intellectual tradition.”
Carroll stated that the Catholic Talent Project will expand to San Francisco at the request of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. Over the next five years, it will expand further, to “a total of 10 geographically diverse dioceses.”
“We look forward to talking with any interested American bishops,” he added.
