“The Numbers” Don’t Look Good—What Should the Church Do?

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“The Numbers” Don’t Look Good—What Should the Church Do? - Community in Mission

What are we to make of “the numbers”? As the Church it is hard to ignore the large decline in attendance at Mass and reception of the sacraments, yet the Lord never seemed overly concerned with numbers; He even distrusted them. The information can help us to gauge the effectiveness of our...
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What are we to make of “the numbers”? As the Church it is hard to ignore the large decline in attendance at Mass and reception of the sacraments, yet the Lord never seemed overly concerned with numbers; He even distrusted them.

The information can help us to gauge the effectiveness of our preaching, teaching, and engagement of God’s people; it can also be a pernicious temptation to water down the gospel just to improve our numbers. The data* below showing the change over the past fifty or so years don’t paint a pretty picture:
19702018
Infant Baptisms1,089,154615,119
Adult Baptisms84,53439,660
Weddings426,309143,082
Ordinations805518
Number of Priests59,19236,580
Number of Sisters160,93144,117
% Attending Mass Weekly54.9%21.1%
Yet, America has grown in population and sometimes, I seem to hear about how much the Catholic Church has grown relatively. Well, the last stat might nail it, weekly Church attendance is way down.

A lot of stats around, sometimes, they are not that reliable. One must be careful.
 
One thing that always helps me keep perspective when looking at these numbers is to remember that the Church grew from a very small number of people, who were cowering in fear in an upper room behind closed and locked doors. In a very few short years it enveloped the entire known world!

Another thing that helps me keep perspective is to bear in mind that although the Church is declining in Western countries, it is growing rapidly in places like Africa and South Korea.

What we’re seeing in the West now isn’t so much a decline in faith, as it is a dropping off of cultural Catholics. Those who are remaining Catholic tend to be much stronger in the Faith and take Catholicism very seriously.

Just my two cents, though.
 
We should let our light so shine before men that they see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven.

We should love our enemies and do good for those who despise us.

We should clothe the naked, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, be meek and humble of heart. We should pray more, seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.
 
What were we doing before the precipitous fall? Did we take any new course of action or make any major changes just before the precipitous fall? Maybe those need re-evaluation.
 
Genesis315 said:
What were we doing before the precipitous fall? Did we take any new course of action or make any major changes just before the precipitous fall? Maybe those need re-evaluation.
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Was it church or society at large that changed?
At one time church attendance was requirement for social reasons. You had to go. With a few exceptions one does not “have” to attend or belong to any church for social reasons.
 
Given the relatively greater society support for Christianity before 1970, the Church is probably doing as good a job now as it was then, all things considered.

Vatican 2 did address the Media, but they never foresaw the extreme concentration of media in a few hands, the rapid secularism of the media, and how much the media would rule government, and Catholics, including priests and, especially, sisters. My hope is in the younger clergy and sisters, home schoolers, and those who are starting new orthodox Catholic schools.
 
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Part of the reason has to be the greatly increased exposure to other cultures in our classrooms, neighborhoods, and especially the internet. It shows ways in which other faiths are similar to Christianity and ways that are different. It allows us to dispel some of the myths about other faiths. And for some it shows more accurately those living without faith.
 
AlNg said:
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Victoria33:
weekly Church attendance is way down.
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Perhaps it would be higher if the New Mass were replaced by the Tridentine Mass where the attendance was higher?
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There’s a place for the EF, for those who prefer it, and I’m glad it is growing. But we can’t bring back President Eisenhower, and that whole way of life so friendly to all the churches and synagogues. That America is gone.

Keep in mind the clergy, religious orders, catechists, and bishops who perpetrated the doctrinal confusion and liturgical abuses of the late 60s and 70s were all trained and nurtured in the TLM. When Fr Charles Curran rallied his (quite ready) theology troops to oppose Humanae Vitae in 1968, they all could have written their dissent in Latin had they wanted to. Ike was likely in office when the Dissent Machine was in preparation.

When an apparently sturdy secure tree suddenly gets blown over by a gust of wind, trust me, the tree had been rotting underneath for a long time before we became aware of the rot.
 
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This is a hot, rant-and-rave topic for me!

Fewer baptisms means that fewer young adults - i.e. the ones with babies - are attending Mass . . . or even any church. The numbers for church attendance among millennials are abysmal. Americans Divided on the Importance of Church - Barna Group And the saying is that if the babes aren’t crying, your church is dying.

I could go on and on about the failure of churches to reach younger generations. It’s not for lack of trying, but they’re missing the target. The late Rachel Held Evans actually hit home on this point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0f788c44cf39

I have an untested hypothesis that a more reverent liturgical approach to Mass would reach young adults and teens better than the more “kumbaya” stuff that a lot of Catholics grew up with.

I am NOT here to get into a contemporary-vs-traditional or extraordinary-vs-ordinary-form battle. That reminds me too much of the Mommy Wars, in which stay-at-home moms and work-outside-the-home moms point fingers at each other and declare, “Yer doin’ it wrong!!” So long as it’s OK with the Vatican, we should attend the Mass that resonates best with us.

That said, trying too hard to repackage churches as hipster hang-outs assumes that young adults are shallow and care only about a trendy veneer when, like so many of us, they’re actually seeking a deeper connection to God.

The hipster stuff is also quite condescending. Young adults can worship with the rest of us grown-ups, thank you very much.
 
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commenter said:
When an apparently sturdy secure tree suddenly gets blown over by a gust of wind, trust me, the tree had been rotting underneath for a long time before we became aware of the rot.
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What does a rotting tree in 1968 have to do with the Holy Catholic Church?
 
There are a couple of things I think might help bring interest in discovering our Catholic Faith. One obstacle to young people has been a desire to be married in the Church but the preparation regime
required is too long - and is discouraging. Not suggesting there shouldn’t be serious discussions regarding Catholic teaching - its a burden on being able to meet the appointments. In many instances, employment interferes with lengthy scheduling. Travel required for employment etc.
Another approach is to reinvest in Catholic Schools, especially from pre-school, kindergarten, 1-8 grades. Quality teachers of Catholic/Christian Faith with salaries nearly competitive with public school salaries and benefits would be very productive. Also an early morning and after school care program for working parents would be a great asset for attracting interest in the Catholic Faith. Being involved with your child’s school is fundamentally family life!
We need to revive the activities that drew people to take part in; enjoying and working in the parish.
 
grotto said:
Another approach is to reinvest in Catholic Schools, especially from pre-school, kindergarten, 1-8 grades. Quality teachers of Catholic/Christian Faith with salaries nearly competitive with public school salaries and benefits would be very productive.
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I would need some huge assurances before I was willing to get behind this idea. I had very mixed experiences with catholic schools and found that public school was at times much less damaging to my faith than some of the parochial schools I attended. Growing up I went to 10 schools (K-12) half were Catholic and half were public. As an adult I have taught mostly in public schools, but I have taught at one catholic school and two Christian schools. As a teacher, I would not want to teach at another catholic school again and it has nothing to do with the pay or benefits.

I am not opposed to Catholic education. One truly great catholic school I attended as a child was probably one of the greatest blessings I ever had in my life. The sisters and priests made us know without a doubt that Jesus lived and died for us, and taught us to have a servants heart. We attended daily Mass and had confession once a month. We were a family and it was a beautiful experience. Another parochial school was very very similar. The other three were very good academically, there were crucifixes in each classroom, we had Mass once a month and Confession once each quarter. The attitudes were very elitist, no special needs students were admitted, and my siblings and I were the only minorities in the entire school. Snide remarks were made by the teachers during religion class (especially about large families). One school was especially damaging to the faith of many of us. I actually begged to go to public school instead of staying in that school. Public school is not necessarily harmful to a child’s faith, but a “bad” catholic school is.

I worry that by attempting to rival public school pay and benefits, schools would attract the wrong teaching candidates and become unaffordable to all but the most well off families. That is not a way to revive the faith. That is a way to make Catholic schools high achieving academic centers with very selective admission requirements.
 

Apologetics​

Apologetics to the young. Answer all objections. Use college students to probe for what to look out for. Have the Vatican fund apologetics in large sums. Age appropriate apologetics. Give easy apologetics to 5 year olds, but work your way up. Answer more aggressive assaults.

Random​

  • Latin Mass, this is a hit or miss. This is controversial. For those 1 year from going to college, it will be useful. Maybe 1 time a year.
  • Reaching teens (13 years old) before they fall away.
  • Preach about theology of the body before the secular culture does.
  • Marian Option: Pray to Mary. Marian Consecration for all High School Seniors.

Benedict Option:​

Make church a community to hang out with after mass, not a 1 day on the weekend and done event. After growing in the Greenhouse of parish community go out and New Evangelization.

Large Catholic Family​

Compare the size of the Catholic Family post war versus today. We live in a time where the secular culture has few kids, low marriage rates and so on. The Catholic Family of 3 children in a family beats more than one average secular family in addition to the ones that don’t marry. Math always wins.

Caveat 1: Again, I don’t think God wants us to treat kids as weapons to stockpile.
Caveat 2: This occurred before. Post war boom. Then weird cultural stuff happened and other things and the Church lost large sums of that generation.

Reach Men:​

A church that has more Woman than Men will result in less marriages (I would assume).

In addition to that problem, more Woman are in college than Men, and College educated people only date other college educated people out of class-ism. Thus even fewer marriages occur.

New Evangelization:​

Take up the internet, missionary work on the ground, make churches beautiful on the outside to draw others in, preach the Gospel.

 
A must have above the rest is a very qualified, faithful Catholic person as the Principal. This office is imperative that the person is above average in choosing teachers and monitoring everything!
The schools must not be so large that they cannot be managed as the very best. The tuition must allow for less income with help from other sources and much, much more operating money from Dioceses.
 
The problems had been building up for years before V2, before the Mass was changed to the OF. We just didn’t notice the gradual deterioration, because it was behind the scenes, in seminaries and religious orders.

The laity in the late 60s suddenly noticed the problem that a network of dissenters had taken over all of catechetics, half the Diocesan bureaucracies, and Theology Departments. But the takeover, the networking was gradual, over a decade before 1968.

The fact that laity only noticed the problems after V2 made some blame V2. V2 did a little good, gets over praised by some, over blamed by others.
 
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HerCrazierHalf said:
Was it church or society at large that changed?
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Both–and that’s the problem. The changes in the Church were made in light of certain circumstances that only existed for a short time. Read St. John XXIII’s opening speech to Vatican II. He explains what these circumstances are and what kind of approach would be best given those circumstances–and he was probably right. The problem is within only a few years those circumstances had radically changed–but the new approach was not abandoned. To extend his famous windows analogy, we threw open the windows when the weather looked nice, but then refused to close them again as a storm suddenly blew in and continued to rage.
 
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commenter said:
The laity in the late 60s suddenly noticed the problem that a network of dissenters had taken over all of catechetics, half the Diocesan bureaucracies, and Theology Departments.
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Were these the people who favored the New Mass and lobbied to kill the Tridentine Mass?
What should the Church do? Perhaps it might realize that it was wrong to pay attention to the “network of dissenters” and to those who wanted to throw out the Tridentine Mass. They can then turn things around by reversing what was done to the liturgy and restoring the Tridentine Mass as the standard for the Roman Church and suppressing the New Mass which was favored by the “network of dissenters” that you are talking about.
 
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I sometimes visit the EF, and I encourage its wider availability for those who want it on occasion, or all the time. It’s the Mass I grew up with.

But my usual preference is for the OF. So also for most people I know who are trying to restore doctrinal Orthodoxy and evangelize. We want the OF without abuses, but don’t consider the OF an abuse.
 
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