Why do Mass attendance and new vocations continue to collapse?

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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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Lots of Catholics and the economic wherewithal to keep them living in/ moving into the area.

Most of the shrinking I see has happened when an area goes into economic decline because the jobs left and/or the Catholic families moved to some other area seen as more desirable, leaving the old parishes behind with mostly elderly folks attending them. The only way these parishes keep going is if the neighborhood either gentrifies, or attracts some other mostly Catholic immigrant group like Latinos or Vietnamese, or becomes a specialty parish such as a national parish, a shrine/ center run by a religious order, or a traditionalist parish.

You can find empty churches in the two major cities near here, and then drive 20-30 miles into the suburbs and find a well-off area with 5 big churches built in the last few decades all running 4 to 6 Sunday Masses that are mostly full every week. These parishes are also producing vocations and there is a joke based on “Trenton Makes, the World Takes” that “This County makes, the neighboring county takes” with respect to priests.
 
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ricmat said:
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
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There are plenty of parishes that already do this, and they are still losing people.

ALL Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant (sorry, I can’t speak for the Orthodox–the church in our city is not communicative with the other Christian fellowships)–are bleeding members and attendees.

The Baptist church I grew up in had over 500 in attendance back in the 1970s and 1980s. Two services were held to accomodate the crowds. Youth group had around 60 active participants. Middle school youth group same, and hundreds of children attended Sunday school from ages 3-5th grade.

Our young married group had around 30 couples who regularly attended socials and the Young Married Sunday school class.

Now the church is down to around 100 people total.

Same for all the Evangelical Protestant churches. From what I have heard (and I’m very social with the Christian communities outside of the Catholic Church!), ALL the churches are experiencing big losses of attendees.

The Protestant church I play piano for had several hundred members back in the 1970s. Now they have 20 regular attendees.

😭

So it’s not just “the Mass” or “too much clapping” or “need more Latin”. It’s a decrease in numbers of Christians who truly understand that Christ means for us to be part of a body of believers, not just in our thoughts, but in real life. St. Paul planted churches, not “individual believers.”
 
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Game said:
The Catholic priests can’t compete with knowledge
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“Knowledge”?
Or “ideas”?

I see young people with heads stuffed full, but unable to untangle the threads of opinions and facts because there’s no underlying philosophical framework (outside of “whatever my friends and favorite You Tubers like”) to figure things out.
 
What were we doing when these things were strong? What were we doing then that we haven’t been doing during the collapse? What did we change? What are dioceses, orders, and parishes without or with less of these problems doing? What are those where these problems are worst doing or not doing? Compare and contrast.

When you look at these questions, the answers become obvious. By their fruits you will know them.

It seems many of our leaders keep trying to come up with new paths to find a solution but there is one they seem to rigidly refuse to try:
Jer. 6:16 Thus says the Lord:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
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Mass attendance is down in this country (I don’t know stats cos I can’t remember, but a priest (Doctor of the church) was telling us at a talk on Saturday) but vocations are up massively, especially lay people but not only us. So I don’t know which country you are talking about but it’s not worldwide as your title seems to imply. even though we are but a tiny island (UK). Actually I am pretty sure Bishop Barron said the same of the US…
 
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In the US Catholics are going to Mass less often and Protestants are dropping out of religion entirely more often (that is, the Protestants who still self-identify as Protestant is going down while attendance of those who do self-identify is fairly steady, whereas with Catholics the self-identification is fairly steady but attendance at Mass is sliding…)


The poll did find that the demographic of 30-39 year old Catholics was actually seeing a rise in those who attend Mass. Not huge, but going up.

Considering that there has been a drop in church attendance not just in the Catholic Church but in nearly every denomination, I think this is a change in human society brought on by things such as two World Wars and a globalized economy and society. Even the Orthodox have the same problems we do in getting people to Mass every week, with only 26% attending weekly. I don’t think they’ve changed their liturgy or their music in a thousand years, so our problems aren’t really likely to be tied to Vatican II. The results of the control group that changed nothing tells us that probably wasn’t it.
 
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Pope_St_Pius_X said:
It depends, I know many of the more traditional orders are actually booming in vocations and Mass attendance.
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And not just among traditional societies either. Many dioceses are also recovering, vocations-wise. At least here in the US.
 
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I believe that the world continues to become a more hateful place.
We hear it in our daily lives and we see it on television.
God is about love.
But it seems that some people would rather hate than love.
We are here on this earth to give glory and praise to God in all that we say and do.
And to love and serve one another as brothers and sisters.
But because of politics and issues of the day, we as a people are divided into tribes, where the folks of one tribe demonize those of another. We are told to hate the rich, hate the poor, hate immigrants, hate people of different race or religion.
Go to confession. Be absolved of your sings. Receive the sacrament at Mass. Love God and love others, even those you disagree with.
 
I think we should help others better understand what the Mass really is, and why it is very important to attend.

More importantly, without receiving the Holy Host continuously we would be in danger of eternal condemnation.
 
I think at least some of it has to do with politics in parishes.

In my parish, we had a perfectly fine priest. Nothing really wrong with him, except that some of the “elites” in the parish didn’t agree with him on everything. He was sometimes a little forgetful, but had several people in the parish helping him out, so it really didn’t affect anyone adversely.

There was never anything impure or improper going on, as far as I know.

Those in the parish who didn’t like him finally managed to get rid of him, via the Bishop, who ended up transferring him after he had first promised he could stay.

Ever since, we’ve only had temporary priests in and out, and none of them have been as good as Father Bill was.

Now, we have no priest, at all. We have a Deacon who does everything.

If there is a shortage of priests, I think it’s at least partly the fault of the laity. They get a bee in their bonnets about differing points of view, and instead of agreeing to disagree and continuing to help out, they persecute the priest they don’t like, to the detriment of the rest of the congregation.

There really was nothing wrong with our Father Bill – just some of his views were at odds with certain members of the parish who insisted on trying to run everything.
 
It is at least worth mentioning and thinking about religious priests. They make up about 31% of priests in the US. However, it feels like 90% of the laity’s interaction with priests is with diocesan priests.

Martin Malachi’s book about his former order the Jesuits in 1987 predicted major problems and made major criticisms of the Jesuits. I don’t agree with a lot of of what Malachi has written, but some of the points he made in the his Jesuits book actually make a lot of sense.

His concern was that you took a historically rural missionary order and transformed them into a primarily urban academic order. The Jesuits always focused to some level on academics, but after 1960ish academics took the priority. Malachi stated the obvious…you don’t need to be a priest to be an professor/teacher/researcher, and once these Jesuit priests realized this many left.

I think it is fair to ask whether over 30% of the men called to priesthood should be joining orders where their interaction with the laity is limited?

http://www.usccb.org/about/public-affairs/backgrounders/clergy-religious.cfm
 
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jack63 said:
think it is fair to ask whether over 30% of the men called to priesthood should be joining orders where their interaction with the laity is limited?
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Depends on which laity. In my diocese almost every diocesan priest is a pastor, with a large percentage of parishes heavily seniors. We need religious order priests to minister to groups most parishes seldom see (youth, young adults, non Catholics etc).

If the diocese had direct jurisdiction over all priests, they would have pulled every priest out of high school, college, prison ministry, etc, in order to keep every “seniors” parish open. The squeaky wheel.
 
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ralfyman said:
According to one source, the attendance rate is around 40 pct:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) newsinfo.inquirer.net

Only 41% of Catholics go to church weekly – SWS​

About 46 percent of Filipino adults, whatever their religion, attend religious services at least once a week, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll taken in the last quarter of 2017 showed. On the other hand, only 41 percent of Catholics attend…
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Our parish has 14,000 parishioners and we have an attendance rate of around 80%.
There are 10 Masses every Sunday to accommodate everyone. At each of these Masses the Church is full and people are standing outside the Church listening to the Mass via speakers and only enter to join the Communion line.
I have family and friends throughout the country and have been to Mass all over. It is similar to our parish so that tiny poll is wrong.
 
Genesis315 said:
What were we doing when these things were strong? What were we doing then that we haven’t been doing during the collapse? What did we change? What are dioceses, orders, and parishes without or with less of these problems doing? What are those where these problems are worst doing or not doing? Compare and contrast.

When you look at these questions, the answers become obvious. By their fruits you will know them.

It seems many of our leaders keep trying to come up with new paths to find a solution but there is one they seem to rigidly refuse to try:
Jer. 6:16 Thus says the Lord:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
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you, are spot on!

What is changing or has changed? Well, respect / reverence for revelation, sacred teaching, and the Eucharist seems to be forefront for me.

Catholics are more and more a horribly catechized group. When 70% of Catholics don’t know the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist…the most central fact of our worship, then we should just admit that what we are doing right now is failing.

You can tell of this horrible catechesis by the way people are more worried about hurting people’s feelings that providing them the truth. Everyday I read another story about the latest controversy within the Church, and what appears to be the push to “Protestantize” or “Secularize” (and lately, “Paganize”) our faith. Look at the % of Catholics who support abortion, same sex unions, embryonic stem cell research, contraception, cohabitation before marriage. Look at the lack of reverence during the mass and when receiving the Holy Eucharist.

Thank you for the quote from Jeremiah.

Blessings.
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jack63 said:
His concern was that you took a historically rural missionary order and transformed them into a primarily urban academic order.
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Do you think the evolution was a missed opportunity to evolve into an urban missionary order to work with the urban poor and working class, though to be fair, aren’t there plenty of Jesuits who do that? I agree with you on how it seems like most people have experience only with the diocesan priests and clerfy and isn’t it a shame because people lose out on learning about the unique spritualities of the religious orders, would more people stay if they had the opportunity to learn about the different charisms and develop their own spirituality?
 
commenter said:
Depends on which laity. In my diocese almost every diocesan priest is a pastor, with a large percentage of parishes heavily seniors. We need religious order priests to minister to groups most parishes seldom see (youth, young adults, non Catholics etc).
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You certainly have a point on some levels. However, Diocesan priests still play the major role for elementary and junior high schools (K-8). In many places I’ve lived Diocesan priests run schools for K-8. I’d wonder why not for K-12.

Also, some of the most profound outreach to poor that I’ve seen have been diocesan in the United States.

I do wonder about people from religious orders taking academic positions at the college level in non-religious fields. 100 years ago this made sense, but today individuals from religious orders are competing with very well qualified individuals who are laity, non-catholic, and non-religious. How does this make sense?
 
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RCIAGraduate said:
Do you think the evolution was a missed opportunity to evolve into an urban missionary order to work with the urban poor and working class, though to be fair, aren’t there plenty of Jesuits who do that?
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Is it a missed opportunity?..I think so. Is it a missed opportunity to reach the urban poor and working class? In some ways I don’t think that question makes much sense. A few things…
  1. Many major cities in the US are extremely wealthy. To maintain a reasonable standard of living, an upper middle class salary is needed.
  2. Much of the poverty in the US is rural. Much of the working class in the US is also rural or in small to mid-sized cities. A simple google search gets those facts very quickly.
If the Jesuits really want to reach the poor in the US, they should go to where the poor are. This is the rural areas of the US that are often ministered by diocesan priests.
 
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