Why do Mass attendance and new vocations continue to collapse?

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Yes, but where is the biggest growth in the church, and how many vocations are we seeing? I’m talking about Africa!
 
Because it’s a lot funner to lay in bed on Sunday morning, and a lot easier to embrace the glittering prizes the world hold out.

I’m increasingly wary of these questions looking for ”tricks” to get people back into the pews.

You can have all the hip, cool, emotionalistic approaches you Like, but at the end of the day, people will decide for themselves.
 
As I said, it’s not enough to just have a big family. You have to be committed to raising them in the faith and you have to promote vocations within your family. And, I’ll add, you have to be serious and vocal about living the faith yourself.

Most people of faith that I know, whether Catholic or not, site the witness of their parent(s) as one of the main reasons they either persevered in the faith or came back to faith as an adult.
 
There are two kinds of scandals.
  1. When some priests and bishops act morally badly, that is a tragedy…but Catholics have always known the tragedy and reality of sin. They see it themselves, and other laity.
  2. Religious education was horrible from the late 60s till late 90s, and is mediocre on doctrine and spiritually even now in many places. Preaching was also weak, often glued to the secular media.
The second kind of scandal did the most damage.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
As I said, it’s not enough to just have a big family. You have to be committed to raising them in the faith and you have to promote vocations within your family. And, I’ll add, you have to be serious and vocal about living the faith yourself.
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I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of a parent “promoting” vocations in the family. Vocations to the priesthood or religious life come from God. One of our recent young priests came from a family where the parents were Protestant and non-practicing. Another pastor talks about how he tried to get away from God calling him to the priesthood. A third older priest told a story about how his mother was basically a Chreaster. This type of call is not something that the parents were “promoting” except that when it happened they didn’t stop their son from following it.

One of the problems the Church had with vocations some decades ago is that some children felt forced into them, by their families and/or their teachers, often in cases where there weren’t a lot of other economic options or the kid had some kind of personal problem that wasn’t being addressed, and this is one way we ended up with the abuse scandals, other scandals, and large numbers of priests and religious leaving in middle age.
 
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Loud-living-dogma said:
Yes, but where is the biggest growth in the church, and how many vocations are we seeing? I’m talking about Africa!
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If you are some poor boy in Africa and the priesthood is offering opportunities for you to be educated, be a leader, and maybe see the world, then yeah, it’s going to look really attractive economically. If you are in the West and have 100 careers to choose from, 99 of which are going to let you get married, have kids and make money, then only the most called and committed are going to choose the career where you have to be relatively poor and stay single.
 
BTypical said:
We keep going back because of the Eucharist. But eventually, that gets to where it isn’t enough, particularly when we’re denied it while watching even worse transgressors be regularly welcomed and protected.
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The Eucharist is ALWAYS enough.

Furthermore, if you’re “denied” it then you presumably know what to do in order to fix that, as a priest will tell you what you need to do.
Pointing to your neighbor and going, “But they’re even more sinful than me and they’re allowed to receive!” is just adding to your sin because you’re minding somebody else’s business instead of mending your own ways.

Most Catholics who care about receiving the Eucharist also use caution not to end up in situations where they are unable to receive for longer than the few days it takes to get to Confession.
 
Where are you getting your statistics?

At my parish, attendance is up by 10% over last year.

In my Diocese, vocations are increasing.
 
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commenter said:
Religious education was horrible from the late 60s till late 90s,
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It was horrible for a lot longer than that. St Pius X wrote his own catechism before becoming pope, presumably because there were no good materials available to him. And then as Pope he promoted some ideas that were truly bad for the faith, like literalistic scripture interpretation. He had some terrific ideas as well, like communion at a younger age. Even there he ignored the connection between confirmation and communion which has led to some difficulties.
 
Sure, I did it probably a couple hundred times. I am now sorry, I have confessed it several years ago, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for that and my other many past sins.
How is that your business?
How does it affect you and your personal relationship with God? It doesn’t.

And, as I told the priest, the reason I did it was that I didn’t want to be away from Jesus during a bad time. It wasn’t out of disrespect. For all I know, Jesus had pity and helped bring me back on track.
 
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Loud-living-dogma said:
When there is a difference between Vatican II teaching and pre-Vatican II teaching, I’ll take pre-Vatican II every time.
For instance, the Third Commandment.
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The following are the cited sources on which the earlier quites from V2 are based:

(12) Cfr. S. Augustinus, Bapt. c. Donat. V, 28, 39; PL 43, 197: Certe manifestum est, id quod dicitur, in Ecdesia intus et foris, in corde, non in corpore cogitandum. Cfr. ib., III, 19, 26: col. 152; V, 18, 24: col. 189; In Io. Tr. 61, 2: PL 35, 1800, et alibi saepe.

(13) Cfr. Lc. 12, 48: Omni autem, cui multum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo. Cfr. etiam Mt. 5, 19-20; 7, 21-22; 25 41-46; Iac., 2, 14.

I doubt that any of that diminishes the Third Commandment.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
How does it affect you and your personal relationship with God? It doesn’t.
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No, but when someone is publicly shamed by being banned from the Eucharist while the Church tells them to “mind their own business” about someone else whose behavior is even more scandalous, that person sees the hypocrisy and total lack of moral authority that’s present in the Church today. That’s what will drive them away.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
One of the problems the Church had with vocations some decades ago is that some children felt forced into them, by their families and/or their teachers,
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Promoting vocation is not the same thing as forcing vocations on people who don’t want them. It is about having a prudent open dialogue and being supportive of those who feel called to religious life and/or the priesthood. In this day and age of hostility to all thing religious, these conversations are worth having.

I have heard several discussions about the importance of talking about vocations within your family and the community, and without pressure letting your children know that you would support them if they discerned a call. In one such discussion, a priest who works with seminarians mentioned how many young men are nervous about discussing their vocations with their parents because they are afraid their parents won’t approve or are afraid of disappointing their parents because they know they expect grandchildren.

My diocese and my parish do an excellent job of promoting these kinds of discussions within our families and community, and as a result, we have a vocations boom here. My medium-sized parish has about 5 young men in seminary and several more discerning. We also have several young women discerning religious life.

Whether or not we are comfortable, prudent discussion about vocations within the family is essential.
 
No one gets “publicly shamed”. It’s not a “shameful” thing to not receive Eucharist at Mass, as unless you advertise the reason why you’re not receiving, nobody knows why, and frankly nobody is paying attention.

Furthermore, if you’re not able to receive Eucharist, then you have likely been told what you would need to do in order to receive it again. If you choose to not do that, then it’s not the fault of the Church that you have chosen to continue with whatever you’re doing rather than make the choices that would allow you to receive. You need to take responsibility for your own soul and not deflect that onto anger at others who have nothing to do with your personal situation.
 
IMHO

Filling the pews doesn’t matter if those particular pews are not on the path to Heaven.

We (our diocese anyway) is supposed to focus on 4 core values: Hospitality, Collaboration, Faith sharing, and Reconciliation.

Note that there is nothing about “proper worship.” It seems to me that if you don’t take the Mass seriously, then nothing else matters.

If you want people that are already in the pews to be holier, and keep them long-term in the pews, then the Mass is the key. Do that right, and all else will follow.

For example
  • ban clapping during the Mass. Focus on glory for God, not glory for everyone and everything else.
  • Have the priest facing the altar/crucifix (if you have one)/ Tabernacle during the Eucharistic prayer. He’s offering the holy sacrifice to God, not the parishioners.
  • Have an altar railing to receive Communion.
  • Treat the altar area as “holy ground”. Instead of “the more people up there, the better.”
  • Use incense.
  • Have every action and word done in a reverent manner.
  • Save the Hospitality, Collaboration, Faith Sharing, & Reconciliation for “some time other than during the Mass.”
If we do the Mass wrong, nothing can help us. It’s the best thing we have going for us. Focus on it first.

Again…IMHO
 
Tis_Bearself said:
No one gets “publicly shamed”. It’s not a “shameful” thing to not receive Eucharist at Mass, as unless you advertise the reason why you’re not receiving, nobody knows why, and frankly nobody is paying attention.
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I’m glad you never have been. I have. The priest called us out in front of the entire congregation for failing to follow the Church’s marital rules. Which was fine, we deserved that, but this exact same priest is known to have actively looked the other way when a man beat his wife black and blue.

When the Church consistently follows its own rules, it’ll eventually start gaining credibility again, but until then attendance and vocations will fall.
 
Sounds like you have a problem with a particular priest rather than the church herself.
 
I’m sorry if that happened to you, but I find it hard to believe that, if you are in USA, a priest pointed you both out before a whole congregation and publicly announced the two of you weren’t following “marital rules”. That sort of thing is grounds for a complaint to the bishop. I have known many people in irregular marital situations and have never heard of such a thing.

You seem to have a large amount of anger at the Church based on this and your other posts. I will pray for you.
 
I think it is a matter of leadership and the culture of the church.
 
You have to look at where vocations and Mass attendance are still high, in some places in the West, and many places in the rest of the world. What is present there, that is absent in places where shrinking takes place?
 
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