Selling the "Catholic" Dream

Working in youth ministry, I am intimately aware of our culture, particularly youth culture. I know what the teens listen to, what they watch, what they wear, and what video games they play. They are all wonderful kids, but they are, as we all are, influenced by our culture.

Robert P. Lockwood, in his book A Guy's Guide to the Good Life: Virtues for Men says that "we're not created by culture, we create culture." He have created the culture we live in, either directly or indirectly. The media, Hollywood, and advertisers have a direct influence on our culture. Magazines, television, and advertisers tell us how we should dress, what we should eat, and how we should live our lives. You and I have had an indirect role in the creation of our culture by buying into the "American Dream" that the media is selling.

Many of us, myself included, just flow with the waves of our culture, allowing it to have an influence on our lives. What we don't realize is that we are being manipulated. We're being manipulated by advertisers to buy their products. We're being manipulated by Hollywood to watch their movies. We're being manipulated by the media to believe in their causes. We, as individuals, have lost our voices.

We have been led to believe that our culture creates us. In reality,  we create our culture. It's time we realize this.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that Catholicism is counter-cultural. It's really sad that Catholicism is counter-cultural. It shouldn't be that way. We, as Catholics, need to resist the influence of the culture that is being pushed on us by the media and advertisers. We need to live out our Catholic faith dutifully. We need to be counter-cultural until the tide turns and the principles of Catholicism become mainstream. We need to sell the "Catholic Dream" to everyone we meet through our words and our actions. For as Lockwood also points out: "The goodness we can create in the small moments of our lives can reach far beyond us in ways that we never know."