Sunday schooling

My earliest memories of Catholic Mass are of the organ playing "Ave Maria" and a large soprano belting out the words as if God himself were listening. All the while, the 5-year-old me in a hand-me-down corduroy suit folded Sunday bulletins into Chinese fans. \nYup, I was the bored kid in church; the one who turns around and makes weird faces at everyone as they try to pay attention to the Mass. That was me then, and, well, things pretty much haven't changed. \nMass was and still feels like the same thing every Sunday. Instead of a spiritual experience, it's more of an obligation. Apparently, many young people feel the same way.\nIn the past five years the church population has grown by 7 million to almost 68 million, but there is hardly any growth in members between the ages of 18 and 39, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. \nChurch officials are shaking in their Astrophytums (bishop hats). Teens and adults make up 40 percent of the church population but that number hasn't moved in the last five years. \nIt sounds a lot like the church is some network TV channel trying to boost its rating among the 18- to 39-year-old demographic. Maybe it should produce a hip comedy sitcom about six young friends living in New York who meet at church every Sunday and discuss their love lives, I mean sins. \nThe church needs to do something if it wants to keep the younger crowd. More and more people are losing their faith because of the lack of modernization in the Catholic Church. \nIt's the new millennium, and it's high time the church did away with some of its archaic teachings. First of all, priests must be allowed to marry. The church must learn its lesson from all the molestation cases popping up. This would also help eliminate the shortage of priests and convince more young men to enter the seminary. \nThe church's view that being gay is a sin also needs to change. The sooner the church accepts that being gay isn't a choice, the sooner younger people will see the church as progressive rather than judgmental. \nMost importantly, the church's ridiculous prohibition of artificial birth control is due for an update. This one should've been thrown out after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. \nThe church needs to do some major revamping if it doesn't want to lose its younger members, but I have a feeling not much will change. History has shown that the church is as unchanging as the new pope's melancholy facial expression. I stopped going to church on a regular basis years ago. Now I only go on holy days to please my parents and my guilty conscience. Changes must be made because prayer alone won't be enough to get young people in those pews.