And where do you get this number from? Please provide some proof. You can’t just fling statistics around without some kind of proof to back it up.
I’m 2 years in after converting and still going strong.
I suppose you beat the odds. Or maybe your parish is one if the few that does a good job with mystagogy.
Weekly attendance is actually about the same between Protestants and Catholics, but there are so few Protestants who would ever call themselves Protestants if they didn’t attend church at least occasionally, and the practicing-non practicing distinction breaks down approximately like this for Catholics.
Synod: Poll finds practicing, non-practicing Catholics in America are worlds apart | National Catholic Reporter
According to some kind of head guy with Knights of Columbus.
I find this an interesting statement too.
As a Protestant I was only ever being fed ‘baby food’. At the pulpit every Sunday the minister would preach about salvation, salvation, salvation but NEVER, ever mention anything to help me be a better Christian. You’re absolutely right that this is what Protestants are often focused on. We all want to be pretty Christians.
Did you ever look around at other Protestant churches? Some are better than others, and you tend to have a lot more options available to you as a Protestant than you do as a Catholic.
It has been my experience that the Catholic Church is FAR more concerned with helping us be better Christians. The problem is people don’t know HOW to access the resources that the Church has in place to help us improve OR people aren’t making any effort to go it on their own.
Our difference of opinion might have something to do with our different assessments of the relative value that the sacraments have in making you a better Christian.
I would agree that there is not enough help for new converts. After RCIA they’re pretty much abandoned and left to their own resources and for some people this can be a problem. Seems to me some people just need more hand holding then others. I’m content to learn on my own using the Catechism and the Vatican documents as my guide but others are not so inclined to research on their own.
My goodness, I suppose the mystagogy was not so good at your parish. I wouldn’t call it hand-holding, but two-thirds of Tiber swimmers could use some more of it within the first five years. Are you a revert? That can be of assistance- I think straight-out converts are more like complete strangers than reverts are, so they tend to need a little more help putting down roots.
Back to the point about the relative efficacy of the sacraments- on their own, they don’t give converts much of a reason to stick around. They need something else in order to stay committed past a year (half don’t) or five years (two thirds don’t). That something is what you call hand-holding, but I would call it the stuff that is comparatively more important and more effective than the sacraments in helping Christians become better Christians. You’re more likely to downplay that if your focus is strictly sacramental, but I would argue that you’re downplaying something that is very important, and to your own detriment.
Because I am in love with the Church I need to stress that the Church has EVERYTHING in place to help us be better Christians. The sacraments are the single most important resource that any Christian needs. Confession keeps me humble and always striving to be better. The Eucharist keeps me on my knees praising Christ. The homilies are usually hard hitting and force me to examine my life and my heart. The Mass forces me to hear Scripture, even when I don’t feel like it.
Everything that you’ve listed is done for you, to you, or on your behalf. At what point do you contribute something? See, this is the other reason why downplaying the non-sacramental types of things is so bad. It downplays everything that you can do as a layperson, and even if it doesn’t strictly limit you to an entirely passive role, it devalues the things you can do by comparison and makes you less likely to do them.
I think it’s unfortunate you have such a low opinion of the Catholic Church’s ability to help people be better Christians but honestly I have the same low opinion of most Protestant churches so I guess we’re even.
Well, there’s a reason why the CC is working so hard to try and get the laity more involved in doing things of value. It’s actually a long list of rather complicated reasons whose problematic roots are well outside these United States, and it has as much to do with an inordinately high view of the priestly duties as it does with all the laity-related issues. But the short version is that the CC badly needs to change what’s happening with the laity, and I acknowledge that they’re in the early stages of working really hard on it while also pointing out how far they have to go and how they had soooo very far to go when they first started. And if you ask me, all of this is intimately related to what should be (and sometimes is) the core mission of any Christian church- win non believers for Christ and help Christians become better Christians. Again, the CC in the US is working on this, but they really aren’t particularly good at either of them (at this time) (relatively speaking) and it becomes especially apparent in this type of highly competitive environment.
(Sanford and Son referance for you guys under 30). Her husband was very quiet (can’t imagine why).
So correctly stated your number what? But you try harder? 