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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
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Of my own generation, the two biggest reasons to leave were laziness (don’t wanna get out of bed on Sunday morning) or sex (“what? Boundaries? No way. I’m outta here”)
Survey reveals why Catholics leave Church, including because of watered down teaching
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PetraG
Guest
This is one of the worst summaries of a survey that I have ever read. It reveals nothing about why Catholics leave the Church. Whoever was writing this had his own bias about what’s wrong with the Church and uses that to interpret vague information. It makes it essentially impossible to glean any useful information from it.
Quote from the introduction: This gives a summary of the results of a survey Prof. Bullivant undertook for the diocese of Portsmouth in England, which appealed to people who had been baptized Catholic, but no longer attended Mass regularly. The survey was to help explain why people left. The results, from 256 respondents with some connection with Portsmouth diocese, are pretty interesting, if not always surprising.
So no, this is an article about the explanations of Catholics who don’t go to Mass in the diocese of Portsmouth concerning why they don’t go to Mass.
I don’t know how “watered down teaching” got into the headline, but the article starts up with “The survey includes respondents driven out by more zealous young priests who dared to give sermons about hot-button issues.” So, Father Newly-Ordained gets all fire and brimstone and we’re going to conclude people quit coming to hear him because they don’t like the truth? Maybe Fr. Newly-Ordained treats “hot button” issues with zero attention to being either sensitive or paying attention to any nuance whatsoever. If your message is “listen to this, and if you don’t like the way I say it, there’s the door,” well, some people you might have reached if you weren’t so blunt (or perhaps even so callous) are going to find the door. But that will be their fault?
Those who told the survey that it was the Church’s stance on IVF, the non-ordination of women, or whatever, which drove them away, need to answer another question. What would be the point of joining a religion which invariably reflected the majority view in opinion polls, or taught no moral restrictions at all? In other words, we really don’t care if we lose people like you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. You were essentially an apostate before you left, so stopping your useless pretense of coming to Mass makes zero difference.
It would have been nice if the article had actually given the results to the surveys. It gave individual hand-picked responses but it never let on how the survey was conducted, nor what fraction of respondents gave any particular response. How were these 256 respondents found? How were their responses different (if at all) from Catholics who were still attending Mass? If no one knows, then how could anybody conclude that there was a cause-and-effect between their attitudes and their departures?
I would hope the original researcher did a far better job than his interviewer did, that’s all I can say.
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PetraG
Guest
Divorcing and not being able to re-marry in the Church is a fairly common reason for leaving. Marrying someone of another faith and just doing a side-move to the spouse’s church is fairly common. Continuing a slide of apathy towards religious duties that started with their parents is another–Grandma and Grandpa were devout, Mom and Dad went through the motions, children just give it up entirely. (No, parents, just attending Mass on Sundays and sending them to parochial schools but not having any religious observance at home does not cut it.)
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
Guest
Or the vice versa.
I’ve known people who were all hung ho Catholic, hung ho devout until they feel in love with a divorced person.
And then it’s all “ah, but I’m enlightened now.”
Although it’s not really funny at all because they often tend to entice other people out of the Church on their way. “You know, I used to believe all that stuff. But do you really think God is mad just because I fell in love?”
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TK421
Guest
Lifesitenews suffers from massive confirmation bias, but this idea is actually pretty mainstream. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
Part of what can make a faith so attractive is when it is authentic in what it has to say. People have a nose for authenticity and if a congregation doesnt really challenge you or occasionally make you reflective or even uncomfortable, those churches tend to be abandoned. Liberal protestantism and liberal sects of Judaism have been rapidly vacated of numbers despite their attempts to accommodate modern perceptions of morality that conflict with what these faiths traditionally believed. People get bored, uninspired, and leave.
Yes, it is true that people also leave because they dont want to follow X, Y, or Z teaching, and most of those unlikable teachings are related to… * plays ominous piano music in a cave while lightning flashes outside *… SEX. But what the trend has been in congregations other than Catholicism is that people leave anyway even if the church culture avoids those topics completely or even calls them okay.
So really, if the aim is all about retention and accommodation, you end up losing twice as many people as you would have otherwise. A church has to accept, just like it has for centuries, that people will inevitably sometimes leave because they want to follow the secular culture and we can’t be inordinately worried about it. We aren’t omnipotent beings and we can’t make everybody stay and we can’t make everybody happy.
Part of what can make a faith so attractive is when it is authentic in what it has to say. People have a nose for authenticity and if a congregation doesnt really challenge you or occasionally make you reflective or even uncomfortable, those churches tend to be abandoned. Liberal protestantism and liberal sects of Judaism have been rapidly vacated of numbers despite their attempts to accommodate modern perceptions of morality that conflict with what these faiths traditionally believed. People get bored, uninspired, and leave.
Yes, it is true that people also leave because they dont want to follow X, Y, or Z teaching, and most of those unlikable teachings are related to… * plays ominous piano music in a cave while lightning flashes outside *… SEX. But what the trend has been in congregations other than Catholicism is that people leave anyway even if the church culture avoids those topics completely or even calls them okay.
So really, if the aim is all about retention and accommodation, you end up losing twice as many people as you would have otherwise. A church has to accept, just like it has for centuries, that people will inevitably sometimes leave because they want to follow the secular culture and we can’t be inordinately worried about it. We aren’t omnipotent beings and we can’t make everybody stay and we can’t make everybody happy.
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Margaret_Ann
Guest
LifeSite News is the #1 pro-life website in North America. I’d trust them any day.
That’s something that us in the church cannot fix. We can only pray for them and hope one day they come to the realization that they don’t know more than God and His Church. They are simply acting on the arrogance of original sin, the sin that befell Adam and Eve.
Only when they open they eyes and hearts to the truth as taught by Jesus and explained in detail by His Church, can they have an authentic conversion of the heat that will lead them back to the Catholic Church.
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VanitasVanitatum
Guest
Says who?
Their articles are usually sketchy when it comes to the Church at least.
Their pro-life position shouldn’t be the only criteria for being trustworthy anyways.
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JohnR77
Guest
Thanks for your post.
A person who is in the process of leaving the Church has already rejected the faith ( the gift of grace)
that the Church is the true teacher.
One basis or foundation that many still do accept is the Bible.
So, Biblical defenses of these core doctrines is one of the best ways of shoring up their commitment to remain in the Church and avoiding the serious sin and consequences of leaving.
That is why I posted it in Scriptural Apologetics.
I am glad that the survey left of the statistical data. Those who want that are missing the stronger argument of logic that underlies the conclusions and the information that is presented.
The many detractors on this thread is a sign that they fear the truths presented here.
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twf
Guest
I agree that the things you mention need to be addressed… that said, those “political left talking points” are often aspects of Catholic social teaching that happen to align more with the “left” than “right” at this particular moment in American history. Catholicism is neither left nor right.
Crusader13
New member
Says who? What criteria are you basing that on?
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VanitasVanitatum
Guest
Everything on their site is negative. Sketchy isn’t the right word, but they have a few problems.
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Buffalo2NY
Guest
The metrics of this survey aside, what’s wrong with lifesitenews?
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angel12
Guest
This has been discussed many many times on CAF. Do a search, and you’ll have more answers than you wanted.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
Same here. I don’t know many people who sit around engaging in a deep thoughtful search for truth. The handful I do know who are like that were never Catholic. I have thought about why I don’t know many of those types of people and I suspect it’s because I find them kind of boring to be honest. Also frustrating because any issue of belief I personally have to get resolved, I always resolve quickly. I never was a big seeker like that.
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
Guest
Now to be fair, I have met Protestants who were raised Catholic and they love Jesus and have been subjected to bad catechesis. But I didn’t know them during their spiritual journey out the door.
But the people I knew as they were leaving fit the profile I described.
But the people I knew as they were leaving fit the profile I described.
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TheLittleLady
Guest
The people whom I have met who left the Church did it because:
They never knew Christ, they had not been exposed to a real relationship with Christ and His Church.
They were never encouraged nor taught about prayer besides memorizing the Rosary mysteries for the Confirmation test.
They fell in love with someone who was not free to marry in the Church.
They were introduced to people who showed hospitality and kindness and real fervor for Jesus and those people were not Catholic
They never knew Christ, they had not been exposed to a real relationship with Christ and His Church.
They were never encouraged nor taught about prayer besides memorizing the Rosary mysteries for the Confirmation test.
They fell in love with someone who was not free to marry in the Church.
They were introduced to people who showed hospitality and kindness and real fervor for Jesus and those people were not Catholic
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ZMystiCat
Guest
I think if someone leaves a religion over being disgruntled that it isn’t being taught well has many more personal problems with that religion. Leaving tends to indicate a lack of belief, not incredibly ardent, convicted belief.
Applied here, LifeSite might hold some positions we agree with. That doesn’t mean that they’re good at supporting those positions or reporting on, well, anything.
Even more, the author acknowledges other issues (which also don’t have numbers), takes many quotes out of context (though that might be the book’s fault), and expects us to find his call to action relevant to the survey. It’s a pretty poorly written piece.
At least in my experience, people who are neutral or hostile are much more likely to be drawn to the Church by praising the beauty than constantly condemning sin. Sure, the two are mutually exclusive. We find sex between two people of the same gender sinful in part because we understand how it detracts from the perfect beauty of sex and marriage. But laying that groundwork will help a lot more than constantly taking jabs at the LGBT community, as I’ve seen some Protestant pastors do.
But would they report that someone left, in part, because of their awful journalism.
There’s something called the “inverse fallacy fallacy” that basically goes:
- Position P is true
- Argument A supports position P
- Argument A does not contain a fallacy
Applied here, LifeSite might hold some positions we agree with. That doesn’t mean that they’re good at supporting those positions or reporting on, well, anything.
Well, their Newsguard score is absolutely awful. Most of the articles posted around here seem to be of very low quality.
Crusader13
New member
Newsguard isn’t exactly the gold standard for measuring a sites reliability rating. The article I don’t believe was written to address specific numbers with regards to statistical data. It was more of generalization piece meant to encompass a broad view of what problems the Church is facing today.
Bishop Barron nearly said as much in his interview with Jordan Peterson. He readily admitted that the Church has focused primarily on mercy to the extent that it has become one-sided in many respects.
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