To Father Louis Floeder, challenges faced by the Catholic Church today include a trend of young people drifting away from the faith. Father Floeder, who celebrated five years of priesthood in May, now leads a book study that focuses on “Return,” by Brandon Voight, which offers ways parents can talk with their children about returning to the Church.
Father Floeder told Practicing Catholic producer Rachael McCallum on the program that airs at 9 p.m. Oct. 4 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM, “I’ve been here for a year and a half now and I think it was just time to call out the elephant in the room and say, ‘Where are all the kids?’ I know this is a problem and I hear it again and again, ‘What can we do to help our kids who have left the faith come back and experience Jesus in a beautiful way and come to love him through the Catholic Church?’”
Over the summer, Father Floeder held a six-week series on “Return” as a resource to help answer these questions. He said the book and series offered people language and tools to study their circumstances.
“Everyone’s different,” Father Floeder said. “Everyone has different reasons and different history and different parishes that they grew up in. … I think it was really big to give us a road map of where to go and then just hope for the journey.”
The book gives a whole host of reasons why young people might leave the faith, such as poor teaching, conflicting morals or something as simple as parents not practicing the faith themselves, Father Floeder said.
“As it goes through possible ways that a child may have left the practice of their faith, it gives adults reason to pause,” Father Floeder said. “The whole crux of this book is that parents have a specific relation with their kids that’s different than any other relation, and it really leans into that it’s built in trust. If we’re trying to be the best parents we can be, we have a certain level of trust and we have a certain level of regularity in our engagements with our kids that’s the building blocks for opening up conversations about the faith and bringing them back.”
Father Floeder’s advice to parents is, “If you don’t have a good relationship with your child, get one, build it right. It’s hard, and maybe you have to ask for forgiveness. Maybe you have to reach out and be the one to call them. Maybe you have to be interested in things in your child’s life that don’t even relate to faith. There’s all sorts of things that a parent can do to build trust with their kids.”
To learn more about “Return” and ways youth might return to the Church, tune into “Practicing Catholic,” which repeats at 1 p.m. Oct. 5 and 2 p.m. Oct. 6.
The program also includes a discussion with Bishop Michael Izen about the significance of pruning season and how it relates to change. Also, Andy Kirsch and Gabby Doran bring to life a musical version of St. Faustina’s diary.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the program can also be heard after it has aired at archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/practicing-catholic or choose a streaming platform at Spotify for Podcasters.
