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I read an article days ago complaining that 50% of those baptised as Catholics stop attending as young adults. I am surprised it’s not more. Looking at my experience in the UK, I can give to my readers some clues as to why.

Firstly, it is a very childish experience. The lack of solemnity and the dumbing down of the liturgy has made of the Mass an exercise for children. When the children grow up, they don’t want to be identified with that stuff anymore.

Second, it is a very child-oriented experience. You see here the anxious desire to keep the children Catholic. But if being Catholic is tailored to please children, young adults will feel put off by it. It will be dismissed as not suited to one’s degree of knowledge and learning, like a nursery is for a third grader.

Thirdly, it never teaches Catholicism. The homilies are such watered down feel-good drivel, that the same homilies could have been – bar a couple of sentences, when you’re lucky – made in an Anglican church. But their Anglicans friends don’t attend, so why would they?

Fourthly, it promotes the Church of Nice. The applauses for the mothers, and for the children, and for everybody who breathes contribute to this idea that we are all so good, we wonder why we need going to church.

Fifthly, it is ecumenical. Other sects are spoken of in a climate of nice approbation, whilst the present nod in heartfelt assent of how good not only us, but everybody else is. If we are all good, one wonders, again, what use it is to go to church.

Sixthly, it is inter religious. Every Assisi rubbish meetings will be praised to the sky. People sit in the pew, and think to themselves the inconvenience is for nothing.

Seventh, a lot of those who attend are clearly not interested. They attend exclusively so that their children can attend the local Catholic school, but it is evident from their – and their Children’s – behaviour that they really don’t care. They are simply making an act of presence, because the school requires them to attend.

Eight, and probably worst of them all: they worship at the altar of the world. Niceness is equated with being a good man. The grown children realise that in order to attend at the church of nice they don’t need to go to church. Plus, they still get a (faint) whiff of Catholic principles and tenets which, to them, are not nice at all. Their worship of niceness is very established by now. The Church – and attendance in church – will be seen as a repressive organisation, according to the same rules of niceness they have heard in church for so many years. Having to choose between an uninspiring Church which does not even know what it wants, and some ideal that lets them feel superior and very good with themselves, many young people will choose the latter.

In short: the church of Vatican II is killing herself.

How do we remedy to this? Going back to tradition, in everything. Liturgy, doctrine, prayers, punishments. How do we make damage? Happy clapping, thinking we are so good we don’t need a Church, refusing to state what is specifically Catholic with non-Catholics.

There, I think I have given some useful hint as to why we haemorrhage faithful. They have their fault, for sure; but the young faithful smell the fraud much faster than their parents.