Major new survey finds decline in US Catholic population, as adults leave Church [CWN]

[Sarah_B_Good]

As part of the younger generation, the numbers do not surprise me at all. In fact, it saddens me to say that my husband and I, who have both been raised in the Church, have recently made the decision to leave the Church and pull our two young children from the Catholic School they attend. They will be attending an Episcopal elementary school in the fall. It truly saddens us to leave the Church, but we can’t in good conscience stay any longer.

 

[Colorad007]

Is it really controversial to suggest that organized religion in the United States is in decline, and that the Catholic Church in America is perhaps declining even more quickly? Numerous polls have already confirmed this, even if the overall Catholic population is more stagnant than Pew reports because of immigration. The Church is absolutely in crisis in America, as is organized religion more generally. When the Archdiocese of New York, one of the country’s flagship dioceses, is shuttering a third of its parishes and reports that weekly Mass attendance is barely in the double-digits in the archdiocese, yeah, that is a crisis. It isn’t the end of the world (I think), but it is most definitely the end of Christianity as a cultural marker for the United States.

 

[Colorad007]

One of the problems with American Catholics [and the American media] is that we tend to look at the Church through a [somewhat arrogant] American lens. The Catholic Church is global. We forget that US Catholics only account for about 7% of the Church as a whole. The Church in many parts of the world is thriving. I feel like the so-called ‘Third World’ will end up re-evangelizing the ‘First World.’ We have become a little too comfortable and rich. We think the world revolves around us and we do not need God anymore. People who have fewer material possessions tend to have an easier time recognizing their utter dependence on God.

You are quite right, which is why the Pew numbers hardly prevent me from sleeping at night. I tend to think that many Americans, even Catholics, are exceptionalists about their country, and find it hard to conceive that America is a post-Christian country that no longer shares the values and ideas of our faith. But the sooner the hierarchy–and the rest of us–understand what is really happening, the sooner we’ll be able to formulate a truly missionary offensive to win souls. Pope Francis gets it, and hopefully it won’t be long before the rest of us do.

 

[Dawnia]

Is it really controversial to suggest that organized religion in the United States is in decline, and that the Catholic Church in America is perhaps declining even more quickly? Numerous polls have already confirmed this, even if the overall Catholic population is more stagnant than Pew reports because of immigration. The Church is absolutely in crisis in America, as is organized religion more generally. When the Archdiocese of New York, one of the country’s flagship dioceses, is shuttering a third of its parishes and reports that weekly Mass attendance is barely in the double-digits in the archdiocese, yeah, that is a crisis. It isn’t the end of the world (I think), but it is most definitely the end of Christianity as a cultural marker for the United States.

The number referenced by the Pew Survey is the number of people who identify as Catholic. That has little to do with the number of people practicing the faith, which has been declining for years although I’m not sure it’s a matter of people no longer practicing the faith. My hometown parish drastically declined because the number of people dying off was greater than the number of newborns.

 

[Colorad007]

The number referenced by the Pew Survey is the number of people who identify as Catholic. That has little to do with the number of people practicing the faith, which has been declining for years although I’m not sure it’s a matter of people no longer practicing the faith. My hometown parish drastically declined because the number of people dying off was greater than the number of newborns.

Right, fine. But decline is decline whether it is the result of apostasy or the result of demographics. For the Catholic Church in America, it happens to be the result of both.

 

[ARSpade]

Eh, if somebody’s going to be yelling about pro-abortion, women-priests, gay marriage, etc. stuff I’d rather them be doing it from the outside than on the inside.

And that’s probably what’s going on.

 

[Pulvis]

No, this survey is not junk.

And Catholics continue to be in denial, saying that the Church keeps growing at a slow rate around the world, that the Church is the largest charitable organization, yada yada.

Look, it’s official. The sky is falling for American Catholics.

I just heard Gus Lloyd on Catholic Channel, XM radio this morning, discussing this poll.

We’re talking a 23% to 20% drop of Millenials (ages 18-35) in only seven years. 3% of America is over 9,000,000 people. This is a crisis. No business would tolerate such a drop in numbers, and neither should a church.

We need to reexamine ourselves and our parishes, and figure out how to reconstruct them from the beginning.

We need to triple our efforts to catechize to adults and children. Protestants are good at this, why can’t Catholics be?

We need to triple our efforts to make Catholic school more affordable for nonwhite Americans. We are losing Hispanic American Catholics because of this.

We need to triple our efforts to study up on our faith and figure out how to counterargue Protestant evangelists. Because Protestants are good at arguing their faith.

We need to make confession more accessible and much gentler. Confession is already embarrassing as is.

We need to get rid of the tough-love nuns. How many horror stories do we have about tough nuns? Too many. They have traumatized an entire generation of Catholics.

We need to make priests and deacons more accessible.

We need to reexamine our marriages.

Personally I think the reason millenials fall away from religion is that they see how their parents are not fully practicing their faith. This includes the divorce and remarriage of their parents. But this also includes how the Catholic Church has not been fully compassionate to divorced people.

It may be that the Church will reluctantly have to create a theology of divorce, and a pathway to remarriage after divorce, much like how the Orthodox are doing.

It may be that the Church will reluctantly have to allow priests to marry, to lessen the possibility of sex scandal. Other rites allow this, why can’t the Latin Rite?

Another reason is that people around the world are discovering that it is possible, after all, to live happy without religion. Despite their problems, the bottom line is that cohabitation, contraception, and abortion do work for people! People don’t even understand what’s so bad about sin. People sin and get away with it, and feel ok. How does one’s gay relationship affect you, anyway? The Church needs to communicate its message of why it’s even relevant in this world to begin with.

Another reason is that women are educated with the idea that the Catholic Church is oppressive to women because of its teachings on abortion and women’s ordination.

There are already plenty of churches doing what you suggest. They are the mega evangelical come as you are churches where numbers of bodies in the chairs is more important than saving souls. Make everybody happy, make everybody welcome, don’t call out sin. No thank you. I would rather attend a practically empty Mass and hear the Truth than to be crammed in like a sardine with a building full of people being lied to about the state of their souls. The Church was never about numbers, it was about teaching the truth to those willing to hear it.

 

[boar2roar]

As part of the younger generation, the numbers do not surprise me at all. In fact, it saddens me to say that my husband and I, who have both been raised in the Church, have recently made the decision to leave the Church and pull our two young children from the Catholic School they attend. They will be attending an Episcopal elementary school in the fall. It truly saddens us to leave the Church, but we can’t in good conscience stay any longer.

As part of an even younger generation its good to see that a lot of young catholic sre traditional and devout in their faith and it made me happy to see the devoutness of many people in my age group who organize and go to events. But if its Episcopalians who we strive to be like then we might as well hit the self destruct button to try to emulate that.

 

[Tigg]

There are already plenty of churches doing what you suggest. They are the mega evangelical come as you are churches where numbers of bodies in the chairs is more important than saving souls. Make everybody happy, make everybody welcome, don’t call out sin. No thank you. I would rather attend a practically empty Mass and hear the Truth than to be crammed in like a sardine with a building full of people being lied to about the state of their souls. The Church was never about numbers, it was about teaching the truth to those willing to hear it.

I couldn’t agree more. Uncompromising truth is not popular these days and those parishes drawing a crowd are oft times the ones with the charismatic, well-likeable pastor not willing to upset the apple cart.

 

[commenter]

The data from CARA and the data from PEW are subject to different interpretations, but based on what I have read, and my own experience in my US diocese, I find:

• The huge growth in non denominational churches is not well understood. It is a mistake to lump them with evangelicals, because they don’t hold to liberal or conservative doctrine, they have very little doctrine. It is almost consumer driven Christianity.
• From what I have seen, women graduating from Catholic High Schools are having very, very few babies. This is especially true of all-girls high schools, which in my area are aggressively feminist, more so than public schools. The extreme emphasis is on career and “Social Commitment”, which means political Left. This is true to some extent also in boys’ high schools and coed ones.
• Home schooling families are having lots of children.
• There is very little going on in the diocese to encourage families to have children. The diocesan newspaper has no articles with strengths of large families. The Family Life Department talks a lot about Domestic Violence, how to expedite annulments, how to be happy after divorce, or how parents can survive despite severe problems with their kids.
  There is never any mention of church teaching on contraception. There is no mention of stay at home mothers, as if they don’t exist. There is no encouragement for home schooling.

 

[robertericleech]

‘Make your way in by the narrow gate. It is a broad gate and a wide road that leads on to perdition, and those who go in that way are many indeed; but how small is the gate, how narrow the road that leads on to life, and how few there are that find it!’ Mt. 7.13-14

If that isn’t a clear enough indication that the truth is not dependent on popularity, I don’t know what is. I’d like to think I would still be Catholic if there were ten of us left.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

It almost feels like there is something else going on. I don’t think the number of people who actually believed and practiced their faith has changed that drastically in seven years. I’d wager the numbers have been pretty steady in the US, or only a slight decline.

Since the survey seems to be about self identifying as a particular faith, I think this shows that those who felt pressured to claim a particular faith are now dropping the pretense.

 

[Vouthon]

I don’t agree with that caricature, it’s very simplistic and doesn’t account for many realities. First, American Catholic parishes pray for crises and concerns around the world, and give to missions and relief efforts in countries that we may never be able to afford to visit. Second, a lot of the reason Americans are American-centric is because we don’t have the same opportunities for exposure as a lot of the world. Travelling between countries is prohibitively expensive for most Americans. Unlike Europeans, for example, we can’t hop on a train or cheap puddle-jumper and visit a whole new culture. Also, there is simply more cultural exchange between the average non-American universities. The U.S. has far too many universities for interested non-Americans to saturate. There may be plenty at a few of the top universities, but it’s not a possibility the numerous state universities between the coasts. When I went to university in the U.S., I met one student actually from South America (i.e., not a U.S. resident) in four years. Then I did a one-year program in London, and had several South Americans in my classes.

So yes, Americans are American-centric in some regards, but I wouldn’t chalk it all up to arrogance and lack of concern for the rest of the world.

May I ask why it is so expensive for Americans to travel? Isn’t it relatively easy to get to, say, the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico for a holiday?

The EU certainly does enable easier travel with its common European citizenship, creating less bureaucracy for tourists through freedom of movement.

I agree about British universities, my one is Scotland is filled with people from abroad.

 

[Vouthon]

Au contraire to what non-Catholics/ex-Catholics on this thread have been suggesting, the statistics - which are from a poll with a potentially very wide margin of error extending into the millions - even if one discounts them as flawed, suggest very clearly that the more traditional churches are retaining their flock whilst the ‘liberal,’ progressive ones are in serious decline.

It has also been suggested on the basis of the evidence that many younger Catholics are disillusioned, not so much with the church’s moral teachings (apart from say divorce or contraception perhaps) but with its apparent identification with right-wing politics in the economic or political sphere in American public life. While the church itself in the US spans the partisan divide on a host of issues, this might not be very clear to the average, ill-informed lay person if they - for instance - looked at CAF post forums which are littered with pro-conservative, pro-Libertarian right-wing economic/political agendas that have nothing to do with the life issues Catholics are expected to uphold but rather represent ancillary Republican Party politics that is actually quite far removed from Catholic Social Doctrine.

I would take therefore take two things from this (bearing in mind the poll may be utterly wrong):

1. The church should take a leaf from the Evangelical churches in sticking to its guns on moral issues, as these cannot be changed anyway and the poll indicates that the churches that are conservative on these matters are holding steady against those which have liberalized and so made themselves socially irrelevant with their ‘wishy-washiness’. Relaxing of moral doctrine actually appears, statistically speaking, to lead to a significant drop in religious attendance and activity.
2. It should be made clear that “moral conservatism” is utterly distinct from “economic/political conservatism” and that people on the left of politics can be faithful Catholics so long as they are pro-life. In the UK, South Korea and many other places the church is often associated - politically and economically - with “leftism” in the public mind whereas Protestantism is actually seen as more pro-capitalist and economically conservative. In South Korea and the UK it is not surprising to me that despite being a minority faith, Catholicism is thriving and has a much higher religiosity vis-a-vis Protestantism, with something like less than 40% of Protestants being actively religious in Scotland whilst for Catholics its 70% religiosity. The left-wing political overtones and the strong, traditional morals model actually seems to work very well in practice, since the church appears ageless and fearless in its stances, strongly rooted in history while also being radical in its support for the poor and marginalized.

The poll therefore seems to suggest that American Catholicism has to become more authentically Catholic vis-a-vis its perception in public life, both morally and socially, to reverse the (supposed) tide. In this respect I think it should look to how the Catholic Church operates in other countries. In Scotland, my country, the Catholic community has the highest religiosity of any group (perhaps excepting Muslims) and while known for its traditional moral teaching is very obviously situated to the ‘left’ in the public mind-set due to its close traditional links to both the Labour Party and the SNP, which are both left-wing parties, its opposition to Conservative Party austerity, its support for nuclear disarmament, welfare programs and so on.

Given that the Catholic Church is still and looks set to remain the largest single Christian denominational grouping in the US (no matter what the poll), a genuine commitment to the full ambit of Catholic Teaching would make Political Catholicism a very formidable force in American politics were it to exploit it to the maximum. I think it would do much to help erase the polarization that grips the political scene in America.

 

[josie_L]

I might have expressed myself inelegantly…i didn’t mean to say we don’t care about the rest of the world or the universal Church, just that we tend to exaggerate the importance of what is happening here, and tend to forget we are a small minority of the Catholic Church as a whole.

I understand and agree with this sentiment.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

May I ask why it is so expensive for Americans to travel? Isn’t it relatively easy to get to, say, the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico for a holiday?

The EU certainly does enable easier travel with its common European citizenship, creating less bureaucracy for tourists through freedom of movement.

I agree about British universities, my one is Scotland is filled with people from abroad.

The US is almost as big as Europe (95% the size), the reason it is so expensive is because you cannot easily drive to another country. Given the size of US states driving to another state is like driving to another country within Europe.

Driving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles is like driving from Poland to France. In the US if you want to visit another country you need to fly unless you live at the border.

 

[MarkR]

It’s amazing to me how poll driven and poll ignorant people are. Even those who don’t want to see this happening quote polls as if they’re Holy Scripture when in fact they’re massively flawed, if not outright dishonest and meant to produce a result. A Pew poll on this subject is worth as much as a NY Times poll. No one ever looks at the poll’s history for accuracy, its internals or its ideology. Pew is a Leftist poll, and it’s notoriously (laughably) inaccurate. All polls are just a snapshot in time of a small group.

That said, I don’t doubt that the Catholic Church in the U.S.is in bad shape. It’s more a matter of Cafeteria Catholicism and ignorance of our own faith that’s to blame though, not people leaving in droves imo. I’m a Revert and the only one in my family who didn’t go to Catholic school, and I’m the family “apologist”. That’s a disgrace, and a lot of priests and nuns are going to have some explaining to do one day.

I don’t think the U.S. Church is significantly shrinking. My local church–in NY!–is packed–and that people actually voluntarily sit through the mind numbingly pathetic homilies we get (if they can stay awake) says something. A LOT of work to do though.

 

[Mark121359]

In 1969, a young Bavarian theologian, Joseph Ratzinger, said these prophetic words;

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision.

As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly.

But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystalization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek.

The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eve of the French Revolution—when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain—to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.

Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Peace, Mark

 

[Mark121359]

I believe this article explains the decline rather well!..
Why Are The “Nones” Leaving Religion?

Peace, Mark

 

[Tigg]

I believe this article explains the decline rather well!..
Why Are The “Nones” Leaving Religion?

Peace, Mark

Mark - So appreciate this article as it affirms a certain view which was the topic of discussion on another thread. Here is an amazingly accurate point:

Religious leaders–and I mean Catholics and Protestants alike–turned the Christian religion into an organization that does good works. Instead of the wondrous bread of heaven they were content to hand out Wonder Bread. .

Someone coined it “busy-ness” and another pointed out the disproportionate “social justice” activities which pass as being paramount to spiritual concerns.

Instead of the feeding of the five thousand they spoke about the “real miracle” being the fact that everyone shared their lunch.

A couple of years ago, in primary age students during catechism class, the miracle of the loaves was being discussed. While I and my aide were trying to explore the meaning of “miracle” with the children and get them to imagine the wonder, power and awesomeness of God, a visiting priest walked into the room and said this very thing. The real miracle was the fact that “everyone shared what they had with others.” I felt as though a balloon had been pricked and suddenly deflated. We felt the lesson of that day was all for naught.