Declining church attendance [Akin]

[otjm]

I posted this a few months ago and it’s worth repeating here:

Here are some figures from the book “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators”. The first column is the year, 2nd is percentage of Catholics attending Mass, and 3rd is percentage of Protestants attending their services (all USA figures). The intervals are not of equal time spans because that’s not how the data is presented on the graph.

1953 75% 45%
1960 73% 44%
1966 68% 40%
1969 65% 39%
1973 60% 40%
1976 52% 40%
1979 52% 40%
1980 53% 40%
1981 53% 41%
1982 51% 41%
1983 52% 40%
1986 51% 40%
1988 50% 41%
1991 50% 45%
1995 45% 45%

The key thing to note here is that Protestant attendance was very steady through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and actually started to rise in the 90s. On the other hand, Catholic attendance dropped by an enormous percentage between the early 60s and the mid 70s, leveled off for about 15 years and then started to drop again.

In the 50s and early 60s, Catholic attendance was almost double the percentage of Protestant attendance. By 1995 Catholic attendance had dropped down to Protestant levels.

This is strong evidence to me that one cannot blame the decline on “the secular culture”, since U.S. Protestants were living in the very same culture as U.S. Catholics, but their attendance hardly dropped at all, and by 1995 was as high as it was in the 50s.

These figures make it clear that something happened in the Catholic world in the 60s and 70s that did not happen in the corresponding Protestant world. That pretty much lets out explanations like TV, kids sports, stores open on Sunday, etc.

As I have said before, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Taking the overall view of the Protestants is beyond simplistic in trying to get at what has happened. It simply ignores what actually was going on in the Protestant world, to wit: the tremendous drop off in attendance within the mainline Protestant churches, and the move of Catholics to the Evangelical and Chrsimatic wings of the Protestant world.

If the Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, and Episcopalians were losing membership - and they were during this time - then please explain how Vatican 2 did that?

And if the Mass of Paul 6th caused such a loss, thenm explain why so many Catholics (who allegedly have left because of the Mass) ended up with the Evangelicals and Charismatics?

The Protestaqnts may well have maintained a steady attendance rate, but that attendance rate does not demonstrate why the mainline churches have lost so many members; it only demonstrates that people attend some sort of service. Lumping them all together without explaining that makes the statistic say something it doesn’t.

And why would Catholics who love the Mass of 1962 join the Assembly of God (one group that is notorious for having "ex’ Catholics)?

Further, if the statistic of 1960 - 1969 is correct for Catholics, why the 8% drop before the Mass of Paul 6th was released, if the drop is due to the change in the Mass?

Sorry, but you have proved nothing.

Or rather, if the statistics are actually examined for what they really say - showing the move within the Protestant denomenations - it can be argued with more weight that the secular culture is at fault than can be argued that it was not.

Ever listen to an Evangelical? They are pretty open about their beliefs, and pretty clear about them.

And to posit that Catholics who were true believers - really deeply committed Catholics - would simply walk away from the Eucharist because of the change in the rubrics and loss of Latin, is to tell me that either they didn’t know their faith and were only attached to the form, as opposed to substance, or it is to tell me that they really didn’t know their faith - which is another way of saying the same thing. SSPX didn’t start until much later, so it wasn’t that they went there.

They simply quit? I don’t buy that.

 

[VociMike]

Sorry, but you have proved nothing.

Interesting comment. What do you think I was trying to prove? Or maybe I should ask, what did I claim I was trying to prove?

 

[stbruno]

This may sound trite, but I believe there is a link between Sunday shopping and the decline of people attending mass.

When I was a kid in the 50’s, it was unheard of…in fact, after 6pm. alot of stores were not even open…even gas stations were closed on Sunday typically, except maybe one near an expressway exit.
I even put in the search engine, if there was a discussion about Sunday shopping and piles of links turned up. In fact, as recently as a couple of years ago, many counties still do not have it.
cbc.ca/news/yourview/2006/10/nova_scotia_lifts_sunday_shopp.html
and saveoursundays.tripod.com/voiceofthepeople.html and even more. In fact one link even had this to say about Sunday shopping.

*Through the Judeo-Christian tradition, God has given us a valuable gift that has served us well over the centuries. This is the Sabbath Day of rest and worship. The Sabbath rest serves both the rural and urban societies in providing physical, mental and spiritual rest to a weary and stressed people. The fourth Commandment tells us to honour the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. *
*This balance between work and worship and rest and recreation contributes to health and wholeness in our society. Over the centuries, we have benefited greatly from the use of Sunday, the Lord’s Day, as the national Sabbath Day. Necessary services have been made available. *
*Dr. Griffeth Thomas wrote: “If there is one thing to which may be attributed the blessing of God on His church and realm throughout the past centuries, it is the national observance of the Lord’s Day.” An evangelical minister, the late Rev. David Michell, wrote concerning Sunday: “. . . our individual, social and national life and prosperity depend upon a well-kept Sabbath.” *
Now, the gods of consumerism and profit are pushing for Sunday shopping. Many would lose their day of rest. We need to support existing Sunday opening laws. After the gift of Sunday, the Sabbath rest, has served us so well, can we allow consumerism and profit to rob us of this balance so needed in our hectic day and age? from Halifax

Just a thought!

 

[otjm]

Interesting comment. What do you think I was trying to prove? Or maybe I should ask, what did I claim I was trying to prove?

Sorry if I over-spoke. This report has been used on another thread to “prove” that it was the change in the Mass. It would appear that it was someone else who was using it; it would appear I should read more closely. My bad.

I get frustrated when statistics are loosely used to prove a point, and the statistics themselves are not closely looked at. There are no simple answers to complex questions, and this is one very complex question.

I can count on one hand how many people I have met who have said they left the Church over the Mass (and I have fingers left over); and when I asked more questions - surprise of surprises - and we “peeled a few more layers off the onion” - it had nothing to do with the Mass; it had to do with moral issues. In once case it was sexual morality; in the other it was divorce and remarriage without a decree of nullity.

That doesn’t mean that some have not left over the issue; but my experience (which reaches back to well before Vatican 2) is that societal impacts along with poor catechesis are the primary sources.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Just my two cents worth:

A lot of things have been “dumbed down” in the United States over the years.

I’m 65 years old. When I was in high school (a Catholic high school), we had four years of math, three years of science, and two languages (three years each). Everyone in the school got all that.

Seems to me that extensive math, science and language is no longer required; those who want those subjects can choose them, but they are optional or elective rather than mandatory. AND, to make matters worse, students often must decide in grammar school that they want to be in the “math track” or the science “track” when they are in high school. Once out of the “math track”, it is almost impossible to get back into the math track; they will be in the “dumb track”. There is also “emphasis” placed on making math as tedious and boring as possible.

Seems to me that there is also less emphasis on learning American history and world history than 50 years ago.

I would also say that the Catholic Church in the United States no longer teaches the Catholic religion.

In fact, one of the reasons for the existence of Catholic Answers is to attempt to fill the void. In my opinion, the average Catholic in the pew used to be very knowledgable about the tenets of Catholicism. (Not everyone back then and not in every aspect; but certainly the average person 50 years ago was more knowledgeable than today’s Catholics.)

However, and to make matters worse, the forces of something … “modernism”? … decreed that “rote memorization” was bad. So, use of the Baltimore Catechism (which was published in several different levels of comprehensiveness, for students at different grade levels) has been dropped because students were required to memorize the Q&A formatted topics.

In a discussion one day at work, one of the Hindu fellows displayed tremendous knowledge of Catholicism. When asked about it, he said that in India they studied all religions. One of the Catholic fellows then said, “Catholics learn their religion by osmosis.”

So, in summary, in my opinion, attendance at Mass is down because folks don’t know what the teachings of the Catholic Church are because they haven’t been taught by the Church. American Catholics have been put into the “dumb track”.

This will be the BIG scandal of the Catholic Church: that the hierarchy of the Church today has failed in its obligation to teach.

 

[otjm]

Just my two cents worth:

A lot of things have been “dumbed down” in the United States over the years.

I’m 65 years old. When I was in high school (a Catholic high school), we had four years of math, three years of science, and two languages (three years each). Everyone in the school got all that. Seems to me that extensive math, science and language is no longer required; those who want those subjects can choose them, but they are optional or elective rather than mandatory.

Seems to me that there is also less emphasis on learning American history and world history than 50 years ago.

I would also say that the Catholic Church in the United States no longer teaches the Catholic religion.

In fact, one of the reasons for the existence of Catholic Answers is to attempt to fill the void. In my opinion, the average Catholic in the pew used to be very knowledgable about the tenets of Catholicism.

However, the forces of something … “modernism”? … decreed that “rote memorization” was bad. So, use of the Baltimore Catechism (which was published in several different levels of comprehensiveness, for students at different grade levels) has been dropped because students were required to memorize the Q&A formatted topics.

In a discussion one day at work, one of the Hindu fellows displayed tremendous knowledge of Catholicism. When asked about it, he said that in India they studied all religions. One of the Catholic fellows then said, “Catholics learn their religion by osmosis.”

So, in summary, in my opinion, attendance at Mass is down because folks don’t know what the teachings of the Catholic Church are.

I think this has a lot to do with the continuing decline in attendance; however, the start of the decline was while the Baltimore Catechism was in effect. And the people who were leaving in the 60’s weren’t the children; they were the adults, who were educated about the faith in the 50’s and 40’s.

One of the complaints about the Baltimore Catechism was that it resulted in rote answers, memorized answers, that too often had no interconnection with praxis. In short, we had a lot of information but too little interconnect with faith.

Faith is more than the Mass; it (the Mass) may be the sum and summit of the Faith, but a Catholic needs something more than just going to Mass regularly to be faithful. An agnostic can do the same thing - show up every Sunday, “just in case”.

When we got to the water cannons and the dogs in Selma and Mobile and elsewhere, and the little girls trying to go to school couldn’t go there because they were the wrong color, there was deafening silence on the part of too many of the clergy as to how this was a “faith” issue; and one could not turn to the Baltimore Catechism and get a good answer. The same applied to Viet Nam, and Kent State, and the lies we were fed.

Note, I do not question that we need to know the doctrines of the Faith; pleasse don’t mistake my comments. But there needs to be more; much more.

What happened was that those who came up empty with their background of Baltimore Catechism training threw out the baby with the bath water, and we ended up with an attempt to build faith. I say attempt, because one cannot build faith on experiences without some foundation of knowledge beneath it; otherwise you end up with a pablum of feel-good sociology with no reason or basis. Catechesis pretty much went into the toilet, and then someone flushed. It is turning around, but as one (Cardinal or Bishop, I forget who) said, we have lost two generations.

 

[Strevel]

i love going to Mass. Even the donuts are good!!

Mass is great! To many people do not understand it tho. We have the greatest thing going!! We learn cause and effect, correct behavior and the bills have been paid. We can give to assist in the payment of our Church. …very nice.

My Parish here in Las Vegas is exploding. We have to get there early just to get a seat and not have to stand in the ante-room. If your arish has falling numbers let me make a few suggestions.

I am a convert from the Mormon Church. There are practices there that we can adopt. Some of these are not from the Mormons. Have social activties like basketball for the kids, recipe exchanges, email clubs (google-groups or Yahoo-groups) have group activities that are fun. Sometimes Mass is boring due to the rote nature of it. We, as a Church, really and truly do not understand the accomplishment and excitement of the Mass. I mean, I want to jump up and go “YAHOO”…except they’d lock me up and it really would be innapropriate! hahahaha. Your Priest gets tired of looking at people not listening, fidgeting, late and dissrespectfully dressed. Be happy to be there. Share a warm hello with your clergy before Mass looking him in the eye nicely. Thank him for his vocation and his investment of time and life!

If the world looked at us and asked if they wanted to be like us, they’d probobly rather go soak their head in some foul place! hahahaha! We have great unrealized potential!! We are humans, we need socialization, hand shakes and told we are doing a great job when we are. WE also need the Eucharist, confession and personal improvement that only comes from Mass attendance. If people stop attending, people can begin attending. What can we do, right now, to make life better for ouselves and others. …how about stopping a percieved slow down in Mass attendance by…are you ready, …attending ourself and inviting others to attend with you, going to their house and picking them up, and calling them later to say thanks. Before you leave, introduce them to the Priest outside. Tell him that you invited them. This can fire up a Priest as well!

Don’t ask them “Did you enjoy it?” Share this instead… “I know you have questions. What can I answer for you”. If you are interested I will write a free ebook on this and how it is done. I love my Church! Truley I do. I will write this free ebook if you, yes, you the individual reader, will email me asking for it. I will not do it if no one cares. It will be absolutely free, no strings attatched. How about a few ways to bring a human that has wandered out of the flock into the wolves of another Church?? I can assist in as well. Use the subject “Catholic ebook”. I’ll write it and send it to you in a week or so.

The declining attendance and vocations was first pointed out to me with data and graphs back when *Vibrant Parish Life * was introduced at our parish. The timing of the decline seemed to coincide with the adoption of Vatican II reforms. It seemed simplistic to me to just blame the reforms, yet the evidence seemed to make a compelling argument. I frequently encounter the phrase, “changes in society” or “societal changes,” when people discuss this subject. Maybe these changes, whatever they are, could be a topic for further discussion of the “complex issues” alluded to by Catholic Opinion.

Here’s one - the rise of television. By 1960, many, if not most, households were tuned in. There was a television in every home. Could the rise of television watching be one thread in the complex web of issues that led to a decrease in Mass attendance/vocations?

lessended attention span…

 

[criffton]

I find it very evident that Vatican II is to blame on falling religious observance among Catholics. It also causes secularization, disrespect of the Eucharist, global warming, and the rise of halitosis in western Georgia.

Seriously, the Spirit of Vatican II is an actual issue though. What I have found seen upon entering is that the rate of religious observance among Catholics is often directly related to how “Catholic” they and their background are.

In the places where the Catholic Church is Catholic - having Adoration, Respect for Eucharist, encouraging the Rosary, observing Catholic teachings, following the Pope, etc, it is in these places there is a devout following. The mushy, meatless, Spirit of Vatican II and liberal theology is easier to follow, but isn’t the Faith. And it is the Faith that people need.

Take the diocese of Omaha, Nebraska and compare it to Los Angeles, California. It is the Catholic Omaha that is alive, not the whatever it is in Mahony-land.

 

[DB_AND_ALI]

Which country are you talking about because it certainly has not fallen everywhere. In Africa and Asia Mass attendence has not fallen. Here in the Philippines Mass attendence is estimated about 80%+.

Indeed , mass attendance is increasing in African countries…even our priest numbers are increasing ! [some are exported to Europe !] Perhaps The Vatican should come up with some seriously innovative ways of attracting the youth back to the church…one method could be the introduction of The Alpha Course at parishes. This course has been approved for use in Catholic churches and literally thousands have attended world-wide.

 

[jmcrae]

Indeed , mass attendance is increasing in African countries…even our priest numbers are increasing ! [some are exported to Europe !] Perhaps The Vatican should come up with some seriously innovative ways of attracting the youth back to the church…one method could be the introduction of The Alpha Course at parishes. This course has been approved for use in Catholic churches and literally thousands have attended world-wide.

The Alpha Course is Protestant - why would anybody want to have it in a Catholic Church?

 

[Sarabande]

I think practically everything that people have mentioned on here has contributed to the decline of church attendance. I really don’t think one can p(name removed by moderator)oint just a singular act or belief which did this.

Another factor to the decline, which I don’t think anyone brought up (if someone has, my apologies for bringing it up again) is that people of my generation (I grew up in the 80s and 90s) and subsequent younger generations seem to have this mentality that if they are not being entertained and actually have to work for their faith, it’s not worth it for them or it is boring. Part of this is brought about by the secular world. We’re so used to having everything fast. On the TV or in movies, we just have to sit there and take everything in. No major, deep thinking is involved. Shots and cuts of scenes are very quick, at various angles, etc. They are fed superficially. Many of us were also brought up on interactive video games. No major thinking again, but entertaining none-the-less. Reading normal books and novels are such a chore now-adays for many of these generations because that requires one to actually sit for a couple of hours and work.

I think this had made its way into attending mass. It’s only just a short hour - no time at all. But much of mass is focuses with the concentration on God and the Eucharist, contemplation and prayer - that means a lot of quieting of the mind to be open to hearing our Lord. Yes, we have the music, but that is only during parts of the mass and, in a way the sacred music and sacred visual art are what helps people regroup their mind to focus again once it is quiet. For those in my generation, the quieting of the mind and concentration and focus is even more work than those of older generations. It can tire them out and make them think that mass is boring. It also can be a little frightening for them to have a quiet mind. That means they are forced to really dig deep into their souls and be true to themselves - something that people of my generation and even many people of other generations feel uncomfortable doing. So, it makes sense that they would be more attracted to “loud” masses or to Evangelical services. It works “better” with how their brains react. Whether or not they are receiving truly what they need is something I cannot answer. I know for myself, having dabbled in loud masses in my late teens/early 20s prior to turning 21, it came accross to me too superficial. But others may have had a different experience, so I can’t negate that.

I’m not defending my generation, as I’m a believer in never dumbing anything down. But many people in my generation cannot help how they came to be. Something needs to be done to combat this and to help them overcome a lack of concentration and to teach them that going to mass isn’t about just sitting there, expecting to be fed with no work. How that can be achieved to contact my generation and those younger is the big question.

Anyway, that’s just one of the numerous factors I think there is a decline, based on my experience.

 

[Grace_Seeker]

I’m glad that otijm made his point about lies & statistics. If he hadn’t posted I would have had to say the same things. The statistics may say that the Protestant church has remained stable. It hasn’t. Mainline denominations are down. More conservative, fundamentalist ones are increasing. As a mainline pastor I have my own interpretation of why, and I think a big part is that often we too easily let people off the hook. We are the place that people who want to practice cheap grace Christianity come as they slip out the door never to be seen as part of any church again, but still dare to call themselves a Christian/

 

[Nino]

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some musings on the trend of falling church attendance, especially among Catholics…
In a combox discussion below about post-Vatican II liturgical changes, a reader suggested that post-Vatican II liturgical changes were responsible for a massive decline in Catholic church attendance. Of course church attendance has fallen everywhere, not just among Catholics – but another reader argued that Catholics have fallen away at much greater rates than their non-Catholic neighbors, implying that the fault must lie with changes in the Church:…

…I’m simply noting that the factors are complex, the social changes over the last few decades are complex, the issues are complex. We can’t simply conclude that if more people are falling away from the Church, the only possible explanation is limited to what the Church is doing wrong. At least in some cases, it may be what the Church is doing right.
Many disciples stopped following Jesus after his “hard sayings” in John 6, saying, “Who can accept this?” The same dynamic is at work today.

More…

 

[Nino]

…in times of extreme danger and threat church attendance always rises…we are in the midst of Americas worst threat in all its history.and church attendance is down…wonder why? Could it be that vague teachings…the color of gray has taken precedance over black and white…as one so called ‘catholic’ deacon show host on a religion on the line sunday morning radio keeps saying…'no one is all bad…everyone has some good in him!" what nonsense…sure Hitler was a painter of sorts and a vegetarian…that is a plus I guess. As a former teacher in a ‘catholic’ small C high school I always had a large sign up rate…averaging some 30 students for each class (re: 150 total) because they always knew where I stood on all issues…young folks like honesty and integrity…cute songs belong on the boob tube …NIno

 

[Matas]

I get frustrated when statistics are loosely used to prove a point, and the statistics themselves are not closely looked at. There are no simple answers to complex questions, and this is one very complex question.

Thank-you for pointing that out. So far, I believe that no posters on this thread as attempted provide THE ANSWER using statistics. THE ANSWER is like a huge elephant, and we are the blind men. Where I hope to see this thread go is that we gradually descrbe aspects of the problem, and see if we can determine the nature of the “elephant.”

• it had nothing to do with the Mass; it had to do with moral issues. In once case it was sexual morality; in the other it was divorce and remarriage without a decree of nullity.

I agree with you here. Not having to confess using contraception and not acknowledging marriage as a sacrament is a big deal. Most people, even church-going Catholics, don’t seem to accept what the Catechism teaches in regards to sex and marriage anymore. Even my old-school mother no longer believes that marriage-divorce-remarriage is wrong.

 

[Al_Masetti]

So they got rid of the Baltimore Catechism and the memorization. And they got rid of not eating meat on Friday. And they got rid of a lot of other things.

And in place of those things, they substituted … nothing.

So we got rid of the memorization and now we have … nothing.

[We did FINALLY get the new Catechism, but it is so complex that ordinary laypeople have a difficult time following it. It wasn’t really written for lay people anyway. It was written so Bishops could write locally dedicated catechisms.]

Someone made the point (that I don’t fully agree with) that the Evangelical and Pentacostal Protestant churches are filled with ex-Catholics. In one discussion with a (former) young Catholic, he was SHOCKED to learn that the words of the Mass are mostly taken from the Bible. He thought the priest made them all up. Besides in Protestant churches they can skip Sunday(s) and it’s not a sin; whereas, skipping Mass without a good reason is a mortal sin for Catholics.

I have never been able to get a priest to explain to folks assembled at Mass what the Lectionary and the Sacramentary are.

When I ask priests to explain Transsubstantiation, they say they can only preach from the pulpit; they are not allowed to teach.

I have only heard ONE priest encourage prayer to the Holy Spirit. [How can Catholics embrace natural family planning or non-contraception without involving the Holy Spirit as an intimate partner in all aspects of their lives?] [That one priest who publicly prays to the Holy Spirit is Fr. Benedict Groeschel.]

More than one cradle Catholic has told me that the Consecrated Host is symbolic. They just don’t know about the Real Presence because they have not been told. They have not been taught. It has not been explained to them.

And I could go on and on.

We used those old practices … the devotions … the Holy Name Society … abstinence from meat on Fridays … and the Baltimore Catechism as the bases of learning the faith. Not the entirety, but a base on which more education could be based.

But now, there is nothing on which to base more education.

The base is all gone.

We could have added Bible study [excuse me …study of Sacred Scripture, a term which few Catholics understand] or Church history, or the lives of the saints … to a base. But the base was abolished.

As Avery Cardinal Dulles once said, the Church has expended millions of dollars for evangelization and has nothing to show for it.

Thanks be to God for Karl Keating and Catholic Answers.

I think this has a lot to do with the continuing decline in attendance; however, the start of the decline was while the Baltimore Catechism was in effect. And the people who were leaving in the 60’s weren’t the children; they were the adults, who were educated about the faith in the 50’s and 40’s.

One of the complaints about the Baltimore Catechism was that it resulted in rote answers, memorized answers, that too often had no interconnection with praxis. In short, we had a lot of information but too little interconnect with faith.

Faith is more than the Mass; it (the Mass) may be the sum and summit of the Faith, but a Catholic needs something more than just going to Mass regularly to be faithful. An agnostic can do the same thing - show up every Sunday, “just in case”.

When we got to the water cannons and the dogs in Selma and Mobile and elsewhere, and the little girls trying to go to school couldn’t go there because they were the wrong color, there was deafening silence on the part of too many of the clergy as to how this was a “faith” issue; and one could not turn to the Baltimore Catechism and get a good answer. The same applied to Viet Nam, and Kent State, and the lies we were fed.

Note, I do not question that we need to know the doctrines of the Faith; pleasse don’t mistake my comments. But there needs to be more; much more.

What happened was that those who came up empty with their background of Baltimore Catechism training threw out the baby with the bath water, and we ended up with an attempt to build faith. I say attempt, because one cannot build faith on experiences without some foundation of knowledge beneath it; otherwise you end up with a pablum of feel-good sociology with no reason or basis. Catechesis pretty much went into the toilet, and then someone flushed. It is turning around, but as one (Cardinal or Bishop, I forget who) said, we have lost two generations.

 

[otjm]

So they got rid of the Baltimore Catechism and the memorization. And they got rid of not eating meat on Friday. And they got rid of a lot of other things.

And in place of those things, they substituted … nothing.

So we got rid of the memorization and now we have … nothing.

[We did FINALLY get the new Catechism, but it is so complex that ordinary laypeople have a difficult time following it. It wasn’t really written for lay people anyway. It was written so Bishops could write locally dedicated catechisms.]

Someone made the point (that I don’t fully agree with) that the Evangelical and Pentacostal Protestant churches are filled with ex-Catholics. In one discussion with a (former) young Catholic, he was SHOCKED to learn that the words of the Mass are mostly taken from the Bible. He thought the priest made them all up. Besides in Protestant churches they can skip Sunday(s) and it’s not a sin; whereas, skipping Mass without a good reason is a mortal sin for Catholics.

I have never been able to get a priest to explain to folks assembled at Mass what the Lectionary and the Sacramentary are.

When I ask priests to explain Transsubstantiation, they say they can only preach from the pulpit; they are not allowed to teach.

I have only heard ONE priest encourage prayer to the Holy Spirit. [How can Catholics embrace natural family planning or non-contraception without involving the Holy Spirit as an intimate partner in all aspects of their lives?] [That one priest who publicly prays to the Holy Spirit is Fr. Benedict Groeschel.]

More than one cradle Catholic has told me that the Consecrated Host is symbolic. They just don’t know about the Real Presence because they have not been told. They have not been taught. It has not been explained to them.

And I could go on and on.

We used those old practices … the devotions … the Holy Name Society … abstinence from meat on Fridays … and the Baltimore Catechism as the bases of learning the faith. Not the entirety, but a base on which more education could be based.

But now, there is nothing on which to base more education.

The base is all gone.

We could have added Bible study [excuse me …study of Sacred Scripture, a term which few Catholics understand] or Church history, or the lives of the saints … to a base. But the base was abolished.

As Avery Cardinal Dulles once said, the Church has expended millions of dollars for evangelization and has nothing to show for it.

Thanks be to God for Karl Keating and Catholic Answers.

You and I do not disagree. One of the greatest tragedies we have had over the last 35 or so years has been the issue of catechesis. Bishops simply did not take a leadership role when the new proposed catechisms were published. Whether they were too isolated, and the decisions were made by someone in the Chanceries, or they were floundering in terms of what leadership meant, or they got sucked in on the siren song of “new and better”, or some other reason, we had catechetical materials published and used in diocese after diocese across the country that left kids with a “me and Jesus let’s take care of the poor” message with no foundation. I do not choose to characteize those who re-defined what catechesis should be as ahving an evil motive because I do not think that can be established. They darn sure had no common sense.

We can second guess what might have happened, and it is just that - guessing. Would we be in as sorry a state as we are now? I doubt that, but I also have no doubt we would have lost many anyway, as the secular world preaches a very seductive message.

Gradually this is being turned around, 2 generations later. And it will take a long time trying to undo the damage.

And again, I would point out that many who abandoned ship in the 60s and 70s were raised on the Baltimore Catechism…

 

[Al_Masetti]

… And again, I would point out that many who abandoned ship in the 60s and 70s were raised on the Baltimore Catechism…

But their departure from the Church was not the fault of the Baltimore Catechism.

The Baltimore Catechism was necessary, but not sufficient.

We needed MORE … but what we got was LESS.

And, in fact, once the Baltimore Catechism was gone, there was nothing to take its place.

The Baltimore Catechism may have been inadequate, but it was better than nothing and better than what came after.

Well … they did teach the children in religious education how to color and how to make banners.

 

[quiet52]

So, in summary, in my opinion, attendance at Mass is down because folks don’t know what the teachings of the Catholic Church are because they haven’t been taught by the Church. American Catholics have been put into the “dumb track”.

This will be the BIG scandal of the Catholic Church: that the hierarchy of the Church today has failed in its obligation to teach.

With sadness, I agree.

Priests are stretched thin between their sacramental duties and being overwhelmed with bureaucratic tasks. They aren’t available evenings and weekends for scripture study and other formation, or for spiritual direction.

And priests seem reluctant to address so many controversial issues during their homilies – artificial contraception, sex outside of marriage, abortion, homosexuality, embryonic stem cell research, female ordination, end of life issues, voting responsibly, etc. They rarely even speak about the sacrament of Reconciliation, and receiving the Eucharist worthily. How can we Catholic parents be expected to echo down the faith to our children adequately when we’re not taught by our priests? And even when we do try to teach our children, our words aren’t reinforced by the priests, and the validity of what we try to teach is readily questioned by our children (teens and adult children, especially). After all, society teaches them big time to question all authority – to “think for themselves.” We are truly in crisis. I believe the “big scandal” is already happening.

 

[bobzills]

In a combox discussion below about post-Vatican II liturgical changes, a reader suggested that post-Vatican II liturgical changes were responsible for a massive decline in Catholic church attendance. …

My guess is that the reader is correct and that this is one more example of the fact that Vatican II was a disaster for the Catholic Church in many ways. Take for another example, the support of family life since Vatican II. In the USA in 1930, there were about 9 marriage annulments total. But today it is running up to 60,000 and more in recent years. When you go from 9 marriage anulments per year in the USA to more than 60,000 marriage annulments per year in the USA, it is difficult to see how the Church has been supporting family life as much as it did in 1930.